33°

Scott recalls a student he saw last year when the Northwest Indian College opened a branch on the Nez Perce Reservation at Lapwai, Idaho.

The woman entered the school tentatively on the first day classes were open for registration, said Scott, a member of the Bellingham, Wash.,-based school's board of directors.

After registering for a single computer class, the new student asked about financial aid. When told she needed more classes to qualify, she signed up for a larger courseload.

As she left the office, the woman said she was going to work to complete a college degree. Scott said the change in her demeanor was noticeable.

"When she walked in, she was scared and shy," Scott said. "When she walked out, she had a spring in her step. Her future had been set."

That concept - bringing higher education opportunities to Natives, and teaching them in a way that ties to their backgrounds, their communities and their lives - is driving the formation of the Southeast Alaska Tribal College.

"Our concern is the lack of Native folks accessing higher education," said SEATC trustee Phyllis Carlson. "We would like to see a choice ... for those who aren't accessing the mainstream system."

"There have been all kinds of efforts from outside the Native community for 100 years to save us," said Andy Hope, college trustee and Southeast regional coordinator for the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative. "It's about time we took the responsibility for ourselves."

Southeast Alaska Tribal College President Ted Wright said he first heard of tribal colleges while attending Penn State University in the late 1980s; about the same time, Hope said he had a growing interest in closing a gap in the documentation of traditional Tlingit law and Native law in general.

During those years, they said, there was a "groundswell" of interest in Native education across Southeast.

Through the early- to mid-1990s, Hope said, a series of Southeast clan conferences gathered support for Native education programs, including saving indigenous languages and developing teacher training programs.

That movement was sharpened into talk of a tribal college for Southeast, an idea Hope said was strongly supported and advanced by elders. At roughly the same time, other Native groups from around the state were also discussing similar institutions for their region.

In 1997, the tribal college effort statewide received a boost from a four-year W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant to assist in creating a statewide tribal college network.

The grant, matched by the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative, led to the creation of the Consortium for Alaska Native Higher Education, an umbrella group for the state's tribal colleges. That consortium, in turn, has gained support from a national tribal college group, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.

Michael Pavel, an associate professor of higher education at Washington State University, completed a site visit report last year documenting the work of CANHE. He said the Kellogg grant and CANHE brought disparate regional efforts together as a more powerful, unified body.

"The Kellogg grant served as an incredibly powerful mechanism to help collaborate activities in each of the regions," he said.

Linked with other tribal college efforts around the state and across the nation, the organization efforts in Southeast moved ahead.

Last fall, a core group of nine founding tribes chartered the college, adopting a set of bylaws and appointing a board of 11 trustees with representation from across Southeast. Hope said creating those lasting institutions of the college was an important step.

"There's powerful psychological value, symbolic value to it," he said. "It's real - real people in the community contributing their time, their names."

While the organizing process has taken many years, Pavel said he sees that as a strength, building a solid foundation for the future.

"They're very sophisticated," he said. "A lot of people just want to bulldog their way ... but Southeast Alaska seems to be a lot more patient, and I think it will pay off in the long run."

Tribal college plans call for the core offering of the Southeast Alaska Tribal College to be a two-year Associate of Arts degree, compatible with and transferable to the University of Alaska Southeast and Sitka's Sheldon Jackson College.

Also envisioned are specialized certificate and Associate of Applied Arts degree programs to meet the employment needs of Southeast communities.

Those certificates could be earned either through a partnership with another institution or entirely at the tribal college.

Teacher training is also a major goal of the college.

"There's a real need for teachers, a crying need for Native teachers and a critical need for Native male teachers," Hope said.

Included in college plans is the development of a Tlingit Language Teacher Certificate program, working with the Southeast Alaska Native Educators' Association and partnering with existing Native teacher-training initiatives.

The college will also offer courses in Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian language and culture.

To date, SEATC has also developed or adapted two curricula that fit into the college's place-based philosophy. The first, "I Am Salmon," centers on natural history study of wild salmon streams. Work to match with Alaska state standards will continue this summer.

The other curriculum, GIS Cultural Place Names, incorporates science, math, engineering and technology into preserving Native culture and traditions; one product has been digital cultural atlases.

A bridge to college

The test scores are in, and for Alaska Natives they look bleak.

On the High School Graduation Qualifying Exam given to Alaska's sophomores last spring, the results show a large performance disparity between Alaska Natives and other ethnic groups.

