In our most recent Town Hall meeting, I was pleased to be asked whether we have developed our response to the question, "What does it mean to be an Hispanic Serving Institution?" I replied that yes, we have evolved our response through the strategic planning process. Let me elaborate.

In the October 2007 issue of Insights, I wrote about this topic and suggested that it is like a mosaic with many pieces (e.g., the federal HSI designation, membership in Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, the percentage of Hispanic faculty as well as students, our El Centro campus, and special services such as Proyecto Pa'Lante). And within the University there are additional pieces of a larger mosaic that all together form the work of art that is Northeastern Illinois University. The pattern for our mosaic was still developing.

Over the next year we embarked on our strategic planning process, bringing together 20 members of the Steering Committee, 85 members of the Planning Team, and over 600 individuals who participated in one of the many forums across all the campuses. And we framed our response: First through our reflection entitled "Diversity at Northeastern Illinois University: What Is It?"; and second, under Goal 3, Urban Leadership, in Action Step 3.4, in which we state that we will strive to make NEIU an institution of choice for Latino students. (In keeping with the larger mosaic we want to be an institution of choice for all students; even so, this will be an area of focus as we increase our capacity to serve our region.)

For the current fiscal year, FY2009, Northeastern received a special legislative appropriation of $1.5 million to assist us in becoming an institution of choice for Latino students. While a detailed update on all of the activities is available, let me give a brief summary:

A major increment has been used to strengthen academic programs, academic support and mentoring, co-curricular activities, and best practices. A second increment was used for competitive grants. Over $300,000 was used toward twenty projects across all the campuses. And the third increment is to assist with the establishment of a multicultural center. We have good concepts from the multicultural center program committee report. The difficulty is identifying an appropriate space. NEIU has the least non-residential space per student of any of the public universities. So this project is still a work in progress.

We have accomplished a great deal with this special appropriation. However, it is "non-recurring" and will end on June 30, 2009. We are currently working to request that we receive this special legislative appropriation again for FY2010.

As we move forward we will continue to refine our shared understanding of what it means to be an HSI, and how this complements our role as a vibrant institution of choice for all students in the region.