The Second Lady of the United States, Dr. Jill Biden, addressed 176 graduating students and their families at Navajo Technical College’s (NTC, Crownpoint, NM) spring commencement. Biden visited NTC after the Aspen Institute named recognized the college for the second consecutive year as being one of the top 120 community colleges in the United States. (more)

This past April, Northwest Indian College (NWIC, Bellingham, WA) students travelled to Scottsdale, Arizona to compete against other tribal colleges in the American Indian Business Leaders’ (AIBL) student business competition. “The competition has us put an idea into words, and then come up with a solid plan for the idea, and then present it in (more)

The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), the collective spirit and unifying voice of tribal colleges and universities (TCUs), applauded the North Dakota State Senate and Governor Jack Dalrymple for enacting legislation to provide vitally needed workforce development grants to the state’s five TCUs: Cankdeska Cikana Community College (Fort Totten, ND), Fort Berthold Community College (more)

Navajo Technical College (NTC, Crownpoint, NM) president Dr. Elmer J. Guy announced the appointment of Luci Tapahonso as the Navajo Nation’s first poet laureate in a press conference at NTC’s Hospitality Center. “A poet laureate is being honored by the Navajo Nation and Navajo Technical College in an effort to encourage other Navajo poets, writers, (more)

This past spring, Northwest Indian College (NWIC, Bellingham, WA) took part in NASA’s university student launch flight competition in Huntsville, Alabama. NWIC students competed with college and university teams from across the nation to see whose rocket could come closest to a 1-mile altitude goal and safely return its onboard science or engineering payload to (more)

The American Indian College Fund honored 33 American Indian scholarship recipients at its 2012–2013 Student of the Year reception at the American Indian Higher Education Consortium Student Conference in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The program, sponsored by the Adolph Coors Foundation, awarded each honoree a $1,000 scholarship. Dr. David Gipp, president of United Tribes Technical College (more)

At its May 10 commencement ceremony, the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA, Santa Fe, NM) granted an honorary doctorate to artist and alumnus Tony Abeyta. Abeyta studied at IAIA and graduated with an Associate of Fine Arts degree in 1986. He went on to attend various art schools in France and Italy, eventually receiving (more)

The Upper Missouri Tribal Environmental Risk Mitigation (UM-TERM) program is offering advanced education and training for tribal college students and tribal members across the Upper Missouri River watershed. With a focus on training a workforce and starting businesses in environmental risk management fields, the program reaches out to 19 reservations and includes activities at seven (more)

In a collaborative effort to showcase the five tribal colleges of North Dakota, the institutions’ presidents met at the state capitol in Bismarck. For the past several years, the North Dakota legislature has invited the state’s tribal chairmen to offer what has become known as the State of the Tribal-State Relationship Address. The testimony takes (more)

(Reprinted with permission from First Nations Development Institute’s Indian Giver newsletter) Diné College (Tsaile, AZ) on the Navajo Nation is often a catalyst for community improvement beyond the school’s doors. In September 2012, it launched a project that may become yet another catalyst. The college held the first of several planned farmers’ markets as part (more)