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UI Receives Grant for Recruitment, Retention of Native STEM Students

Wednesday, September 17 2014


MOSCOW, Idaho – Sept. 17, 2014 – The University of Idaho is expanding and strengthening its efforts to promote Native education through a new program to support recruitment and retention of American Indian and Native Alaskan graduate students in science, technology, engineering and math – or STEM – fields.  

The National Science Foundation recently awarded the UI College of Graduate Studies nearly $600,000 to support this program, which will be implemented through the Pacific Northwest Alliance: Collaborative Opportunities for Success and Mentoring of Students, or COSMOS.

UI will work collaboratively with Montana State University, the University of Montana and Washington State University, which have received similar grants to focus on recruiting and retaining other minority students who are underrepresented in STEM. Together, the institutions received a total of $2.4 million, the largest grant of its kind NSF has awarded to date.

The grant will support UI’s work as it develops, implements and studies the effectiveness of a discipline-focused, culturally relevant model for recruiting and mentoring Native students. Once a model is developed, the university could adapt it for other minority student groups and share it with other institutions.

Jie Chen, dean of the UI College of Graduate Studies, said he hopes this will raise UI’s profile as a hub for graduate education among American Indians and Native Alaskans, and help improve STEM education for Native students regionally and nationally.

“Recruitment and retention of minority students, particularly with underrepresented students, is part of the mission of graduate education at this university. It is one of our most important strategic goals,” Chen said. “Fundamentally we believe that diversity serves as an engine that drives excellence. If we want to promote excellence in graduate education, we have to put effort into promoting diversity.”

COSMOS co-primary investigator Ed Galindo, associate director of the Idaho Space Grant at UI and director of the nonprofit Native American Research and Education Foundation, said retention efforts are a particularly important piece of the puzzle.

“It’s one thing to get our Native students here on campus. It’s another thing that they walk across that stage with diploma in hand,” Galindo said. “I’m very pleased we have the opportunity to focus on getting Native students here and getting those students their degree.”

UI will study ways to help Native graduate students succeed, including mentorship programs. Galindo said all students, but particularly American Indian and Native Alaskan students, benefit from finding a sense of place at a university, which includes feeling welcomed, finding support systems and being part of a larger academic community. 

This four-year program will work hand-in-hand with the Indigenous STEM Research and Graduate Education program, or ISTEM, which is a UI-led national network of institutions collaborating to increase the number of Native students entering and completing master’s and doctoral programs in STEM fields. UI received a grant to launch the ISTEM program from the National Science Foundation in June.  

“UI can lead the nation on STEM education with American Indians. I’m not saying we have all the answers, but we have some very talented people on our team. We can look at things critically and can ask some questions that have needed to be asked for a long time,” Galindo said. “I think we’re well on the way to using good research, asking good questions and working with other institutions to help find those answers.”

Also working with COSMOS at UI are Yolanda Bisbee, the university’s tribal liaison, who will help the project staff coordinate with Native populations, and Jerry McMurtry, associate dean of the College of Graduate Studies, who will be the project’s liaison to university faculty and the alliance with other institutions.

The grant was funded through the National Science Foundation’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate program.

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Contact
Tara Roberts
University Communications
(208) 885-7725
troberts@uidaho.edu





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