Diversity on extension campus brings in grant
The College of Eastern Utah San Juan campus has one of the highest Native American enrollment populations in the country and, as a result, has received the Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions (NASNTI) grant to help improve the campus in becoming more culturally sensitive.
Heather Young, director of distance learning technology, said because 60 percent of their students are Native American, the campus has to be more sensitive to their culture.
“We have to do things a little different than other colleges, we try to make things culturally more appropriate to our students,” Young said.
San Juan Campus physically covers 33,000 square miles and encompasses the largest Native American population in the United States, which includes Navajo, Ute, Mountain Ute, Southern Ute, and Hopi Nations. San Juan campus also copes with a 31 percent poverty rate, twice the national average. Because of the diverse population and lower standard of living, Young said San Juan has the responsibility to adjust according to the needs of students.
Young said family is very important to the Native American students and sometimes they have to miss school for ceremonies, some that last for days, and because of this, they “attempt to accommodate the best they can.”
Virgil Caldwell, director of distance education and program development, said it is important to remember who the school is trying to serve, and find the best way to go about improving the school.
“As a small rural community college we have been working and developing our campus over 30 years. We operate as a regional college and the majority of students are Native American, and by recognizing our position in the population we serve, we very much focus and strive to constantly enhance our service,” Caldwell said.
Young said the main thing she is looking forward to with this new grant is the chance to improve retention and graduation rates for the school. She said once students get to school, they struggle and have a hard time staying enrolled. She said with this new grant, the school will implement an “early alert” system that will notify them when a student is struggling earlier on so the student can receive help before it is too late.
“We have retention issues just like any school,” Young said, “but with new tutoring programs we can help retain students and get graduation rates up.”
Young said three years ago their graduation rate was only 14 percent, but because of “beefed up tutoring programs” the graduation rate has gone up to 60 percent. Even with the large increase, Young said they “still have a lot of room for improvement.”
Caldwell said retention rates are only one of the things he hopes to see improve from the grant.
“The outcomes we are seeking to develop and improve from the grant are: increasing enrollment rates, graduation rates, retention rates and professional development of faculty and staff as well as developing a greater cultural aesthetic for the campus,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell was one of the writers and “strategic planner” of the grant. Grant writers watch for announcements that pertain to their institution, and when a writer comes across one that “seems like a good fit” they put together a team and work on it. The NASNTI grant took about a year, Young said. Caldwell said San Juan works on about two to three major grants a year and have about a 50 percent success rate, which he said in the competitive nature of the work, is “pretty good.”
Young said learning centers brought about by the grant will provide better technology to reservations. The distant education centers cover 40,000 square miles and 65 smart classrooms. The grant states the focus will be on students who are pursuing careers in “high-need, high-growth industries,” particularly those in the health care professions. It states the project will “expand current successful programming in these areas to develop ‘home-grown’ talent that will reduce employee turnover and better represent the indigenous population.”
Caldwell said he hopes to see the grant help further increase enrollment of Native American students and a programming system that fits the goals of the students in the region. He also said he hopes to see additional resources provided for different learning styles and cultural sensitivity.
– megan.b@aggiemail.usu.edu