At Texas State University, being a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) is more than a federal designation—it helps shape how we plan, how we grow, and how we support all of our students.
This work advances our mission to create an environment where every student can succeed.
As a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), Texas State can compete for federal funding that strengthens programs, enhances research, and supports student success. Since earning the designation, the university has received 44 grants and awards totaling more than $58.7 million from agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education, National Science Foundation, NASA, and others.
Texas State reapplies for its HSI designation each year to maintain eligibility for these programs and ensure continued support for students.
Being an HSI means understanding and meeting the full needs of our Bobcats. Faculty and staff have developed programs that provide academic coaching, mentoring, tutoring, research opportunities, and faculty development — all aimed at helping every student succeed.
HSI-funded initiatives have also expanded access to new materials and experiences, which empower students and strengthen learning for all. At Texas State, being an HSI is about building the capacity to serve — one student at a time.
Eligibility for Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions programming has three main components that must be met in order to compete for federal funds:
PI: Bahram Asiabanpour Co-PI: Nicole Wagner, Mar Huertas
Purpose: The Bluewater project will focus on training students with marketable skills necessary to become professionally competitive in the job market. To do so, students will engage in multidisciplinary research concerning organic hydroponic-aquaponic farming with limited resources.
PI: Merritt Drewery Co-PI: T. Ryan Anderson
Purpose: The awarded funds will strengthen the incoming Food, Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Human Sciences (FANH) workforce by developing educational activities that position underrepresented students for success in attaining and excelling in a professional career of doctoral degree program.
PI: Doug Morrish Co-PI: T. Jaime Chahin
Purpose: Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) have prioritized agroterrorism and the safety of our food supply. Many jobs are available for students who are trained in this specific area, but the Hispanic population is often underrepresented in the food safety and inspection area. Students funded through this innovative program will gain an immense amount of experience with food safety and agroterrorism, thus helping narrow the gap of underrepresented students in food and agricultural sciences.
PI: Bahram Asiabanpour Co-PIs: Ken Mix, Nicole Wagner
Purpose: EverGreen is a project that integrates soil-free hydroponic farming, water saving, renewable energy, automation, and smart technology systems to provide a sustainable off-grid indoor farm, which, by utilizing financial modeling, marketing, and optimization techniques, is becoming financially viable and sustainable. EverGreen addresses water efficiency issues in agriculture through methods such as rainwater harvesting and atmospheric water generation, introduces sustainable agricultural methods in a changing climate (e.g., extreme weather and drought), and provides food security through consistent quantity and quality of production. Additionally, this project will train a diverse future workforce of food system innovators that have the educational and applied research skills needed to address the nation's priority areas.
PI: Madan M. Dey
Purpose: To increase recruitment and retention of minority undergraduate and graduate students in agriculture through innovative programs that emphasize career awareness, leadership development and global competency. Objectives:
1) increase awareness of career opportunities in the fields of agriculture among minority students;
2) develop professional leadership development program for undergraduate and graduate students;
3) provide international and domestic career and experimental learning opportunities; and
4) develop and implement an innovative international exchange program.
PI: Heather Galloway CoPIs: Alice R Olmstead, Eleanor W Close, Li Feng, Cynthia J Luxford
Purpose: The awarded funds will build capacity at Texas State University by increasing the use of culturally relevant instructional approaches across STEM departments, and to generate new knowledge of effective change strategies that can inform efforts at HSIs and other higher education institutions.
PI: Araceli Ortiz Co-PI: Leslie Huling
Partner: Penn State
Purpose: To develop and implement a transformative, diversity-focused educator professional development system with a national scope led by a Hispanic-Serving Institution and a network of education and technology experts from other Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Tribal Colleges. Constellation will impact over 400,000 educators (higher education faculty, pre-service teachers, K-12 teachers, and informal educators) during the first five years of operation. The Constellation model is based on five innovative approaches that also serve as foundational principles: 1) attention to the educator across the professional continuum, 2) respect for the culture and language of the learner, 3) openness to sharing learning and harnessing the power of scholar/expert partnerships, 4) boldness to leverage the potential of massive online learning and badging systems and 5) commitment to innovate a national impact evaluation model that gets to the heart of professional learning and behavior change.
