Stephanie Aguilar-Smith
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About Stephanie
Straddling organizational and policy studies, Aguilar-Smith's research broadly focuses on competitive arrangements within the stratified and hierarchical system of U.S. higher education. In particular, she exposes how these arrangements, which are shaped by partisan pressures and institutional logics, (re)produce inequality, often with racialized impacts, across the macro, meso, and micro social orders. As a Latina immigrant, she pays special attention to Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) and other minority-serving institutions—places overwhelmingly serving her beloved community—with much of her recent scholarship focusing on Title V, competitively-awarded federal HSI grants.
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Analyzes to what extent federal academic earmarks were distributed in ways that reinforce or weaken the racialized stratification of resources across organizations in the field. Finds that Congress favored a racially reproductive funding portfolio, though the way earmarks were distributed among Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) did not favor whiter or more prestigious ones, suggesting that pork-barrel politics may have potential for advancing racial reparations.
Uses a racialized organizational lens to think in new ways about how community colleges, as an institutional type, are often as marginalized as the students they serve.
Explores barriers Latinx leaders encounter on their path to executive roles at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and how their race and gender shaped their professional trajectories. Findings show that some Latinx leaders may feel the need to conform to white-coded institutional practices to secure and succeed in their roles and that raced and gendered practices may permeate their work, including their hiring.
Systematically reviews more than 20 years of literature on Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), finding that while literature has grown in the last decade, it has not kept pace with HSIs’ growth, spread, and overall evolution.
Explores Hispanic-serving institutions’ (HSIs) pursuit of racialized federal funds and theorizes the connection between grant seeking and servingness at HSIs.