‘Recruitment to Native Communities Has Got to Be Different’

Each summer, the College Horizons program brings between 200 and 300 Native American high-school students from across the country to college campuses for a crash course in college admissions, financial aid, and campus culture. At the workshops, faculty and staff members from colleges and schools across the country tutor students in choosing the right institution and confronting stereotypes in the classroom, among other topics.

More than 40 selective colleges and universities partner with the program, sending staff members from admissions, financial aid, student services, career services, and Native American studies to the five-day event. Nearly all of the students who have completed the program have gone on to four-year colleges, and 85 percent of them have graduated within five years.

In an interview with The Chronicle, Carmen Lopez, executive director of College Horizons, talks about the misconceptions that many Native American students have about college; what colleges are getting wrong when it comes to recruiting them; and how the program prepares participants for life at predominantly white institutions. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You teach Native American students how to navigate the college-application process. What do you find that students misunderstand, or don’t know, about applying to college?

For sure, financial aid. It’s kind of a mystery. Then it’s the assumptions and myths — that college is way too expensive, or that they should only look at community colleges or a state institution.

We help them understand what financial aid is, what EFC [expected family contribution] means. Five years ago, we started requiring parental tax info as part of the application, so we could advise students on building college lists.

The colleges we partner with are able to pretty much meet full demonstrated need. I want to make sure that for those students where there is the right academic and social mix, that partner colleges are on their list. I need students to understand that a college that’s $60,000 a year might be more affordable than their in-state institution.

Then, it’s test-taking — only one-third have past test exposure. Pre-SAT or ACT. We have the Princeton Review Foundation come in to do test-taking strategies. Help them understand what preparation means, what scoring means, which courses they should be taking.

How do you help them find the right fit?

We give them exposure to different types of colleges that are out there. Most students will have their understanding from family and from where students are going from high school. It’s sometimes based on sports. There’s a huge gap for 3,000 colleges out there.

To find what matches me — that is an introspective question. Who am I? We don’t ask them that in high school. It requires them to think about what kind of kid am I, and what other kinds of kids do I want to be around? It’s understanding the diversity of colleges that are out there and expanding those horizons. They might not know about what Bowdoin is, or what an Ivy League institution is.

We have them fill out a battery of questions. We have a map of the U.S. and tell them to cross out areas of the country they would not consider attending. Then we ask what type of support system they’d need. Are you OK being one of a handful of Native students with no Native program or studies? Or do you need a strong Native community around you?

What are some of the hopes and fears that these students express when it comes to college?

One of the most beautiful things students will write about is about how attaining a degree is going to contribute back to their community. They might talk about diabetes, sexual assault, domestic violence, suicide. They are addressing the realities of their community, writing about how they can help with this. That’s what distinguishes the students in my program — they’re approaching colleges not from an individualistic place. They’re already thinking about their community, about giving back. They survived it, so now they’re thinking about, How can I help solve the problem?

Their biggest fear is, How can I pay for this? There’s a tension of wanting to go explore, but they’re also nervous about being homesick. There’s the cultural side of, How do I maintain my connections to my language, culture, community?

You’ve said successful students like the ones you accept into your program aren’t on colleges’ radar. Why is that?

First, the outreach in recruitment to Native communities has got to be different than the traditional recruitment that colleges embark upon. When you are traveling to certain states, you might expect that students will be on your website, signing up for tours, that they will come to you. But with Native communities, they’re not being told “go sign up.”

Then, a lot of colleges go to schools where they’ve identified an academic caliber. They will hit the private institutions, the independent schools, a few publics, but not some of schools with a higher Native population. That’s the job of the institution, to better reach out to students. That’s a legacy of trust.

We do that legwork — we go to schools with Native populations, with Indian education coordinators, to tribal education departments. Most colleges would never go through a tribal education department, but that’s the exact place you’d want to build relationships, the department providing scholarships and resources.

The recruitment has to look different because you’re building relationships and trust with a community. It’s not just an individual-student approach. It has to be a community-based approach to recruitment.

Another reason they’re overlooked and undermatched is because of testing. Colleges are identifying prospects based on the PSAT. So if our Native students aren’t taking tests in 10th grade, and not getting on profile lists that colleges purchase, they’re not seen as traditional prospects.

About students: You told NPR in a recent interview that you’re “prepping them for the blows they’re going to take when they arrive on their college campuses.” What sort of blows are you talking about, and how do you prepare them?

Another part of what we do is transitioning to college. We have a professor from the host college come lecture to the students. It’s exposure to what does a professor look like, sound like, talk like?

Then we go into being a Native student on a predominantly white campus. The majority of the colleges are predominantly white, or at least non-Native. So we need to talk to our students, especially those coming from reservations. We need to talk with them about what’s it going to be like when you become the 1 percent on your college campus. We talk about that, open up with our individual experiences of going to college, the racism we experienced, the ignorance we experienced, the bigotry we experienced.

It can happen in a social setting, but it’s also the ignorance of professors. It’s putting students on the spot to speak to certain things. Or challenging students’ understanding of the issue versus a Western anthropological or historical view.

It’s talking about when you’re invisible as a Native, and when you are fighting to be seen, and you want to academically be seen. If a college is teaching U.S. history and never mentions Native history, it is not teaching it properly.

Then it’s being homesick, or how you might be treated when you go home. Do you see family differently through an educated lens? And if you talk about it, are you seen as thinking you’re too good, or white?

College Horizons’ motto is “College Pride, Native Pride!” What does that mean to you?

It’s an understanding that when we’re thinking about what is knowledge on our Western side, higher education means seeking new knowledge. From a Native side, we also have this cultural knowledge that has informed us since time immemorial, and that is just as important as Western education. At College Horizons, we believe we can have both of these things. We can have the Western education, and we can also have the traditional education. Sometimes they’re going to collide, but I don’t think Native students should have to make a choice between them.

Kelly Field is a senior reporter covering federal higher-education policy. Contact her at kelly.field@chronicle.com. Or follow her on Twitter @kfieldCHE.