From Hispanic Journal, November-December 2003
National Education Leader Of The Year
Dr. Antonio Flores
America’s Voice for Hispanic Higher Education
By Renee Haines
In the small village in rural Mexico where Antonio R. Flores was born, his grandparents, who were farmers, had no formal schooling. His parents, also farmers, only made it to the second grade – not because they dropped out, but because that was the highest grade the local school system offered.
“I wasn’t just a first-generation college student; I was a first-generation elementary school graduate,” said Flores, who went on to become the best-known advocate for Hispanic higher education in the United States.
As president and CEO of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), Flores is the chief spokesman for the higher education needs of the youngest and largest ethnic population in the United States. He presides over a national nonprofit association that represents 359 colleges and universities serving the largest concentrations of Hispanic higher education students in the fastest-growing U.S. Hispanic population centers.
When HACU was founded in 1986, it was with 18 institutions located mostly in a handful of southwestern states. Today, HACU campuses are located in 26 states and Puerto Rico. HACU’s membership ranges from small community colleges to the massive campuses of the Universities of Michigan and Texas, Penn State and UCLA. Collectively, these diverse institutions serve more than two-thirds of all U.S. Hispanic higher education students. Together, they share a common mission to open more doors to a college education for a population that also makes up the fastest-growing component of the U.S. labor force.
“The stakes are considerable in that Hispanics already make up one of every three new workers joining the U.S. labor force today. As a higher education community, we must equip them with the advanced knowledge and skills they need as our country’s next generation of teachers, scientists, innovators and leaders,” Flores said.
HACU’s reach also now extends beyond U.S. borders. When Flores became president of HACU in 1996, one of his first steps was to expand HACU’s membership to leading higher education institutions throughout the Americas and in Spain. HACU’s international member colleges and universities now work with U.S. member campuses to share research, faculty, students and cross-border academic programs.
“Organizations, even those that do not yet define themselves in this way, are becoming international organizations in the global village in which we all live,” said Flores, who arrived at HACU already equally adept in two languages and cultures. “If today’s global economy recognizes fewer physical borders to trade and commerce, so should the higher education community bridge more borders in educating their students to succeed in the international marketplace of ideas.”
As a Mexican American, Flores is a member of by far the largest and fastest-growing segment of the U.S. Hispanic population, but any experience in another culture, Flores believes, can hone one’s ability to better appreciate and understand a whole world of different languages and customs.
“When you experience the best part of each culture and language, it gives you a sense of competency and understanding, an intellectual flexibility for working in the global education arena. International education is imperative to giving all of our students that edge to truly learn what it is like to be a citizen of the world,” Flores said.
Flores could not have predicted his future as a U.S. higher education leader as a child in the rural village of San José, Jalisco, Mexico. In San José, Flores only was able to complete the fifth grade, the highest grade then offered by the rural school system.
A visiting family of teachers would expand the young student’s opportunities. Francisco and Maura Robles, whose children were also teachers, convinced Flores’ parents to allow them to take him with them to the larger town of Chapala to continue his education.
“They were my rescuers,” said Flores. “They took me with them and made me feel a part of their family, and put me on the right track to excel in my education.”
Flores would complete his schooling, earn a degree in elementary education at Centro Normal Regional University in Mexico, and enter the world of teaching. At 20, he went to work at a small school serving a Yaqui Indian community in the state of Sonora, Mexico. He was the youngest of the teachers but, because he had a college degree, he was appointed principal.
Here, Spanish was taught as a second language in a community whose majority of residents spoke Yaqui. Here, Flores learned early that community service in education amounts to much more than books and classrooms.
Flores and his fellow teachers were able to persuade a team of government specialists in health education and economic development to visit the impoverished community. Within just 18 months, they would win support from the government and townspeople to build a community center, establish a vaccination program, and build new school classrooms. For the first time, the town would have running water. Electricity was on its way, too, when Flores left the community to pursue a degree in business administration at the University of Guadalajara.
“It is one of my most memorable experiences in my very early career as an educator,” Flores said.
At 25, with two bachelor’s degrees, Flores came to the United States in search of continuing education opportunities then unavailable to him in Mexico.
“I was impressed by not only the number of opportunities, but the diversity of those opportunities. The one prerequisite I didn’t have was command of English. I didn’t know the language. So I started from scratch,” he said.
Flores mastered English, became a permanent U.S. resident, and subsequently a U.S. citizen. His first U.S. home was Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he worked for a high school that catered to a fast-growing Latino enrollment. Later, he worked for the federal Upward Bound program for disadvantaged students at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
He then became director of the Upward Bound program at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Flores also earned a master’s degree in counseling and personnel from Western Michigan University and a Ph.D. in higher education administration from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
He spent the next 15 years working for the State of Michigan. After serving as a bilingual education consultant, he later served as director of Hispanic Education Programs before becoming director of programs and services for the Michigan Higher Education Assistance Authority and the Michigan Higher Education Student Loan Authority.
Making a Difference
Then HACU called.
“HACU offered me the opportunity to make a difference for the national community,” Flores said.
