November 1, 2023, Santa Rosa, CA — The Santa Rosa Junior College community is pleased to welcome Dr. Gina Ann Garcia to the Santa Rosa campus Newman Auditorium on Thursday, November 9, for a keynote presentation titled, “Creating a Servingness Culture at SRJC,” a book signing, and a practitioner-only workshop.
The coordinated events are intended to help area students, staff, faculty and the community better understand how to serve an undergraduate student population that is increasingly Latinx, Black, Indigenous, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and mixed race. These students often face financial, linguistic, cultural and other types of barriers that reduce their ability to access higher education, their lifelong economic potential, and their ability to fully participate in the larger community.
Dr. Garcia is a professor in UC Berkeley’s School of Education, where her research centers on issues of equity and justice in higher education for minoritized populations, and documents the ways that race and racism have shaped institutions of higher education. She received her Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
As a student affairs professional, Dr. Garcia worked to establish programs that foster retention and success for Students of Color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors and careers, and developed a mentoring program and first-year experience cohort for students. She has also been a resident director and a coordinator for large-scale campus programs.
Dr. Garcia is the author of Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges & Universities for which she won the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Book of the Year Award in 2020 and the editor of the book Hispanic-Serving Institutions in Practice: Defining “Servingness” at HSIs.
The keynote address will begin at 9 am, after which the practitioner workshop will get underway in Doyle Library, Room 146. At the workshop’s end, Dr. Garcia will sign copies of her most recent book, Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice.
The day’s events are sponsored by the Avanzando and Lanzamiento initiatives, which support academic achievement among Latinx, low-income, and first-generation college students. There is no RSVP required for this event.
Newman Auditorium is located in the Emeritus building on the north side of the Santa Rosa campus, along Elliott Avenue. The campus is located at 1501 Mendocino Avenue, Santa Rosa CA 95401
