A partly cloudy day on the UC Riverside campus with the Highlander Union Building (HUB) in the background and students sitting at umbrella-covered tables in the HUB plaza.

AANAPISI Committee

Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI) Committee

Committee Overview and Charge

Institutions are defined as AANAPISI under the Higher Education Act (HEA) as colleges or universities with an undergraduate enrollment that is at least 10 percent Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander. Additionally, at least half of the institution’s degree-seeking students must be low-income. In 2018, UC Riverside was designated an AANAPISI institution and in July of 2018 it had its inaugural AANAPISI meeting. The Committee was revived and reconstructed in January 2023. 

The purpose and charge to the Committee are as follows: 

  1. Campus Community Education Across Constituency Groups 
  2. Student Servingness Academic and Holistic Student Affairs 
  3. Governmental & Community Relations Advocacy 

The Committee is chaired by Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Mariam Lam and Associate Chancellor Christine Victorino. 

  • Committee Members

    Committee Members

  • Resources

    Selected Readings

    Heterogeneity
    • Buenavista, T. L. (2009). Examining the Postsecondary Experiences of Pilipino 1.5-Generation College Students. Critical Essay. ASHE/Lumina Fellows Series. Issue 8. Association for the Study of Higher Education.
    • Teranishi, R. T. (2010). Asians in the Ivory Tower: Dilemmas of Racial Inequality in American Higher Education. Multicultural Education Series. Teachers College Press. 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027.
    Campus Climate
    Asset-based Perspectives
    • Saelua, N., Yi, V., Na, V. S., & Museus, S. D. (2020). Refugee life making:(Re) Centering the refugee narrative through feminist refugee epistemology. New Directions for Higher Education, 2020(191), 67-78.
    • Salis Reyes, N. A. (2019). “What am I doing to be a good ancestor?” An Indigenized phenomenology of giving back among Native college graduates. American Educational Research Journal, 56(3), 603-637  
    Student Agency 
    • Park, J. J., & Dizon, J. P. M. (2022). The push for Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions: Highlighting the perspectives of student activists. The Journal of Higher Education, 93(2), 195-219.
    • Vue, R. (2021). Visibility, voice, and place: Hmong American college student-initiated organizing as creative praxis. Journal of College Student Development, 62(3), 276-292.
    Racialization and Racism-Conscious Advocacy 

     


     

    Organizations and Conferences

    AAAS

    Founded in 1979, the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) is the primary research and teaching hub for Asian American Studies, an interdisciplinary field born out of the 1960s movements for racial justice, third world liberation, and student activism.

    Advancing the highest professional standards of research, teaching, and service in the field of Asian American Studies, AAAS is committed to sponsoring conferences, symposia, special projects, and publications. These activities engage the association’s priorities with regard to scholarship, mentorship, and pedagogy. Equally important is the degree to which the association’s various objectives reflect multiple communities and varied identities within the broader Asian American umbrella.

    APAHE

    Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education (APAHE) was founded in 1987, during the height of a five-year fight against a series of discriminatory admission policy directed against Asian Pacific American applicants at the University of California, Berkeley, and several research universities across the nation. At a conference on the admission fight convened in Oakland, California, participants uniformly felt the need for an organization that would address issues affecting Asian Pacific American students, staff, faculty, and administrators. Up until then, there was no national or regional organization devoted to this purpose.

    Out of that conference emerged APAHE. Since most of the participants at the founding conference came from universities and colleges throughout California, the consensus was to initially create a California-based organization devoted exclusively to addressing Asian Pacific American concerns and issues in higher education. In recognition of the shared interests and concerns Asian Pacific Americans had across the nation and the need to project our issues more forcefully onto the national forums of higher education, APAHE became a national organization on June 23, 2000.

  • Campus Partners
    Asian Pacific Student Programs (APSP)

    Asian Pacific Student Programs (APSP) is a community of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students, staff, interns and peer mentors dedicated to preserving and promoting the rich cultural fabric of diversity at UCR. When we face challenges, when we celebrate, we do so together. We build programs, events and social activities around three guiding principles: leadership, consciousness and community. We foster open and educational dialogue that respects and embraces our unique histories and cultural identities. We encourage the academic and professional excellence of all UCR students by providing a peer-mentoring program, internship opportunities through our alumni network, and a safe, welcoming place where anyone can study or just hang out. Through involvement at APSP, students become leaders and leaders become decision makers, shaping their path at UCR and beyond.

UCR AAPI-Focused Projects 

Grants to assess the needs of California’s Asian American and Pacific Islander populations

More than $1 million will be distributed by UC Riverside's AAPI Data program

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Edward T. Chang, professor of ethnic studies and founding director of the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at UC Riverside. He stands in front of the statue of Korean independence activists, Dosan Ahn Chang Ho in downtown Riverside on May 26, 2021. (UCR/Stan Lim)

Korean American history to become a traveling exhibition

UCR professor receives $850,000 Mellon Foundation grant to share history of American’s first Koreatown

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COVID-19 took serious toll on Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander mental and physical health

Two UC Riverside-led studies found concerning psychological and physical health problems among more than 300 NH/PIs in five US states

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Connect with the Committee