The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has announced it is granting $300,000 over the next three years to the American Indian College Fund (the Fund) for expansion of the
Sloan STEM Leadership Fellowship Program. The purpose of the grant is to provide funding to tribal college faculty currently pursuing master’s or doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in order to enhance the educational atmosphere at the tribal colleges.
The Fund will award two fellowships per year over the course of the three-year period for a total of six fellowships.
Richard B. Williams, American Indian College Fund President and CEO, said, “The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s renewed commitment to Native success in the STEM fields and well-educated faculty at our tribal colleges is vital for the development of Indian Country and the United States as a whole. As we seek as a nation to become more competitive, it is imperative that our youth are educated in these fields. This generous gift from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will help us achieve this goal while also creating hope in American Indian communities.”
“Completion of a graduate degree is a key step in faculty development,” said Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program Director Elizabeth S. Boylan. “The Foundation is excited to partner with the American Indian College Fund in its important efforts to support promising STEM faculty at tribal colleges, efforts that will, in turn, provide benefits to both the faculty and their students.”
About the Alfred P. Sloan FoundationEstablished in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-President and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit grant making institution that supports original research and broad-based education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and economic performance.
www.sloan.org.
In April 2011, the American Indian College Fund announced a $5 million grant award from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to fund four early childhood education projects located at tribal colleges and universities and serving Native children. Under the program, initial grant awards of $800,000 per college over a period of four years will be awarded to four tribal colleges whose submitted proposals best supported the goals and objectives of the program to improve young Native students’ skill acquisition; prepare them for grades K-12 and post-secondary education; improve the quality of early childhood teachers in Native communities through partnership opportunities with post-secondary teacher training programs at the tribal colleges; bridge early childhood and K-3 education; integrate Native language and culture into early childhood curriculum; and empower Native families and communities as change agents in education for their children.
Richard B. Williams, President and CEO of the American Indian College Fund, said, “The generosity of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation will help transform learning opportunities for young Native children who are vulnerable in Indian Country. By providing the opportunity for these four selected tribal colleges to focus on high-quality early childhood development, the Fund will pave the way for Native children not just to succeed, but to excel in K-12 and post-secondary education. This exciting initiative furthers the ability of our tribal colleges to enhance intellectual capacity in our communities while expanding their vital role in Indian communities.”
The American Indian College Fund is honored to announce the following four tribal colleges as the 2011 Wakanyeja “Sacred Little Ones” Early Childhood Education Initiative Grantees:
The College of Menominee Nation, Keshena, Wisconsin—The college’s We Will Make A Path for the Children program will develop an early childhood instruction model to enable disadvantaged low-income students gain academic skills, motivation, support, and confidence necessary to succeed in elementary education. The program will be developed within existing infrastructure for program sustainability.
Ilisagvik College, Barrow, Alaska—The college’s Uqautchim Uglua, an Iñupiaq Early Learning program, is rooted in the values, history, and language of the Iñupiat. It will serve the North Slope Borough’s 11 schools across an 89,000 square mile region in northern Alaska. The program will serve eight predominately Iñupiaq communities offering a culture-based early learning center and teacher training program patterned after the language nest model.
Northwest Indian College, Bellingham, Washington—The program will host a collaborative effort between two school systems and the Northwest Indian College’s Early Learning Center and Early Childhood Education program to serve infants, toddlers, K-3 students, parents, early childhood education students, and early childhood education staff. The program will create learning communities and create a seamless transition from the Early Learning Center to Head Start to K-3.
Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico—The SIPI Early Childhood Education program will reflect best practices in Native and non-Native early childhood development, learning, and teacher training through courses and web-based tools, while infusing programs with Native culture and language.
About the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, established in 1930, supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and southern Africa. For further information on the foundation, please visit
www.wkkf.org From the flute music of R. Carlos Nakai, Navajo/Ute, to tributes and good-natured banter, the 2011 American Indian College Fund (AICF)
Flame of Hope Gala offered something for everyone.
