Post by Moon Seeker on Feb 3, 2009 12:39:16 GMT -5
American Indian Graduate Center offers financial aid to Native students
New Mexico Business Weekly - by Dennis Domrzalski Special to NMBW
For the past 40 years they have been looking to New Mexico for help with their college education — thousands of them, in fact — American Indian graduate students who have turned to the Albuquerque-based American Indian Graduate Center for scholarship money.
In those four decades, the nonprofit Graduate Center, which was founded at the University of New Mexico in 1969, has awarded more than 15,000 scholarships totaling more than $44 million to Indian graduate students across America.
That record of providing financial aid to those students, though impressive, isn’t enough for Graduate Center Director Sam Deloria.
“We made a policy choice in the beginning,” says Deloria, who came to the organization in May 2007. “Were we going to fund some students totally, or were we going to give everybody something? We decided to give everybody something so that nobody would end up with nothing. That means that the amount we can give out to each person is equally inadequate.”
The Center’s average scholarship is $3,300, which, Deloria says, “is a pittance,” and which leaves those graduate students $20,000 short of what they actually need — money they have to try and find elsewhere.
“It terrifically affects their career choices because if you’ve got to pay $60,000 [for graduate school tuition], you’re not going to become a reporter, you’re going to become — I don’t know what you’re going to do, but it’s going to be something that you can make enough to pay that money back,” says Deloria.
So as the Graduate Center celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, Deloria is on a mission to increase the center’s funding base. The Center gets a $2 million annual appropriation from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, and $250,000 to $500,000 in donations from other sources.
Deloria thinks that the tribes should be pumping more money into the organization that has helped educate so many of their members.
“We have to broaden our funding base. We have to get more money from tribes,” Deloria says. “They’re cutting back because of the economy, but they have to face the fact that in order to preserve all Indian programs in the future, they have to step up and put some money out for programs like this.”
Deloria also wants the Graduate Center to become more involved in Indian policy, particularly when it comes to education. The organization provides an average of 450 scholarships a year, meaning it gives money to just about every American Indian graduate student who applies.
“That 450 number is too low. It means we are not producing the qualified graduate students,” Deloria says. “The pipeline leaks so much in high school and college. You’ve got kids coming down here from the reservations to UNM and they don’t last past Christmas, and they go home feeling like they’re a failure.
“Some are not well prepared by their high schools, and these colleges, even though they’ve been educating Indian kids for a hundred years, haven’t figured out how to do it. It’s not that hard. They’re not prepared to help the kids deal with their particular concerns.”
Getting a Graduate Center scholarship is relatively easy. Applicants must be a member of one of the 565 federally recognized Indian tribes in America, or provide proof of Indian descendancy, and they must be enrolled full time in a master’s, doctorate or professional degree program at a nationally accredited college or university.
Cynthia Chavez Lamar, director of the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, received Graduate Center scholarships for her post-graduate work at the University of California at Los Angeles, and UNM, where she earned a master’s degree in American Indian Studies and a doctorate in American Studies.
“One of the things I appreciated is that they didn’t limit funding to professional degrees,” Chavez Lamar says. “A lot of these organizations want to fund people who are going into law or medicine. I was going into the humanities. I was so fortunate that the American Indian Graduate Center was around.”
American Indian Graduate Center
4520 Montgomery NE, Suite 1B
Albuquerque, NM 87109
Phone: (505) 881-4584
Toll free: (800) 628-1920
Web: www.aigc.com
charlotte.bizjournals.com/charlotte/othercities/albuquerque/stories/2009/02/02/focus4.html?b=1233550800^1770507
New Mexico Business Weekly - by Dennis Domrzalski Special to NMBW
For the past 40 years they have been looking to New Mexico for help with their college education — thousands of them, in fact — American Indian graduate students who have turned to the Albuquerque-based American Indian Graduate Center for scholarship money.
In those four decades, the nonprofit Graduate Center, which was founded at the University of New Mexico in 1969, has awarded more than 15,000 scholarships totaling more than $44 million to Indian graduate students across America.
That record of providing financial aid to those students, though impressive, isn’t enough for Graduate Center Director Sam Deloria.
“We made a policy choice in the beginning,” says Deloria, who came to the organization in May 2007. “Were we going to fund some students totally, or were we going to give everybody something? We decided to give everybody something so that nobody would end up with nothing. That means that the amount we can give out to each person is equally inadequate.”
The Center’s average scholarship is $3,300, which, Deloria says, “is a pittance,” and which leaves those graduate students $20,000 short of what they actually need — money they have to try and find elsewhere.
“It terrifically affects their career choices because if you’ve got to pay $60,000 [for graduate school tuition], you’re not going to become a reporter, you’re going to become — I don’t know what you’re going to do, but it’s going to be something that you can make enough to pay that money back,” says Deloria.
So as the Graduate Center celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, Deloria is on a mission to increase the center’s funding base. The Center gets a $2 million annual appropriation from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, and $250,000 to $500,000 in donations from other sources.
Deloria thinks that the tribes should be pumping more money into the organization that has helped educate so many of their members.
“We have to broaden our funding base. We have to get more money from tribes,” Deloria says. “They’re cutting back because of the economy, but they have to face the fact that in order to preserve all Indian programs in the future, they have to step up and put some money out for programs like this.”
Deloria also wants the Graduate Center to become more involved in Indian policy, particularly when it comes to education. The organization provides an average of 450 scholarships a year, meaning it gives money to just about every American Indian graduate student who applies.
“That 450 number is too low. It means we are not producing the qualified graduate students,” Deloria says. “The pipeline leaks so much in high school and college. You’ve got kids coming down here from the reservations to UNM and they don’t last past Christmas, and they go home feeling like they’re a failure.
“Some are not well prepared by their high schools, and these colleges, even though they’ve been educating Indian kids for a hundred years, haven’t figured out how to do it. It’s not that hard. They’re not prepared to help the kids deal with their particular concerns.”
Getting a Graduate Center scholarship is relatively easy. Applicants must be a member of one of the 565 federally recognized Indian tribes in America, or provide proof of Indian descendancy, and they must be enrolled full time in a master’s, doctorate or professional degree program at a nationally accredited college or university.
Cynthia Chavez Lamar, director of the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, received Graduate Center scholarships for her post-graduate work at the University of California at Los Angeles, and UNM, where she earned a master’s degree in American Indian Studies and a doctorate in American Studies.
“One of the things I appreciated is that they didn’t limit funding to professional degrees,” Chavez Lamar says. “A lot of these organizations want to fund people who are going into law or medicine. I was going into the humanities. I was so fortunate that the American Indian Graduate Center was around.”
American Indian Graduate Center
4520 Montgomery NE, Suite 1B
Albuquerque, NM 87109
Phone: (505) 881-4584
Toll free: (800) 628-1920
Web: www.aigc.com
charlotte.bizjournals.com/charlotte/othercities/albuquerque/stories/2009/02/02/focus4.html?b=1233550800^1770507