This article describes the Leadership Development for the 21st Century: Linking Research, Academics and Extension program that began in June 2005. This 12-month program, designed to explore different models of leadership, develop peer networks, and enhance skills and knowledge in leadership competencies, is specifically for land grand educators…

This column relates the story of Dylan Olson, a struggling business student at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College (Cloquet, Minnesota). During construction of a new gas and convenience store on the Fond du Lac Reservation, Olson recognized an opportunity, applied for the manager's position, and was hired. Olson's experience illustrates the…

In Peru and Guatemala, faculty found a rich intellectual history and vibrant cultural traditions suppressed by the Western education system.

When a dozen education leaders met in Alberta, Canada, in August 2002, they felt the familiar thrill of history being made. They had come to form a worldwide organization for indigenous higher education, and their excitement sustained them for 12-hour days etching the road map for a new organization. Despite differences in language, ethnicity,…

Thirty-seven years ago, the Navajo people in Arizona created the first tribally-controlled college in the world. This birth fired the imagination of educators and community activists across the United States, who soon began creating their own colleges in the Northern Plains, Midwest, Northwest, and, most recently, in Oklahoma and the East. It is…

When students from Haskell Indian Nations University set foot in Siberia, they anticipated a new experience. They did not expect something comfortably familiar. Haskell's Dan Wildcat (Euchee member of Creek Nation) explains it was "like being at home" when they first encountered the indigenous people in the Altai region of the former Soviet…

Tribal colleges and universities, in addition to providing our people with higher education, help to bridge the gap among cultures. The colleges sustain American Indian art forms through class and degree offerings that include traditional (shield making, drum making, arrow making, knapping, carving, masks, and pottery), contemporary (digital art,…

This article examines issues regarding the organizational identities of tribal colleges. It provides views that despite being modeled on conventional colleges and universities, tribal colleges need to become more uniquely Native American institutions. A suggestion is explored that tribal colleges offer more courses of study involving tribal…

Reports on the creation of a public health degree at Dine College in Shiprock, New Mexico, the first degree of its kind at a "tribal college". Review of the work of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and the Centers for Disease Control, who developed the degree with the goal of increasing the number of American Indians in health…

Focuses on the Sisseton Wahpeton Community College, a "tribal college" of the Dakota Indians in Sisseton, South Dakota. Comments from college president William Harjo LoneFight regarding the philosophy of the institution and its integration of the Dakota language and tribal cultural values. Looks at various programs and institutions that have been…

State higher education policy-making processes can evoke or avoid public consideration of underlying tensions in postsecondary education. A study of imposition of out-of-state enrollment limits at the University of North Carolina, and its effects on the Chapel Hill campus, suggests contemporary dynamics of state policy-making can suppress…

A study of peer and social influences on the political orientation of undergraduate students, using data from the Cooperative Institution Research Program, suggests that student political orientations consistently tend toward the institutional norm, whether liberal or conservative, regardless of social era in which students attend college. This…

Examined synopses of academic mission statements to explore the relationship between stated mission and curricula of 327 colleges claiming to emphasize liberal arts. Results indicate that the curricula of 68% of these colleges were dominated by professional disciplines. Statistical analysis revealed several institutional characteristics that…

Surveyed 744 administrators and faculty at 248 colleges and universities concerning how faculty influence financial and policy decisions, how faculty satisfaction with the decisions correlates with faculty influence, how these decisions are made, and how authority and influence shift during a financial downturn. Results suggest faculty influence…

A study used ethnographic methods to investigate the experience of gay and bisexual male college students from the perspective of subculture. Subjects (32 undergraduate and eight graduate students at a research university) were interviewed by telephone. Four students are profiled, and commonalities in their experiences and points of tension (gay…