The report featured interviews with a variety of Latino Goshen faculty, students and parents. It centered on the theme of Latino education in the United States, and the varied challenges that Latino students and families face in the current political climate, along with the colleges that serve those students.
Filmed in June, the students interviewed were from a range of majors and years in college, and spoke both about the challenges of attending college and the support they felt Goshen College had given them and other Latino students.
Gilberto Pérez, Jr., dean of students and vice president for student life and Hispanic serving initiatives at GC, said, “The interviews with Telemundo were a way to give a voice to our students and their experiences. We are proud of our students for their courageous storytelling.”
This fall, 29 percent of Goshen College’s traditional undergraduate students identify as Hispanic/Latino, compared to 6 percent in 2007. The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) designated the college a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) in 2023. With this designation, the college successfully competed for a $3 million Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Grant allocated by Congress to strengthen the ways that HSIs support all students.
The DOE announced in September 2025 that it was ending discretionary grant funding for all Hispanic-Serving Institutions. With that decision, Goshen College lost $1.8 million that had been awarded.
Pérez said, “Grants come and go, student servingness doesn’t. Goshen College was serving all of our students before the grant was received, and now that the grant was removed, we are committed to continuing to serve all of our students. Our student servingness is not dependent on grant dollars. It’s dependent on relationships and trust.”
Goshen College students and faculty were featured in a variety of interviews for this special Telemundo report, filmed in June and aired in November.
Student support was a theme throughout the Telemundo report. One Goshen College student said (translated from Spanish), “here, everyone is like ‘speak Spanish, celebrate your culture.’ That’s the difference [at GC]: you feel like it’s good to be Latino, it’s good to celebrate your culture.”
Pérez said that the relationships with students are at the forefront of the college’s work.
“Our HSI work is about strengthening our relationships with students and their parents,” he said. “Goshen College is proud of the many ways our faculty support students through mentoring and advising. It is important that all students have mentors to guide them in these turbulent and uncertain times.”
When the federal grant was rescinded in September, Goshen College President Rebecca Stoltzfus wrote to campus, “I want to reiterate what I said in 2023, when we officially celebrated becoming an HSI. Our Hispanic students have taught us how to become more student-serving – for ALL of our students. We want to be known as a place where people go out of their way to learn to know one another, advocate for each other’s civil rights and dignity, and where all campus members feel they can belong — in our classrooms, departments, residence halls, religious life, event venues, athletic facilities and work spaces.”
Telemundo is the second-largest American Spanish-language television network.
