Developing a culture of support for recruitment and retention of American Indian Students

Abstract

American Indian demographics in the United States are at about 1.2% of the population and at about 0.5% of the engineering enrollment. In South Dakota, American Indians are about 10%) of the general population and are at 4.0% of the enrollment at SDSMT in 2013. South Dakota has nine American Indian tribes within its borders. All of these 9 tribes can trace their roots to the Seven Council Fires and this alliance consisted of the Santee, Yankton, and Teton tribes. Each of these tribes had a different dialect of the same language: Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota. These cultural traditions influence these students and how they look at the world. This influences how these students are learning. In this paper, we discuss how some of these cultural traditions influence these students as well strategies for the recruitment and retention by capitalizing on these traditions. Following best practices developed by American Indian educators and tribal colleges, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology has developed a new program in 2008, Tiospaye, a Lakota word for extended family, offers a new paradigm for recruitment and support for American Indian students. The program centers on support areas which include financial support, academic support, mentoring and positive intervention, research opportunities, and social networking. In this paper we include a discussion of the types of support offered in each of the support areas as well as lessons learned and steps for improvement. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the necessary conditions needed to promote sustainability of the program.