Presidents, board members and students from 33 tribal colleges donned formal and traditional wear to attend the event October 20 at a downtown ballroom of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, where Hattie Kauffman, Nez Perce, an award-winning CBS reporter, was mistress of ceremonies.
All was not glitz and glamor, however, as American Indian College Fund president and CEO Richard B. Williams, Oglala Lakota, honored the late
Elouise Pepion Cobell, who will not see the fulfillment of the $3.4 billion settlement she wrested from the U.S. government for violating its trust duties to individual Indian beneficiaries.
Eight years ago, Williams recalled, he discussed a permanent education endowment with John Echohawk, Pawnee, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), which represented Cobell at the time. Echohawk shared Williams’ vision of Native Americans becoming the best-educated people in the country.
“Eloise, I know you’re going to win this case,” Williams remembered telling her and suggesting that they ask for a permanent education endowment as part of the settlement: “She really liked the idea and said that she would include it in the settlement.” As a result, there is $60 million for a permanent fund for
Native American students, he noted.
“She’s not going to see her dream come true, but we’re going to make it come true for her,” Williams said. He announced a $25,000 Elouise Cobell Scholarship Fund from the American Indian College Fund board of trustees and an honor song was sung by Cetan Wanbli Williams.
Paula Bremner, a student at
Blackfeet Community College, in Browning, Montana accepted a Pendleton blanket in muted colors on behalf of the Cobell/Pepion family, and will return the blanket “to the people to whom it belongs”—Bremner is Elouise Cobell’s third cousin.
Williams said the presence of AICF donors “means that you understand the many problems that American Indian people face,” including an average reservation income of $8,000 per capita and the nation’s lowest education attainment rates juxtaposed with the highest unemployment rates that reach 80 percent on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
The country is facing “unprecedented economic challenges” and people are protesting “right here in Denver, about four blocks away, ” he said. “To the extent that people are protesting in our city and other cities across the nation,” America “needs solutions for a sustainable and competitive global economy.”
“We need jobs at the tribal colleges such as call centers and help centers that are currently being outsourced overseas,” he said. “Let’s change that and bring them home to help the First People of America.”
Tribal colleges prepare students for graduate school and for a variety of professions, including nursing, he said. “In the Pine Ridge IHS service unit, 62 percent of all nurses are graduates of
Oglala Lakota College.” The graduates “not only hold a college diploma but carry with them a deeper understanding of their culture and traditions.”
Twenty percent of students attending tribal colleges are non-Indian, he said, noting that although the colleges are providing a high quality education that is affordable, only five percent of students on scholarships can afford their books.
Designing childhood education for an early college start has been made possible through a $5 million grant from the
W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a major AICF supporter, for administering four 2011 Wakanyeja “Sacred Little Ones” Early Childhood Education Initiatives, Williams said.
Under the initiative, four tribal colleges were selected to be awarded up to $800,000 over four years: the
College of Menominee Nation, in Keshena, Wisconsin;
Ilisagvik College, in Barrow, Alaska;
Northwest Indian College, in Bellingham, Washington; and
Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to the AICF annual report.
Student speaker at the gala was Danielle Denton, a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska and an Osage descendant, who graduated magna cum laude from Haskell Indian Nations University in 2010 and who said an AICF scholarship “definitely turned things around for me.
She is one of three students to participate in a summer internship at Wal-Mart Inc.’s Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters, and received her degree in business administration with an emphasis in tribal management. Her presentation was the last of the evening.
The annual gala funds need-based scholarships for Native American students at tribal or other colleges; it raised approximately $300,000 this year, about the same amount as last year.
The event began with soothing flute music by Nakai and a silent auction that allowed leisurely conversation. Drum songs ushered in livelier chatter as people mixed and mingled and a curtain was drawn back to reveal city lights below. Dinner followed, with Williams’ address and honoree awards until the evening closed as it began, with music and muted conversation.