According to statistics from the state Department of Education for 10th graders taking the exit exam, among white students 78 percent passed reading, 56.3 percent passed writing and 53.3 percent showed they were proficient in math.

For Alaska Native students, those numbers were 36.9 percent for reading, 23 percent for writing and 22.7 percent for math.

"The high school student achievement data is very depressing," Hope said. "When you look at the number of Native kids who enter ninth grade to the percentage who graduate ... we have the highest early leaver rates."

One possibility being explored to meet that challenge is through the development of a tribal charter school for grades 11 through 14 - bridging the last two years of high school with two years of college.

Wright said the charter school could provide a "seamless transition" for students struggling in high school to get help and continue on to college in the same environment.

Hope said he envisions the school operating in partnership with the Juneau School District. For that to happen, an application must be filed with and approved by the school board, as well as by the state Department of Education.

Not just for Natives

While the main focus of the tribal college will be providing higher education opportunities to Native students, its organizers said they hope the school will create better cultural understanding among non-Natives.

Wright said one goal of the tribal college would be to provide training for non-Native teachers who serve Native villages around Southeast - training on what methods work best for teaching such students.

Wright said existing offerings in that area for teachers are more of an afterthought.

"As it is, it's a lot of after-the-fact training," he said. "It doesn't pervade the system."

To fill that gap, the tribal college would offer sabbaticals, exchange and inservice programs on Native culture for additional certification of teachers around the region.

Partnerships

From continuing consultation with tribal elders, to cooperation across the region, to being a part of CANHE, the Southeast Alaska Tribal College is firmly rooted in a spirit of partnership.

Organizers say that collaboration will continue to be a vital element of the institution.

"We're not under any illusions that we're going to do this totally independent," Hope said.

As it begins to offer programs, the tribal college will seek to form partnerships with other colleges to cooperate on program offerings. Hope said they also hope to involve the Juneau School District.

Until SEATC receives accreditation, partnerships with accredited institutions are necessary for students to gain credit for their work.

UAS Provost Robbie Stell said the university would welcome the tribal college filling gaps in the offerings of UAS, or complementing existing programs.

Stell said she is not concerned about potential "competition" from a new school.

"I think there's so much work to be done that neither one of us can meet the needs of higher education in the Southeast," she said.

Looking to the future

SEATC organizers have an optimistic outlook for the future, as years of effort in the abstract are finally showing concrete results.

"It's exciting to get to the point to where we're talking to the university about programs," Wright said.

The college will apply for several key grants this spring; supporters also are hopeful about funding from the recently signed federal education act. Some teacher training and mentoring programs will be offered starting in late spring.

As course offerings expand, a much longer-term goal will be completing the accreditation process.

"There's a lot of work to do, but there's finally some momentum," Wright said.

Tribal college officials said they hope the school will use ties to the past to create a brighter future.

"Since time immemorial, knowledge has been integral to the tribal people of Alaska," said tribal college trustee Sue Stevens of Wrangell. "I'm hoping it will accomplish a 100 percent graduation rate for the Native students involved in it, and through that we'll be able to be more successful."

Pavel, the Washington State University associate professor, said opening the doors to a tribal college creates a sense of empowerment for a Native community.

"Each Native community must return back to having a control of the mission, scope and influence of the educational system on community members," he said. "Return back to a sense of greatness, being able to say, 'We are listening to our people. We are meeting their needs.' "

• Anchorage: Cecilia Tavoliero
• Angoon: Mary Jean Duncan
• Juneau: Marion Berry, Phyllis Carlson, Andy Hope, Dr. Joyce Shales, Carlton Smith
• Klukwan: Ed Warren
• Pelican: Dr. Ronn Dick
• Saxman: Lee Wallace
• Wrangell: Sue Stevens

Southeast Alaska Tribal College Founding Tribes

• Chilkat Indian Village
• Douglas Indian Association
• Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska
• Sitka Tribe of Alaska
• Angoon Community Association
• Petersburg Indian Association
• Wrangell Cooperative Association
• Ketchikan Indian Corporation
• Organized Village of Saxman

On the Net
For more information on tribal colleges across Alaska and around the nation, visit:

• American Indian Higher Education Consortium: www.aihec.org

• Consortium for Alaska Native Higher Education: www.ankn.uaf.edu/canhe/

• Ilisagvik College: www.ilisagvik.cc

• Northwest Indian College: www.nwic.edu