Yale to Create Position to Oversee
American Indian Student Life
By Mary Annette Pember

With the help of private donations, Yale University is creating an endowment for a new assistant dean position to serve the campus’s growing American Indian student population.

Fred C. Danforth, a 1973 graduate of the university, and his wife, Carlene B. Larsson, have contributed an unspecified sum to Yale to support American Indian student life. According to sources at the university, the donation is in the neighborhood of $1 million. Danforth has been a longtime supporter of American Indian student activities and events at Yale and underwrites one scholarship each year for an American Indian student.

The new dean is expected to be in place by July 1, 2007, and will serve as director of the Native American Cultural Center.

Yale’s American Indian student population has more than doubled in the past 10 years, says assistant dean Rosalinda Garcia, who estimates the enrollment to be in excess of 70 students. Garcia currently oversees both the Hispanic and American Indian student communities.

“The Native students need to have their own dean,” she says. “Now that the student population has grown, we really need to make sure our support services can keep up and support that community.”

In addition to Garcia, Yale currently has one assistant dean for Black student and one for Asian students. The university ranks third among Ivy League institutions in the number of American Indian students on campus behind Dartmouth College and Cornell University, respectively. But Alyssa Mt. Pleasant (Tuscarora), an assistant professor of American studies and history at Yale, says the school has not kept up with the other Ivies in terms of services for American Indian students.

“Bringing on a dean for Native students is a major step in bringing Yale up to the same level of its peers,” she says.

Kathleen T. Burns (Nlakapamux), a 1999 alum who works as an archivist at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, says Yale’s support for American Indian students is the result of years of effort by students, alumni and staff.