Presentations given by students that submitted to the research journal
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Melanie Martinez - 2023
Melanie Martinez
The Hispanic-serving Institution (HSI) designation is a test of character. Colleges and universities in which 25 percent or more of the student body self-identifies as “Hispanic” can qualify as HSIs. If a sufficient percentage are low-income, and if the institution has low core expenditures, it is also eligible to receive Title V funding. Remarkably, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that Title V money is used to narrow gaps in the school’s opportunity and reward structures. The vacuous, undefined space that characterizes Title V functions as something of a projective test that reveals each HSI’s true values and assumptions about what counts as fairness and equity. Institutions that genuinely care about Latinx students intentionally center them in their grant applications; others assume that helping all students means helping at least some who identify as Latinx. This paper discusses the on-going failure of the US Department of Education to hold HSIs accountable for spending Title V funds in ways that are beneficial to Latinx students. In so doing, it critiques the neo-liberal metrics by which HSIs are judged and recommends new methods of assessing the impact of the designation and the use of Title V funds. It concludes by arguing that lessons learned from the vast literature on culturally responsive evaluation and assessment (CREA; Hood et. al., 2015) can be used to guide strategic planning in ways that shift power into the hands of the students whose identities made the funds possible.
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Zoe Parra - 2023
Zoe Parra
During the Covid-19 pandemic, access to movie theaters was restricted, and online streaming became the primary way for movie consumption in the US. Moreover, the audience’s mentality was seriously influenced by the drastic changes in their daily life. However, the impact of these changes on the audience’s preferences for movies is underexplored. This study utilizes content analysis, a hybrid deductive and inductive coding approach to identify relationships between plot and genre in the highest-grossing films between the years 2017 - 2022. This study builds upon the idea that every story is told using one of the seven basic plots and genres as a means of classification for this set of films. By utilizing the seven basic plots, genre categorization, and the official descriptions released with each film this study investigates how the audience’s preferences were affected by the 2020 covid-19 global pandemic. The results show notable changes in the types of films that were most consumed such as an increase in comedy and horror genre movies along with an increase in comedy and overcoming the monster storytelling plots.