Volume XI Spring 2000 Issue #3

Education Grants to Strengthen Tribal Colleges

By Marjane Ambler

Blackfeet Community College plans to provide individual email and Internet access for instructors and to complete a comprehensive bookkeeping system. United Tribes Technical College and Little Priest Tribal College will construct student centers. While these plans might seem to be fulfilling basic needs that most colleges take for granted, they were not possible until these colleges received Title III grants from the U.S. Department of Education. 

Twenty-seven years ago, Congress established a program under the Higher Education Act to help colleges and universities become more self-sufficient. Unlike other grant programs, the Strengthening Institutions Program (Title III) provides funds specifically dedicated to the infrastructure needs of developing colleges--improving academic quality, institutional management, and fiscal stability. Since it was designed for institutions that enroll many financially disadvantaged students, Congress later created setasides to benefit universities that serve Hispanics and Blacks, but not tribal colleges. 

In 1998, however, Congress rectified that omission. As a result, eight tribal colleges received grants in 1999 from the Department of Education under the new tribal college section. This past fall, Congress doubled the Title III tribal college funding in the appropriations legislation for fiscal year 2000 from $3 million to $6 million, opening the door for other tribal colleges to apply.

The new setaside program is critical to the tribal colleges. Stone Child College President Steve Galbavy said the grant will help his college meet the standards needed to maintain its accreditation. Several colleges will use their grants as seeds for establishing endowment funds and building their fundraising capacity.  Little Big Horn College plans to construct web-based Crow Indian curriculum materials. Dr. Verna Fowler hopes to make the College of the Menominee Nation’s distance learning program “a technology show place where technology is put to work for effective education.” 

The eight tribal colleges that received Title III grants in 1999 under the new section are listed below with the totals for their five-year grants. 

• Blackfeet Community College (Montana): $1.97 million to add hardware and software to improve the college’s physical management, academic programming, and student services. 
• Cankdeska Cikana Community College (North Dakota): $1.9 million to incorporate information technology in academic programs and to develop curriculum in child development and computer applications technology.
• College of the Menominee Nation (Wisconsin): $1.75 million to provide new technology and staff development for distance education, including experts in technology training and multimedia. 
• Little Big Horn College (Montana): $1.59 million for academic improvement, administrative management, student services, library development, and faculty development.
• Little Priest Tribal College (Nebraska): $1.76 million to provide immersion intervention strategies for students in a new student center, to provide training in student learning styles and cultural differences, and to establish an endowment fund.
• Sitting Bull College (North Dakota): $1.95 million to strengthen academic quality and student services, develop additional fund raising capacity, and build an endowment.
• Stone Child College (Montana): $1.80 million for technical support and to improve the college’s long-term fiscal stability. It will upgrade the college’s administrative computers and it will help the college develop a five-year plan and build an endowment. 
• United Tribes Technical College (North Dakota): $1.1 million to provide a student center with computers and Internet access, which is expected to improve student achievement and increase retention. 

Sitting Bull College will use part of its Title III grant to build an endowment to serve future students such as these: Eric Grey Cloud, Kent Grey Cloud, Christian Brown Otter, Charlie Gates, and Alicia Gates.
Photo © by Lee Marmon.