When the Tohono O'Odham Nation's surveyed its members last year about barriers that they faced to obtaining a college degree, recurring themes kept cropping up. The nearest college to the Sells, Arizona community was more than an hour's drive away. Moving to a city with a college was not an option for others. And many found the high cost of big-city rent prohibitive.
Tribal leaders in this southwest Arizona desert town, located near the U.S.-Mexico border, believe they have a solution. They plan to open a tribal college offering two-year degrees.
We're already looking for someone that has a really strong background and experience as a college president," says Rosilda Manuel, the tribe's director of education.
If the Tohono O'Odham Nation succeeds in its quest, the planned new institution would be the nation's thirty-second tribal-run college. Most tribal schools are community colleges.
Arizona has nineteen other public community colleges and one other tribal college -- Navajo Community College in northern Arizona. But the proposed Tohono O'Odham tribal college is not a done deal. Several hurdles still must be overcome.
The tribe hopes to get a few classes started by this fall if the new school is approved by the Tohono O'Odham Nation's tribal council. The ambitious project falls in step with a national trend that has seen more and more of the country's Native American tribes developing their own higher education programs.
Native American education leaders say the tribal higher education institutions fill a unique niche on the reservation. The colleges offer culturally appropriate classes to thousands of people who otherwise would not receive an education because they lack the transportation or funds needed to attend elsewhere.
"When the first group of tribal colleges was established, the founding tribal college presidents all thought that within twenty-five years there would be a tribal college on every American Indian reservation in the United States," says Dr. Gerald "Catty" Monette, president of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.