Since his arrival at HACU in early 1996, the association’s membership has more than doubled and HACU has won record multi-million dollar appropriations each year from Congress for the country’s Hispanic-Serving Institutions. Flores frequently testifies before Congress on issues of importance to Hispanic higher education; he has been a keynote speaker at campuses in the United States and abroad; and he has earned numerous awards and accolades.
HACU oversees prestigious national scholarship programs, cutting-edge technology initiatives, Hispanic leadership and faculty development projects, regional workforce development partnerships and the country’s largest Hispanic college internship program – the HACU National Internship Program.
“It’s absolutely incredible, the sheer number of accomplishments for such a relatively young association,” Flores said. “HACU is fortunate to have a staff at headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, and at our Washington, D.C., offices who work so well together as a team. They and our Governing Board and Corporate & Philanthropic Council have such enthusiasm and commitment. Their willingness to really go that extra mile to get things done, and done well, to me is enormously rewarding.”
When HACU was founded, there was not yet a means to formally recognize those higher education institutions that were serving the largest concentrations of Hispanic students. The country had long recognized Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, in service to what then was the nation’s largest minority population.
In 1992, HACU and its allies would win the first federal designation for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, or HSIs, now formally defined as having a student enrollment that is at least 25 percent Hispanic. That official designation would allow Congress to specifically target general federal funding and individual federal agency program dollars to HSIs in service to a population that has now surpassed African Americans as the country’s largest “minority” population.
The federal designation for HSIs has served as a springboard for ensuing partnership agreements between HACU and more than 30 federal agencies and private sector foundations in support of scholarships, internships and other Hispanic higher education initiatives.
HACU’s Reach
HACU has expanded its reach as an advocate not only for Hispanic higher education, but for issues that impact the entire kindergarten-to-college pipeline. Because Hispanics continue to suffer the lowest high school graduation rates, as well as the lowest college graduation rates, HACU has become a leading advocate for pre-collegiate support services, administering programs that reach even the youngest students with a message to aim early for college.
One in five Hispanics live in poverty, which has made HACU a leading voice for increased college financial aid and on-campus student support services for economically disadvantaged students. Because the largest segment of the country’s immigrant population is Hispanic, HACU is also a leading voice for immigrant education.
Flores is also a co-founder and co-leader of the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education, which for the first time is providing HBCUs, HSIs and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) a united voice to promote enhanced higher education programs for all minority students.
Last year, Flores was elected chair of the national Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility, or HACR, which advocates for more Hispanic representation in America’s corporate boardrooms and management ranks. That HACR chose an educator to lead its board of directors is evidence in itself of the organization’s commitment to investing in the education needs of Hispanic communities.
“HACU obviously represents a wealth of talent by virtue of the 1.8 million Hispanic college students we serve. U.S. Hispanics also represent a tremendous purchasing power that already surpasses $750 billion; by 2010, it is expected to exceed $1 trillion. That’s huge,” Flores said. “We want reciprocity. We want to see our outstanding college graduates moving into these companies as managers and executives. We want our experienced leaders who now manage major enterprises, whether they are campuses or companies, to become part of the pool of board directors for Fortune 500 companies.”
Flores is a firm believer in coalition-building to address the country’s Hispanic higher education needs. It’s a lesson he learned as a child from his grandfather in the farm fields of rural Mexico.
“I vividly remember it,” he said about a day in the fields in which his grandfather stopped to pick up a stick from the ground, show it to his grandson, and quickly snap it in two. He then gathered a bundle of sticks, which he could not snap in two, to teach his young grandson about the strength in numbers and in unity.
HACU has attracted a powerful “bundle” of support for Hispanic higher education under Flores’ leadership, from its formal partnerships with dozens of top corporations, federal agencies, and allied education associations, to HACU-inspired coalitions in Congress which each year promote new opportunities for the country’s historically under-funded HSIs.
HACU’s annual conference has become a national platform for networking, consensus-building, and sharing best practices in serving diverse student populations. HACU’s annual Capitol Forum brings grass roots leaders and advocates for Hispanic higher education in direct contact with the leadership of Congress to build support for HACU's legislative agendas.
"If we can continue to build coalitions and a base of support at every level of our society, we can make college a reality for many more members of a community that will have such an enormous impact on our country's future economic strength and security." Flores said.
Flores and his wife Maria, also a first generation college graduate, take great pride in the second-generation college success of their children. Their son is still in college. Their daughters have graduated and one is also a second-generation educator, teaching at an inner city charter school in Los Angeles. It is a pride that Flores can share with other parents when, as a frequent commencement speaker, he participates in the celebration of families of graduating college students.
"In all kinds of settings - at community colleges, private and public four year universities, and at international education institutions where I have addressed graduating students - the experience fundamentally is the same. You see the collective satisfaction on their faces, and on the faces of their families." Flores said. "It is so personally rewarding to be asked as a representative of HACU to participate in these celebrations, to see these students receiving their college diplomas. It's what motivates me to keep working to promote new opportunities for new generations of Hispanic students to achieve their dreams." HJ