Program success at tribal colleges and mainstream universities is often identified solely with matriculation and graduation rates. However, particularly for new STEM programs, capacity building is another key measure of success. In this paper, three of the co-authors, who are faculty members at a tribal college and participants in a multi-year collaborative pre-engineering education initiative between a tribal college and two Regental universities, provide their perspectives on capacity building in summer research activities within the alliance. The three each wrote essays reflecting on capacity building guided by pre-determined questions written by another co-author. Through qualitative analysis, we present common themes, divergent opinions, and quotations extracted from the essays from their unique perspective as faculty at a tribal college. We emphasize impacts among the partnering schools, faculty, students, and communities where the summer research activities took place. Three common themes dominated the essays including the importance of (1) building trust within the reservation community, (2) employing experiential and aspects of project-based service-learning approaches, and (3) encouraging tribal college and university leadership in the determination of research and educational foci in institutional collaborations such as ours.
We present community outcomes in our unique pre-engineering program, along with lessons learned when a tribal college and community partners collaborate with two mainstream universities in experiential learning on a Native American reservation in the United States. We share our expertise so that others may apply elsewhere what we have learned. We provide guidance through sharing our successes, best practices, challenges, case studies, and hopes for the future. We recognize that every reservation is unique, and what works for one may not work for others. Community outcomes include significant capacity building where partners assemble evidence-based research that strengthens the tribal college and tribal government, allowing them to better manage resources. The OSSPEEC program includes undergraduate, graduate and faculty researchers in water resources, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), geology, surveying, structures, and cross-disciplinary endeavors. Community partners include tribal governmental agencies, reservation-based interest groups, and non-profit organizations. The program is sustainable because the tribal college builds a variety of lasting partnerships offering mutual benefits.
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