New Mexico State University is committed to creating a Strategic Diversity Plan that centers “servingness”: practices that truly center students who attend Hispanic-serving Institutions (HSIs) and Minority-serving Institutions (MSIs). For education scholars like Dr. Gina Ann Garcia, “servingness” within the context of an HSI is a “multidimensional and conceptual way to understand what it means to move from simply enrolling Latinx students to actually serving them” and all students who are enrolled at HSIs. An important component of “servingness” is acknowledging and teaching to the assets students bring with them into the NMSU system.   

One goal of NMSU’s new Office for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity is to explore and re-define the university’s HSI and MSI mission in action, and to better understand the climate issues faced by not only the students of this institution, but also its educators, workforce, and the communities that are connected to and served by NMSU. This work will also inform the development of NMSU’s first strategic diversity plan. Furthermore, this goal must encompass a focus on intersectionality, or the overlapping and interconnected ways in which race, gender, class, disability, and myriad other social identities relate to one another.

As the strategic diversity plan is developed, in collaboration with stakeholders throughout the university community, more information will be available on this site.