The University of Montana and Blackfeet Community College are vastly different institutions in size and mission. Yet both in their own way try to create a welcoming environment for Native American students that helps them to succeed. Here are how the two colleges support Native students, as well as some of the struggles the institutions face in graduating them.
University of Montana
The first thing most visitors to the University of Montana notice is the white concrete “M” that looms over the campus, at the top of Mount Sentinel. A Missoula landmark since 1908, the “M” is a widely recognized symbol of the college, and the city itself.
But the university’s most distinctive building is probably the Payne Family Native American Center, a 12-sided structure that sits on the main quad on the site of a historic Salish encampment. Opened in 2010, it’s unlike the classic brick buildings that surround it — and that’s intentional, says William Brown, administrator of the Native American-studies department.
When college leaders were planning the building, they invited tribal elders to tour the campus and asked which architectural elements they’d like to incorporate into the structure, Mr. Brown says. The elders wanted nothing of the campus’ traditional buildings, which “reminded them of boarding school,” he says. “They wanted something loudly indigenous.”
With that in mind, the university built a center that honors Native design throughout, from the main entrance, which opens to the east to greet the sun, to the long skylight that resembles the slit of a teepee’s smoke hole. The domed roof mimics the inside of a hand drum; the frosted windows evoke sweat lodges.
“There’s always been this separation of home and school, and this brings them back into one space,” says Mr. Brown. “It helps with retention.”
According to the university, there are 600 Native students on campus, accounting for 5 percent of the student body (the federal tally, which does not include “multiracial” students, is 3 percent). It’s a small share, but it’s high given that Native students make up less than 1 percent of undergraduates nationwide. And when it comes to recruiting and serving Native students, the institution is ahead of most of its peers.
Each fall Emily Ferguson-Steger, interim director of admissions, visits every reservation-based high school and tribal college in the state to talk about enrolling in — or transferring to — the university. She walks applicants through the process, and teaches them the language of federal financial aid, so they won’t be intimidated by the jargon, as she once was.
“When I first heard EFC [expected family contribution], the first thing I thought of was KFC chicken,” Ms. Ferguson-Steger recalls, with a laugh.
She says she urges many students to start at a tribal college first, like she did. The university has transfer agreements with every tribal college in the state. Students who plan to transfer to the university from a tribal college can apply as early as their first semester, and be co-advised by their home campus and Montana until they make the move.
Students can be in a center that makes them comfortable, and also integrate and feel that they’re part of a whole.
When Native students arrive on campus, they are provided with mentors, cultural activities, and a “loudly indigenous” place where they can gather — the Native American Center. To introduce students to the broader campus community, the center hosts “Soup Wednesday” events in the rotunda, offering a free meal to any student who shows up. The president and the deans take turns serving the soup. Ms. Ferguson-Steger says the bi-weekly event “breaks down walls.”
“Students can be in a center that makes them comfortable, and also integrate and feel that they’re part of a whole,” she says.
This year staff in American Indian student services began giving presentations to other departments on cultural sensitivity and historic trauma in Native communities. They’re urging faculty and administrators to reject the stereotypes — both positive and negative — about Native students, to treat them as individuals, not as statistics.
But even with these efforts, the University of Montana struggles to graduate its Native students. Just 15 percent of Native students in the 2009 cohort of first-time, full-time students finished within six years, compared with half of white students.
One problem, Ms. Ferguson-Steger says, is that Native students are often pulled back to the reservation by family obligations or feelings of guilt about leaving for college. “It feels selfish, because we’re doing something for ourselves,” she says. “Unfortunately, when one student leaves [for college], their cousin leaves, or their brother or sister leaves. It’s a bit of a systemic problem.”
On recruiting trips, she tells prospective students what she wishes she’d been told when she was young: that there will be family members who will criticize their decision to leave — aunts, and cousins who will complain when they miss birthdays and funerals because of midterms. She reminds them that they’re getting an education not just for themselves, but for their grandparents, who didn’t have the same opportunity. And she promises them it will all be worth it.
“You are going to get people saying, ‘You’re turning your back on us, you care more about your white education than us,’” she says. “But know that it’s coming from a place of love. And when it comes to graduation, they will be there.”
Blackfeet Community College
On a mound of earth at the edge of Blackfeet Community College, a cluster of blue-painted rocks form the letters “BCC.” To get to it, you have to cross a trash-filled marsh. It’s a far cry from the iconic “M” four hours south.
