Indiana University Northwest has a secret, and the time is past for it to share it far and wide with the community, the campus’s leader announced Wednesday evening.
Buried in all the terror of the burgeoning pandemic in March 2020, the Gary campus became a Hispanic Serving Institution, IUN Chancellor Ken Iwama shared with students, faculty and others during a Sept. 28 Town Hall the school sponsored with Indiana State Rep. Mike Andrade, D-Munster, in conjunction with Hispanic Heritage month. The designation is bestowed on schools that have at least 25% Hispanic and Latino student population; IUN comes in at 27%, Iwama said.
IUN is the only public college in the state with an HSI designation, Iwama said; the private Calumet College of St. Joseph in Whiting was the state’s first.
Faculty and staff started the HSI process in 2018 when the university was trying to define what it wanted to be as a school, he said. The foundation, they discovered, was already there, he said, but they needed to do more to show that Hispanic and Latino students were welcome and encouraged to come and work on their degrees.
With the U.S. Census indicating that Lake County is 28% Hispanic and Latino — and that’s just those who filled out their census forms — it’s important for them to know they have a pipeline to higher education, Andrade said.
“We have a lot of students who want to further themselves — from the cooks, the gardeners, the cleaning people, they’re entrepreneurs who own restaurants or catering businesses, or landscaping and housecleaning businesses,” Andrade said. “So for us to show them that there is representation, someone who looks like them and who’s going to speak to them in their own language, that hub of support is the difference in keeping them from dropping out in their second year.”
Documentation status is a constant stressor for many Hispanic and Latino students, Andrade said, especially since it hinders them from accessing financial aid. The fear of deportation also looms large, he said.
To that end, he and state Rep. Earl Harris Jr., D-East Chicago, have been working on a bill that would give undocumented residents a driving card allowing them to drive legally and insured, he said, although it would not be a license, per se, and couldn’t be referred to as such since many people get hung up on the thought that it could allow undocumented people to possibly vote. The bill wasn’t taken up by the Republican supermajority last year, but this year, State Rep. Blake Doriot, R-Goshen, is interested in looking at it since Goshen has a 28% Hispanic and Latino population, he said.
Eve Gomez, a radio personality and community activist who moderated the event, sees firsthand what happens when undocumented people aren’t allowed to drive. They’ll often end up fleeing a scene out of fear of getting deported, adding more charges to what they had and all but guaranteeing they will get deported.
“And just think of the money that businesses lose because their workers can’t get to work,” she said.
Having the HSI designation benefits the university and its students in that it’s received a good sum of money from the U.S. Department of Education, Iwama said, including a $5 million STEM grant in October 2021, which the school is using to create research opportunities and partnerships with local high schools in the form of a STEM Resource Center for Hispanic and Latino students to pursue careers in that discipline, either through IUN or IVY Tech in Lake County, he said.
Gomez said she’s glad IUN has the designation but sees room for growth.
“It’s a great start. I can now say to people, ‘Hey, by the way, did you know about this?’ in the language they understand,” she said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.