PABLO Mont.

If she wanted to, Lois Slater wouldn't have to go any farther than a mirror to find a compelling story about how educational opportunities can turn a life around.

"I was a statistic," she says, and this is what she means:

She dropped out of Ronan High School in 1968, at the age of 16, to get married and have a baby.

By the age of 22, she had four children.

By the age of 28, she had lots of categories covered: minority, divorced, high school dropout, single mom.

Today, Slater holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Montana, a master's degree from Gonzaga University, and a job as director of development at the tribal college where she got the ball rolling to rebuild her life.

Salish Kootenai College, which began in 1977 with classes you could count on one hand, about four dozen students and a couple of classrooms in an abandoned school in Polson, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.

It's grown a tad since its humble beginnings.

Today, on a tree-covered 140-acre campus in Pablo, SKC is home to more than 1,100 students. It offers eight bachelor's degrees in fields ranging from forestry to nursing, associate degrees in many more, and certificate programs in everything from highway construction to dental-assisting technology.

Two new buildings, a performing arts center and a special events center that includes a 2,700-seat gymnasium, are going up on the south end of campus. SKC is talking about offering graduate degrees on its own. The school has made noises about fielding intercollegiate athletic teams and applying to join the Frontier Conference.

It has become, says a former chairman of its board, Darry Dupuis, one of the most successful tribal colleges in the United States, offering opportunities to Indians and non-Indians alike.

Joe McDonald, who has been there since the college's infancy when it was a satellite of Kalispell's Flathead Valley Community College and who has served as SKC president for 28 of its 30 years, remembers when the school took up residence in Pablo.