Competence of Faculty, Staff, and Administrators in Hispanic Culture: Evidence from Three Surveys of Personnel and Students at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

Best practice in the field of communication, especially intercultural communication, emphasizes seeking to understand and enter your interlocutor's perspective. This practice would seem directly applicable to college faculty and staff when they interact with students, especially given the cultural and ethnic diversity in college student populations. Yet, faculty and staff can operate with substantial autonomy when interacting with students and there are few means of monitoring cultural responsiveness in their conversations. Because of this, little is known about the actual cultural competence of college and university personnel. Information about competence, in respect to Hispanic culture, of college and university faculty, staff, and administrators at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) was gathered as part of an NSF-funded investigation that focused on the characteristics and programming of HSIs as well as the background and experiences of their students. A minimum of 44 HSIs in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado were represented in the 403 usable responses gathered from faculty, staff, and administrators. Fourteen HSIs in New Mexico and Texas were represented in the student survey data gathered in 2018 and three in north Texas in the survey data from 2019. Responses from 213 Hispanic students were isolated from the 2018 student survey and 307 from the 2019 data. This material was used to verify and expand on the FSA results. A consistent and strong difference of opinion was found between Hispanic faculty, staff, and administrators at the HSIs and their non-Hispanic peers regarding information available to higher education professionals about Hispanic culture, the elements of Hispanic culture, and the characteristics and background of Hispanic students. Student responses confirmed, at many points, that the perspective of the Hispanic faculty, staff, and administrators was accurate. It appears, based on this information, that the non-Hispanic employees at HSIs are less well informed about a major portion of their student population than would be desirable. Being better informed about Hispanic culture would make these HSI employees "more credible, empathetic, relatable, and trustworthy" (Haupt & Connolly Knox, 2018, p. 538) when working with Hispanic students. The findings, while from the south-central United States, can inform multiple academic and support services at Hispanic-Serving Institutions and other colleges and universities as they detail gaps in competence regarding Hispanic culture among faculty, staff, and administrators at HSIs and the cultural orientation of Hispanic students attending the HSIs represented in the sample.