Latino Student Achievement: A Collaborative Mission of Professional Associations of Higher Education

Abstract

Latino student achievement in higher education is a priority for the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE). To date, AAHHE has worked deliberately on this agenda, involving primarily Latina/o scholars, graduate students, and non-Latino allies. Annual conferences have provided for a sharing of research and examples of interventions promoting Latina/o student achievement. At some research universities, there may be biases discouraging faculty from engaging in community-based and K-12 empirical research because it may be categorized as service rather than research. The Boyer model for scholarship of integration is described as a methodology that can be applied to put discoveries in a larger context and create connections across disciplines to view the data in different ways. As a strategy to address the Latino educational achievement gap, recommendations are made for multi-professional collaboration associations among the Association of Public Land Grant Universities (APLU) and the American Association of Universities (AA&U) and AAHHE.