Brown sees her initiative as "an important group in a constellation of educational advocates." "Partnering has always been a part of achieving goals and now I will be working very closely with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) to achieve the higher education goals of the Hispanic initiative."

RELATED ARTICLE: Tribal Representation

When the time came in 1996 to set a mission for the White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges, the founding commissioners had the benefit of looking at what the HBCU and Hispanic initiatives had done.

Veronica Gonzales, executive director of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), says one of the primary concerns was to avoid weakening the focus on tribal colleges. In addition, there was concern about the complexity of having the initiative (a U.S. governmental entity) represent the K-12 system, which operates under the authority of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Gonzales says.

"We [AIHEC and tribal college presidents] met with policy makers from the HBCU and Hispanic initiatives and discussed what the advantages and disadvantages might be of having a broad versus a college-only focus when we learned that the tribal college initiative would be funded," Gonzales says.

The commissioners decided upon a structure that was a little like the HBCU and the Hispanic initiatives but unique and tailored to the special needs of the tribal colleges Gonzales says.

"Because the tribal colleges are severely underfunded - the lowest-funded colleges in the nation - it was agreed that the main focus should be on the tribal colleges, with some K-12 goals included in the mission," Gonzales says.

Contributors to this story include: Joan Morgan, Ronald Roach and Karin Chenoweth.