A new guide on Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Minority Serving Institutions (CMSI) calls for more engagement and research to understand how the institutions uplift and support Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
Dr. Marybeth GasmanThe guide, “Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions: A Resource Guide,” aims to bring nuance to the experiences of these students and notes that AANAPISIs were created in response to the “history of invisibility among Asian American and Pacific Islander students in higher education.”
Several recommendations in CMSI’s guide encourage higher education researchers to use “intentional, relevant, and ethical research methods” that consider comparative and longitudinal approaches; assess a range of programs and services catered to students’ development and trajectory; and evaluate how the AANAPISI designation shapes institutional culture.
“Being an Asian American, working on this guide has been critically significant to my academic journey,” said Nicolas W. K. S. Lee, one of the guide’s lead authors and a graduate student in the Student Development Administration program at Seattle University. “It has allowed me to feel both seen and heard. And if I feel that, I know there are others who also feel that.”
