APLU and Cornell University Announce Grants to UC Riverside and University of North Dakota to Support Indigenous Students Success

Washington, DC – In an effort to support indigenous student success, APLU and Cornell University today announced grants to UC Riverside and the University of North Dakota to support new and ongoing programs advancing success. The $10,000 grants are made possible through the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

“We’re thrilled to support UC Riverside and the University of North Dakota in this critical work,” said Robin Parent, Associate Vice President, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) & STEM Education at APLU. “Native American and Indigenous students and scholars are vital to the public university community, and we’re excited to work with these institutions to support the extraordinary contributions of these initiatives.”

UC Riverside Division of Undergraduate Education is using the funding to launch the Native Community Education Promise (NCEP) Program to support Indigenous undergraduate scholars from any major who are dedicated to serving the Native community upon graduation. In addition to participating in high-impact practices that boost student success, NCEP Scholars will receive financial and mentoring support as well as preparation for graduate studies.

The University of North Dakota Department of Indigenous Health is using the funding to provide financial assistance for scholars studying in the doctoral Indigenous Health Program (the first of its kind in the U.S. or Canada). The funds support scholars traveling to attend an in-person summer seminar. The seminar is a one-week convening where students develop relationships with their peers and the department’s faculty and staff. The in-person seminar is held in North Dakota with students traveling from as far as Hawaii, Washington State, and American Samoa to participate.

Grantees will share the progress on their project at the APLU Annual Meeting in November. The grants announced today are the continuation of work APLU and Cornell have undertaken to increase scholarly understanding of land dispossession history and its relationship to contemporary Indigenous people; support institutional learning by having campuses share their experiences and actions that they have taken to support Indigenous students and learning; and provide opportunities for campuses to collaborate and generate resources that could be shared more widely with APLU member institutions engaging with this topic.