Council Meeting

Held Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Host: Ms. Bonita White

 

Introduction

 

Ms. Delia L. Johnson, Co-Chair and Director, Office of Civil Rights for International Broadcasting Bureau, opened the meeting with a few remarks and then asked the attendees to give their names, agencies, and positions. She thanked Bonita White, Director, EEO Programs, DHHS, for sponsoring this meeting.

 

Announcements

 

Milton Belardo, Chair, National Council of Hispanic Employment Program Managers, announced that the annual conference of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) will be held on July 7-12, 2008, at the Washington Hilton, located at 1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC.  In addition, the EEOC’s EXCEL Conference will be held on August 18-21, 2008, at the Chicago Hilton, located at 720 South Michigan Avenue.  Mr. Belardo indicated that his Council will host a Hispanic Summit at both conferences.

 

Mr. Belardo stated that the Hispanic Federal Career Advancement Summit will be held on Wednesday, October 1, 2008, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott, located at 1700 Jefferson Davis Highway, in Arlington, Virginia.  The theme for the Summit is “Right Talent! Right Place! Right Now!”  While registration is not opened yet, you can get additional information at http://www.federalhispanicsummit.org. 

 

Mr. Ponce announced that he and Co-Chair Johnson will participate at the EXCEL Conference on Tuesday, August 19, 2005, in a panel discussion at the plenary session from 9:15 AM to 10:00 AM, and a workshop from 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM on strategies to recruit and advance Hispanic employees in the workforce.   

 

HSIs

 

Jorge Ponce, Council Co-Chair, introduced guest speaker Nalini Lamba-Nieves, Management and Program Analyst at the U.S. Department of Education, Title V, Hispanic Serving-Institutions (HSIs) Program. 

 

Mr. Ponce indicated that he had asked Nalini to address the Council because there was much confusion about where to get a definitive list of HSIs.  He stated that unlike the webpages for the White House Initiatives for HBCUs and TCUs – where you can get the lists for these institutions -- you could not get an HSI list by going to the webpage of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.   Therefore, EEO and HR professionals, managers and supervisors engaged in recruitment and outreach initiatives were often in the dark when securing the latest HSI list.  He asked Nalini to clarify this issue.

 

Nalini explained that there was no definitive list of HSIs; instead, there are multiple ones.  Unlike HBCUs and TCUs that are identified by Congress, HSIs are not.  The definition of an HSI is enrollment-based, not congressionally mandated.  Thus, Nalini indicated that the best way to tackle this challenge is to look at the multiple HSI lists below, or to look at one list after you’ve identified the criteria that you are looking for.

 

Following is a description of the multiple HSI lists: 

 

1) U.S. Department of Education, Title V List – See  http://www.ed.gov/programs/idueshsi/t5abstracts2006.doc; for the most recent 2007 directory, see HSI Directory 03-07.   This is a list of the colleges and universities to which the Department’s Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) has given grants  under the HSI program authorized by Title V of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA), 20 U.S.C. §§1101-1103g. In order to be eligible for grants under the HSI program, each college and university attested that it met the HEA’s definition of an HSI and self-certified that it met the conditions of eligibility. HSI status is maintained for the duration of the grant (typically 5 years). 

 

At one time, Title V required that HSIs needed to have a high enrollment of needy  students, as well as first-generation students , but these requirements were dropped subsequently.

 

2) IPEDS - is the core postsecondary education data collection program for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), U.S. Department of Education.  Statistics are collected from all primary providers of postsecondary education in the country in areas including enrollments, program completions, graduation rates, faculty, staff, finances, institutional prices, and student financial aid. See http://nces.ed.gov/ and http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/. Nalini indicated that it is possible to send an e-mail to a Title V Program Officer and request assistance.       

 

3) Another source the EEO Council has found useful is the latest edition of the U.S. News Ultimate College Guide, which is published by the staff of the U.S. News & World Report.  The latest edition of the Guide was issued in 2008, and you can purchase it at your local bookstore or through http://www.amazon.com. 

 

4) Excelencia in Education.  See  http://www.edexcelencia.org/  The HSI list uses the basic definition of HSIs along with the student enrollment derived from IPEDS.  

 

5) Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU).  The list includes HSIs that pay dues to HACU.  To view the list, click on  http://www.hacu.net/assnfe/CompanyDirectory.asp?STYLE=2&COMPANY_TYPE=1,5&SEARCH_TYPE=0.

