When Marcela Cuellar was growing up in Oxnard, and even when she started her own undergraduate work at Stanford University, there were no local public four-year institutions in Ventura County. Just seven years old, CSU Channel Islands now serves the local community. The campus has only 3,500 students, its growth temporarily stymied by state budget cuts. CSU Channel Islands fosters a "small school feeling," Marcela says, "focused on placing students at the center of the college experience."

With a student body that reflects the community's Latino population, CSU Channel Islands meets the criterion of a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI): at least 25% of its enrollment is Latino. Although only 8% of America's universities are HSIs, they enroll more than half of all Latino college students. Marcela's dissertation will contribute to what is now a very small body of research on such institutions and the experiences of Latino students there. Her research question is: What are HSIs doing to promote student success?

Using data from the Higher Education Research Institute's Freshman Survey and follow-up surveys when the same respondents were seniors, Marcela hopes to compare the experiences of Latino students at HSIs with those at schools having proportionally smaller Latino enrollments. Her goal is to see "what works in both environments in terms of promoting student success and what is unique to each."

Marcela was a counselor with the Upward Bound program in San Diego when she decided two things: She wanted to pursue a career in education, and she wanted to be closer to home. Starting with a master's degree in higher education leadership at the University of San Diego, she was encouraged by a faculty mentor to move along to doctoral studies. After reading about the research under way at UCLA, "I knew that if I was going to pursue a PhD, it was going to be here and nowhere else."

When Marcela left San Diego, she says, "I wanted to conduct research in my home community and bring things full circle." Being able to focus on institutions like CSU Channel Islands in her dissertation will fulfill that goal. Marcela hopes to complete her degree in 2011. In this job market, she's open-minded about career choices. "As long as I'm working with students," she says, "that's the part I'm eager to get back to."

Published in Fall 2010, Graduate Quarterly