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.