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Integrating access to higher education and creating an excellent, high quality educational environment went hand in hand for President Emerita Diana Natalicio.

“If not me, then who?” is what Diana Natalicio asked herself when she was being considered for the President of the University of Texas at El Paso in the late 1980s. She was the only woman among a field of men. When she considered her own qualifications in comparison to theirs, she decided to stay in the running. And she earned the position.

A Legacy of Access and Excellence

For 31 years, Dr. Natalicio served as President at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ, having risen up the ranks from being a visiting professor in linguistics. The first in her family to go to college, Diana saw the power of a university education to transform lives and lift communities. And she wanted to extend these possibilities to others. When Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) were designated in the 1992 Higher Education Act as institutions having 25% or more full-time Hispanic enrollment, ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ qualified.

By the time she retired in 2019, having had among the longest tenures among university presidents, Diana had achieved two components of her vision. First, ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ had become a school that reflected the demographics of its local community, serving many low-income, first-generation, and Hispanic students. Second, ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ had transformed into one of the top 5% of universities in the country in terms of the amount of its research activity, known as “R1”, or “Research University 1,” status. Integrating access to higher education and creating an excellent, high quality educational environment went hand in hand for Diana. To this day, ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ is the only open-access R1 in the country, in addition to being one of the largest HSIs in the country. ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ also produces the highest number of Hispanic doctoral degree earners in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields in the nation.

An Institute to Further Dr. Natalicio's vision

Diana forged a legacy at the University that raised its national profile and lifted up the economic and social mobility of the regional community. Today, ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ’s leadership, faculty, and staff continue that legacy. The Diana Natalicio Institute for Hispanic Student Success was created through a large donation Dr. Natalicio gave to the university and an endowed staff position from the University of Texas System. Our mission is to continue her work of integrating higher education access and excellence by uncovering and sharing knowledge about how to promote student success and bringing together scholars, leaders, and staff across the nation in this purpose.

Since the Institute was launched in 2022, new trends in the U.S. pose distinct threats for higher education. The events of 2025 and after will present unique challenges for forging access to a high quality education. The Institute plays an essential role in drawing on the lessons of HSIs and broad-access institutions to promote student success. For too long, highly selective institutions predicated on exclusion have dominated media headlines, research, and the design of models of student success. But many of these do not work in less well-resourced institutional contexts and historically underserved communities. 

Celebrating Her Impact and Signaling the Future

Panel discussion at Diana Natalicio Legacy and Impact Event, January 22, 2026. From left: Erin Doran, John Wiebe, Anne-Marie Nunez, Freeman Hrabowski III. 

On January 22, 2026, the Institute celebrated Diana’s life through a full day of events – a morning Open House welcoming the community, a lunch panel that brought together institutional, scholarly, and leadership perspectives on her higher education legacy, and a culminating lecture by a similarly renowned higher education leader, Freeman Hrabowski III, who led a 30-year transformation of The University of Maryland Baltimore County to expand opportunities for historically underserved communities while also promoting educational excellence. Throughout the day, community participants were invited to of Diana’s impact on their lives, and Dr. Hrabowski, her dear friend, also discussed how Diana and he supported one another in changing the U.S. higher education landscape.

In my remarks throughout the day, I alluded to my first visit to ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ having been in 2015, at Dr. Natalicio’s invitation, to discuss a paper I had written for the event: “Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Where Are They Now?”  At the time, I was a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and had just come out with the book: Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Advancing Research and Transformative Practice. It struck me then that a college president would be interested in my research and want to share it with the other HSI presidents who attended, as well as with foundation leaders and other scholars who were present. 

That panel actually took place in the same room at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ as the 2026 lunch panel in which I spoke with ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Provost John Wiebe and Freeman Hrabowski III about the future of higher education. Eleven years later, I found myself in the same place, talking about where higher education is and where it is going. In 2026, the constitutionality of HSIs is being challenged, and federal programs that were designed and legislated to support these institutions have largely been pulled back by the current federal government.

Taking Student Success into the Future

While many full circle moments happened at our January 2026 impact event, so many things have changed. The Diana Natalicio Institute strives to continue the work to promote student success, to maximize higher education’s potential to transform lives, communities, and society. Nobel Prize winning economists have demonstrated that higher education has been the key factor in the US’s global ascendance in the twentieth century, and it is a central institution in the US that has contributed to the nation’s economic and social thriving. As I see the nation’s commitment to higher education recede, I try to remember that, as Freeman Hrabowski III said at his lecture, “America is better than this.” And, as we at the Institute aim to grow knowledge that promotes student success, we ask, “If not us, then who?” Many great scholars, leaders, practitioners, organizations, and institutions around the country are doing innovative things to promote student success. And, just as Diana did, we will invite others to come with us to advance the common cause to meet the needs of all students. Please join us as we design better educational futures.