Applying to join the Frontier Conference in the future is a possibility. The NAIA Division I league sponsors four men's and five women's sports, and with the Silver Fox Golf Course already in place on campus, SKC will have the facilities for all but football once the events center is completed.
And it does have a football field, just not a stadium to go around it.
McDonald says the big push now is to land more undergraduate research grants, to help prepare students who go on to graduate school.
"More Indian people are getting into graduate programs," he says, and while it has always accepted non-tribal members, SKC's mission remains providing the post-secondary educational opportunities needed and wanted by Native Americans.
McDonald would also like to see the college offer its first master's degree, in nursing.
Big plans for a small college? Very.
But when you consider that just 30 years ago, this college offered a grand total of three associate's degrees and operated out of part of an abandoned school in Polson that has since been torn down, you understand.
Salish Kootenai College didn't get where it is because anyone was thinking small. And the bigger it dreams, the more opportunities there are for people like Lois Slater to become a different sort of statistic a successful one.
© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com