 

6) The Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights currently links to the Title V, HSI Program list of HSIs. It also includes, based on IPEDS data, institutions that have a high percentage of Latino students, though the institutions may not be HSIs as they do not have a Title V grant.  This list includes the institutions of higher education whose full time equivalent (FTE) enrollment of undergraduate students is at least 25 percent Hispanic and that is self-reported to IPEDS.  To view the list, click on http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/edlite-minorityinst-list-hisp-tab.html.

 

7) The U.S. Department of Agriculture has developed its own list of HSI grant programs, which follows the Title V definition of an HSI.  To view this list, click on http://cris.csrees.usda.gov/cgi-bin/starfinder/0?path=fastlink1.txt&id=anon&pass=&search=AS=CSREES%20AND%20CG=*-38422-*%20NOT%20PS=TERM*&format=WEBTITLESF.

 

8) The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development  has also developed its own list of HSI grant programs, which follows the Title V definition of an HSI.  To view this list, click on  http://www.oup.org/phonebook/progrPhone.asp?Progr=HSIAC&id=7.  These are HUD grantees. Like the USDA list, some grantees may or may not overlap. 

 

Jorge Ponce stated that if he were a manager interested in doing outreach and/or recruitment, he would not want to use the HSI list of Title V institutions – as inclusion on this list was determined on whether the institution qualified to receive federal funds from the Title V Program.  He would be more interested in an HSI list that showed the postsecondary institutions with the highest percentage of Hispanic graduates in those subject areas related to his agency’s mission critical occupations.  Nalini indicated that if the main purpose of the outreach was to stay within federally-defined HSIs, then the Title V list made sense. However, if, as Mr. Ponce stated, the purpose was Latino outreach by occupations, it would be best to expand the search and go through IPEDS.

 

To view Nalini’s PowerPoint presentation click on HSI Presentation May 08.    

 

Asian-Pacific American Heritage (APA) Month

 

Bonita White welcomed everyone to the AAPI Program at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  She introduced the guest speaker, Ms. Gazal Modhera, who is the Special Assistant to the Chair of EEOC and Chair on the AAPI Work Group.

 

EEOC formed the Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) Work Group on October 11, 2007, to examine this community's concerns about federal sector employment, special emphasis programs and the complaints process.

 

The Work Group surveyed federal agencies on AAPI issues, and received over 60 responses from the survey forms.  Following is a list of the key findings: 1) there are 2.4M or 6% AAPIs in the federal workforce, but it does not give the whole picture.  Only 2.24% serve in the SES -- based on FY2006 data; 2) based on a Gallup Poll, 31% of AAPIs believe they have been subjected to discrimination, but EEOC has not seen as many complaints on that basis; 3) federal agencies did not support Asian programs and conferences as much as those from other groups - specifically, the annual conferences sponsored by Blacks in Government (BIG) and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC); in fact, they created more barriers for members of groups such as the Federal Asian Pacific American Council from attending their own meeting or even meeting with the Chair of the EEOC to discuss their concerns; and, 4) there were various barriers that contributed to the creation of a bamboo ceiling at the SES and middle management levels -- like the perception that AAPIs were the model minority and, thus, did not need any affirmative action programs, that AAPIs were passive, harmony-seeking, and risk/confrontational-averse individuals.

 

Jorge Ponce asked whether Asian and Pacific Americans made up the entirety of the AAPI Work Group. A Council member from the National Archives and Records Administration and a member of the AAPI Work Group responded in the negative by saying that there were non-Asian/Pacific American members. 

 

Ms. Modhera announced that the AAPI Work Group will release the report based on the survey results at the EEOC public meeting on July 22, 2008.

 

A Council member stated that Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao held monthly meetings with its senior leadership to discuss the diversity demographics of its workforce, and this – together with hosting the annual Asian/Pacific American Summit -- explained why the representation of AAPIs had increased under her tenure.

 

Delia Johnson indicated that in order to make a difference with the APA community, someone needed to take a stand by notifying Congress.  She said to forget about making progress by generating another report that everyone knows what the recommendations will be.  

 

A member from the AAPI Work group from the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicated that non-APA organizations have written letters to Capitol Hill to highlight various concerns of their members. Nevertheless, to his knowledge, APA organizations have not done the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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