PI: Sylvia T. Gonzales Co-PI: Dr. Kambra Bolch
Purpose: The HSI STEM Impact Program enhances and strengthens the STEM success pipeline through high-impact practices and outreach. High-impact services are provided to new freshmen, transfer, and continuing students in STEM baccalaureate programs within the College of Science and Engineering.
HSI STEM Impact strengthens STEM success through professional development and research. Faculty can serve as Mentors for undergraduate STEM research and guide students through this STEM Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE). Faculty and Staff can develop cultural fluency to increasingly diversify the STEM student experience.
PI: Sylvia T. Gonzales
Purpose: Project Maestros will develop and enhance success in pre-service education programs at Texas State by creating a support network for both continuing and transfer students. Students receive academic support through transfer navigation, academic advising, and success coaching. Professional development opportunities will enhance students’ skills and strengthen cultural fluency to prepare them to lead a diverse Texas classroom.
PI: Shetay Ashford-Hanserd
Purpose: The purpose of this project is to collect preliminary data to inform the future development of an integrated research and extension project that promotes STEEAM workforce development for youth to enter the USDA/agriscience workforce and engage in agri-entrepreneurship within rural communities. The outcomes of this research will inform decision-makers and policymakers in rural communities of innovative approaches to reduce poverty and income inequality through the cultivation of STEEAM workforce development and agri-entrepreneurship in their local economy.
PI: Jaime Chahin
Purpose: The grant aims to: Strengthen institutional educational capacities to recruit, retain, and support the needs of graduate students from underrepresented populations and enhance the quality of postsecondary instruction with the food and agricultural sciences disciplines; facilitate cooperative initiatives between Texas State, AAHHE, USDA and related agencies to support activities that strengthen the graduate fellows' capacity to serve as a role model and provide opportunities and access to food, agricultural, and natural resources and human sciences careers in the public and private sector; and strengthen the underrepresented students' education through field trips, faculty mentors, leadership development training topics, internships and align the efforts of HSIs and other non-profit organizations in support of the academic development of underrepresented groups. The disciplines and subject matter area activities supported by the USDA on which Texas State will focus listed in the order of priority:
(1) animal health, production, and well-being;
(2) plant health and production;
(3) animal and plant germ plasma collection and preservation;
(4) aquaculture.
(5) food safety;
(6) soil and water conservation and improvement;
(7) forestry, horticulture, and range management;
(8) nutritional sciences and promotion;
(9) farm enhancement, including financial management, input efficiency, and profitability;
(10) rural human ecology;
(11) expansion of domestic and international markets for agricultural commodities and products, including agricultural trade barrier identification and analysis;
(12) information management and technology transfer related to agriculture;
(13) biotechnology related to agriculture;
(14) the processing, distributing, marketing, and utilization of food and agricultural products);
Purpose: CAMINOS Project is designed to address significant underrepresentation of Hispanics in Federal Government.
PI: Anadelia A. Romo
Purpose: Dr. Romo’s research explores the tangled connections between race, representation, and tourism that have shaped the structure of modern racial inequality in Brazil. Examines the reinvention of a former sugar zone in Brazil’s Northeast and probes how the promotion of tourism forged and reinforced racial stereotypes in the aftermath of abolition. To do this, Dr. Romo turns to sources neglected by historians: illustrated tourist guides for Brazil’s colonial capital of Salvador, Bahia, written from the 1920s through the 1950s. Dr. Romo shows how the budding tourism industry of this era developed a distinctive iconography that placed Afro-Bahians as central to the city’s landscape, an apparently inclusive visual culture that worked well with Brazil’s promotion of itself as a racial democracy. Yet Dr. Romo argues that the intersection of tourism and a new visual landscape of the city shaped and consolidated pernicious stereotypes of blackness and exoticized visions of African culture that continue to dominate the visual culture of the city today.