But the log and wood buildings that make up the campus core are modern, and the tribal college is growing, with a health-sciences building under construction. Financially, it’s in better shape than many of its peers.
Ninety-seven percent of the almost 500 students here are Native, as is 91 percent of the faculty, and most are from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Everyone is required to take classes in the history and language of the Piikani — the branch of the Blackfeet living in Northwest Montana — but Native culture and folklore are infused across the curriculum, in math lessons on teepee geometry and in chemistry labs where students make a painkiller from willows.
There aren’t many fluent speakers of Blackfoot on campus today, but the college tries to instill the basics, sending students a “word of the day,” and posting inspirational sayings in Blackfoot in the hallways: “Stay healthy,” “laugh often,” “never give up” — mii-noh-mat-skoh-tsit.
Two years ago, the college adopted the Blackfeet “society” model, as part of an effort to strengthen students’ sense of belonging and community. The eight societies, which are named for animals important to the Piikani, offer both social and financial support, providing struggling students with gift certificates, gas cards — even holiday gifts.
The climate at Blackfeet Community College is informal and familiar. Professors joke around with students, and people wander in and out of classrooms. Tardiness is tolerated, but when students miss a class, professors will call to find out why — and will often offer a ride or other way to help.
Tribal colleges know the environment and the unique challenges that students come from. They accept students where they’re at.
Billy Jo Kipp, president of the college, says its ties to the reservation where it’s based are one of its biggest strengths.
“Tribal colleges know the environment and the unique challenges that students come from,” she says. “They accept students where they’re at.”
But those ties also bring some challenges. The Blackfeet reservation, in northwest Montana, is poor and geographically isolated, with low levels of educational attainment. Sixty percent of students are the first in their family to attend college, and two-thirds of them are unemployed.
Recruiting faculty from beyond the reservation can be difficult, because Browning is remote and salaries are low, in the $30,000-40,000 range, Ms. Kipp says. Those who accept the job are often asked to teach outside their area of expertise, and to take on social-service roles, such as soup preparation.
The Board of Trustees is appointed by the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council, and leadership decisions are often political; when Ms. Kipp took office in 2011, the college had been through nine presidents in 11 years.
The leadership turnover and the faculty challenges hamper the college as it looks to improve its to low graduation rate. Less than half of students return after the first year, and only 13 percent graduate within three years, according to federal statistics.
Ms. Kipp says such statistics ignore the fact that many students drop out and return repeatedly, taking longer than three years to complete their programs. They also overlook the key role that Blackfeet Community College and its peers play in community service and tribal education.
In the 2015 academic year, tribal colleges served more than 160,000 individuals through community education and outreach — 10 times the number they enrolled that fall, according to the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. That programming included things like health screenings, financial-literacy courses, and programs for youth.
The failure of government officials and accreditors to acknowledge these contributions and recognize other successes has led some tribal-college advocates to call for the creation of a separate accreditor for tribal colleges — or at least a supplemental one.
“The way we define success is different than most of the rest of higher education,” says Cheryl Crazy Bull, president of the American Indian College Fund, the nation’s largest charity supporting Native students. For some tribal college students, “achieving their educational or life dream might take 10 years.”
“We need to look at metrics in the context of mission,” says Ms. Crazy Bull.
Paul Willeto, a professor of arts and humanities at Diné College, in Arizona, the country’s oldest tribal college, says creating a tribal-college accreditor is about living up to the ideal of tribal self-determination. Allowing tribal colleges to monitor themselves would finally give Native Americans the sovereignty they sought in higher education when they created the colleges in the 1970s.
“The current higher-education accreditation systems are grounded in Euro-American values and elitism,” Mr. Willeto says. Those values “are not always congruent with tribal nation-building efforts.”
An independent tribal-college accreditor would “recognize and validate tribal cultural practices and standards,” he says.
But Ms. Kipp says she’s ambivalent about the idea. She worries that creating a separate accreditor for tribal colleges might send the message that the institutions want to be held to a lower standard than mainstream institutions.
Still, she wishes that the existing accreditors would look beyond graduation rates to more intangible outcomes — things like improved living skills and social consciousness.
“Students who attend tribal colleges are committed to the collective improvement of the tribe and the reservation,” she says. “This is not measured by non-Native colleges.”
Kelly Field is a senior reporter covering federal higher-education policy. Contact her at kelly.field@chronicle.com. Or follow her on Twitter @kfieldCHE.
