Communications of the ACM
Program Builds a STEM Career Pathway for Tribal Students in North Dakota
Joseph Henry and Jaydon Willis cast silicon from a 3-D printed mold at the NATURE Summer Camp.
Credit: Austin Allard
"It's all about expanding horizons for students," says Robert Pieri, professor in mechanical engineering at North Dakota State University, of the Nurturing American Tribal Undergraduate Research and Education (NATURE) program. "You open the door, see who wants to get curious, and then give students the opportunity to explore."
Each summer the tribal college campuses across the state of North Dakota, North Dakota State University, and the University of North Dakota open up their doors to middle-school through recent graduate, tribal college students and their K-12 instructors, cultural experts, and tribal college faculty for this series of collaborative STEM outreach programs. Participants take part in University Summer Camps held at NDSU and UND which are followed by Tribal College Summer Camps held in June and/or July of each year. The Sunday Academies, workshops that host NDSU and UND faculty at the tribal colleges, are then held throughout the school year at the five tribal colleges in North Dakota which include Cankdeska Cikana Community College, Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College, Sitting Bull College, Turtle Mountain Community College, and United Tribes Technical College.
The NATURE program is a North Dakota EPSCoR-sponsored education outreach program. NATURE aims to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education among North Dakota tribal college and middle/high school students and to build a pathway for the pursuit of careers in STEM disciplines. NATURE builds on activities of a long-term collaboration among the North Dakota tribal colleges, NDSU, and UND.
Austin Allard is currently the American Indian STEM student mentor in the NDSU EPSCoR office. He fondly recalls his days as a high school student in the Sunday Academies. Attending the academies from his sophomore to senior years in high school, Allard took part in at least 15 of the events.
"The academies were my first introduction to the research process," he says. "We learned about how to identify a problem, determined the steps to study it, and then came up with solutions based on what we learned. It was during the Sunday Academies that I first became interested in engineering. After graduating from high school, I enrolled in classes at NDSU studying civil engineering."
Allard is an example of the many students whose curiosity was captured and nurtured by NATURE. "The NATURE programs have enjoyed success because dedicated K-12 instructors and faculty members across all seven campuses continue to work together to develop exciting and culturally relevant STEM lessons for each of these age groups," says Jean Ostrom-Blonigen, ND EPSCoR project administrator.
Culminating his NATURE experiences, Allard recently accepted a role with the NDSU EPSCoR office and is working with longtime camp coordinator and mentor Pieri. Pieri will soon mark his 30th year of teaching and has been a part of the NATURE program from the start.
"Little things can change a student's trajectory," Pieri says. "NATURE offers an experiential program that provides students with an opportunity to meet with professors, get some time doing research, and get a flavor for what a STEM career can be. It's a win/win for the university and tribal college faculty because they can see what's available and gain a better understanding of what the students need."
The NATURE programs were originally part of an informal agreement in 1998 between the NDSU Colleges of Engineering and Architecture and Turtle Mountain Community College, and are currently supported by a North Dakota and National Science Foundation NSF EPSCoR Track-1 Cooperative Agreement. Back then, a team of NDSU STEM faculty worked with the tribal colleges in North Dakota to enhance ways to increase the STEM educational opportunities for American Indian students. In partnership with NDSU, Turtle Mountain was awarded a five-year grant from the Office of Naval Research to support activities designed to stimulate the interest of American Indian youth from tribal reservations in North Dakota in careers such as engineering and those involving higher level mathematics, science, and technology skills. The project received support from other programs as well.
After the funding from the Office of Naval Research ended in 2005, ND EPSCoR took the program under its wing and entitled it NATURE. Many improvements have occurred during the subsequent years.
Separate tracks for faculty and students at the University Summer Camps were developed and are held during the first two weeks of June each year. The faculty track is held at NDSU where tribal college faculty and K-12 instructors work with NDSU and UND faculty to develop seven distinct lessons for the Sunday Academy programming, which are taught one Sunday each month during the academic year at the Tribal Colleges.
"It was a lot of fun for university faculty to take their research concepts and expose middle and high school students to our research and see the light bulbs go on," says NDSU professor in mechanical engineering Chad Ulven, who played a role in developing the Sunday Academies. "The students could see how research—from a college or university just down the road—was impacting problems throughout the world. The excitement in the students when they understand those concepts, and what was possible for them, is amazing."
Chris Dahlen, a math instructor at Cankdeska Cikana, notes that "NATURE has afforded students the opportunity to expand their horizons throughout their high school and college years. Many students have stepped right out of middle school and into the NATURE tribal college camp, it is there that we are able to create and nurture an appreciation for science."
Tyson Jeannotte, a former Sunday Academy and NATURE Camp student, attended his first Academy event when he was in the sixth grade. "That's what got me interested in science," he says. Jeannotte recently graduated from UND with his master's degree in environmental engineering and today serves as the EPSCoR Native American Success in Science and Engineering mentor for UND EPSCoR. "I've made good friends through the NATURE camps, and working with faculty and students is one of my favorite things," he says. "The kids look up to me, and I want it to be a good experience for them."
Catching students at the right point in their lives is critical to their ongoing success, says Miles Pfahl, until recently an instructor at Turtle Mountain. "There is a point where a high school senior has to make the choice with what they are going to do with their life. Linking them to a program like NATURE provides a bridge to higher education and a great career. But we need to lay the groundwork for that in the years up to their senior years or we lose them."
The Tribal Nation Research Group, a nonprofit organization formed in 2014 to promote research in indigenous communities, will begin studying the effectiveness of the NATURE program in improving math skills and plans to research written English skills in the next phase.
Capturing the imagination of young students, providing opportunities to explore and ask questions, offering guidance about potential careers, connecting to people who are active in the field: all are the purpose of NATURE and the reason so many people have been passionate supporters for decades. "When your focus is the students," Pieri says, "it changes things, for everyone."
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