PI: Jose Carlos de la Puente
Purpose: To complete the first in-depth study about the travels of native Andeans to the Habsburg royal court in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Andean Cosmopolitans brings to the fore the indigenous leaders and legal agents who played an active part in gaining access to the Spanish system of justice for native Andeans. They influenced Crown policies at the highest level, turning stays at the court into a negotiation about the nature of the state in the New World. The story unfolds simultaneously in distant settings of the early modern Atlantic world. The focus is less on fixed ethnic and legal identifications, or on discontinuous places and regions, as it is on fluid identities, interconnections, and the interplay between local and global scenarios. Dr. De la Puente highlights the role played by native Andeans in the formation of a "legal Atlantic," an organic network of litigants, petitioners, attorneys, and ideas of law and justice bridging courtrooms in Spain and America.
PI: Katie Kapurch
Purpose: Grant will support the research and writing of a book, Blackbird Singing: Black America Remixes the Beatles, contracted with Penn State University Press in its American Music History series. The book offers a comprehensive view of black Americans’ musical engagements with the Beatles, which informs the story of popular music, especially mid-twentieth century rock ‘n’ roll, and, broadly, the study of American culture.
Dr. Kapurch shows how black artists remix the Beatles while tapping into a tradition of African American arts that include music, as well as folklore and literature. In addition to iconic covers, the book analyzes Beatles-inspired songs, mashups, samplings, collaborations, accompanying visual media, including album art and music videos, and online discourse.
USDA Kika De La Garza Science Fellowship
Reimbursable travel expenses to visit multiple federal agencies and a USDA research lab.
Period of Support: Summer 2012 (paid directly to faculty member)
USDA Kika De La Garza Education Fellowship
Reimbursable travel expenses to visit multiple federal agencies.
Period of Support: Summer 2015 (paid directly to faculty member)
USDA Kika De La Garza Science Fellowship
Reimbursable travel expenses to visit multiple federal agencies and a USDA research lab.
Period of Support: Summer 2018 (paid directly to faculty member)
PI: Yihong Chen
Purpose: A team of researchers from Texas State University received funds to acquire a versatile Optomec Aerosol Jet 300 printing system for flexible electronic circuits and printable nanomaterials based chemical/biological sensors.
The Aerosol Jet AJ300 system is ideally suited for 3D printed electronics applications such as fully printed antennas, sensors, molded interconnect devices, etc. The system enhances our capability to develop low-cost high-throughput flexible/conformal electronics with additive manufacture technology.
PI: Alexander Zakhidov
Purpose: Acquisition of a multifunctional high-resolution scanning probe microscope for the imaging and characterization of semiconductors, polymers, functional oxides, 2D materials, and DNA molecules, which is user-friendly and reconfigurable. The instrument is hosted by the Shared Research Operation (SRO) office and available to be used by any TXST student, staff, and faculty member. Since installation it directly impacted more than 100 students from Physics, Chemistry, Engineering and Biology via the course work and research projects.
PI: Mark Holtz Co-PIs: Wilhelmus Geerts, Ravi Droopad, Nikoleta Theodoropoulou, Yihong Chen, Edwin Piner, Thomas Myers, Alexander Zakhidov
Purpose: This equipment acquisition has enabled students, faculty, and staff at Texas State University to utilize established industry characterization techniques. The equipment is used to rapidly acquire statistically sound electrical data feedback for aiding studies of material properties, growth and fabrication principles, and thin film device integration all required for educational and research projects. Courses supported include PHYS 5322/MSEC 7360, PHYS 5324/MSEC 7310, and TECH 4392. On-campus research projects supported include innovative oxide materials, nanoscale heat transport, and magnetic permalloys.
