Thinking & Advocacy
Reciprocity is at the heart of Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs). A TCU is chartered by its respective nation(s) to support Tribal self-determination. Tribal identity is at the core of each TCU, with distinct values, cultures, history, and languages embedded in everything from the architecture, resources, and campus events to the pedagogy and degree and certificate offerings.
For Native students, that Tribal identity shapes everything: a sense of belonging, relationships rooted in their own communities, and a view of success that includes giving back. This sense of belonging and purpose runs deeper than education alone because it is the exercise of our sovereign right to educate our own people, in our own ways, on our own terms.
As a Pomo citizen of Round Valley Indian Tribes, I know how much education can shape a person’s sense of self and connection to community. I did not attend a TCU, but my work with them has shown me what I missed: the opportunity to learn in a place where my identity could have been the foundation of my education, not something I carried alongside it.
Achieving the Dream’s work with TCUs began in 2017 with Project Success, an initiative involving 33 colleges (individual TCUs worked with ATD as early as 2013). Each had a leadership coach and a data coach, two site visits a year, and monthly coaching calls.
Like many organizations, we arrived with a Western perspective that relied on national models, high-impact practices, and a variety of frameworks and toolkits. TCUs are accountable to Western standards such as accreditation requirements, but they are the anchors to their communities and accountable to the Indigenous nations they serve.
After years of that work, we did something that felt overdue: We asked what the partnership had meant to the colleges.
To hear directly from TCUs about their experiences working with ATD, we partnered with Education Northwest on a culturally responsive evaluation of our Project Success initiative. The design mattered as much as the findings: An evaluation focused on listening to TCUs had to be built with them.
The purpose was to understand what practices TCUs use to support student success, what conditions make it possible to implement those practices, and how ATD and coaching services can continue to best support the institutions. An advisory committee of six TCU representatives and two ATD coaches helped shape the interview protocols, select the six colleges for site visits, and make sense of what we heard. The evaluators spoke with 133 administrators, faculty, advisors, staff, students, and coaches. The TCUs were not subjects of this evaluation but were partners in it.
“ATD quickly learned that the approaches we had used successfully at other colleges did not always resonate in the TCU context. The pivot we had to make was from bringing our own model to listening first, and that changed how we worked.”
— Alina Randall-Long
Listening first, and earning it over time
After beginning our work with TCUs as part of Project Success, ATD quickly learned that the approaches we had used successfully at other colleges did not always resonate in the TCU context. The pivot we had to make was from bringing our own model to listening first, and that changed how we worked.
Instead of following a prescribed model, coaches adapted to each college’s priorities and let the college decide where to focus. We also significantly revised and contextualized our tools so they reflected TCU realities rather than assuming a mainstream community college context.
Building relationships through this approach took time. Coaches described the first year as discovery, with three visits meant to get to know the college and its people. They described showing up as a guest and letting the college decide where to focus. Early on, some TCU staff wondered what was in it for us, but the evaluation shows that skepticism gave way to trust through sustained, in-person presence.
At ATD we joke that I can’t walk through the annual DREAM conference without stopping to talk to someone. Behind the joke is a sense of connection I don’t take for granted. As a non-Native organization, ATD has worked to be a partner to TCUs, not an outside expert, and the strength of that partnership shows in the colleagues who come back to DREAM and to the work year after year.
And it’s important that we show up for them in their spaces too. Visiting TCU campuses and attending Tribal education conferences allows us to listen and learn how we can be better partners.
I’ll never forget the first time I stepped onto a TCU campus, Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College (NHSC) in New Town, North Dakota. The work became more than a professional engagement; it felt like a homecoming. I may not be a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation, whom NHSC serves, but standing on the campus, I could see the kind of place I might have attended, one built around its own people and the communities they come from.
“As a non-Native organization, ATD has worked to be a partner to TCUs, not an outside expert, and the strength of that partnership shows in the colleagues who come back to DREAM and to the work year after year.”
— Alina Randall-Long
What trust made possible
Project Success began largely as a data capacity effort. Over time, colleges built dedicated institutional research staff, developed data cultures, and began making decisions with their own data.
The evaluation documents what that looks like in practice, noting how colleges created data dictionaries (so that terms like “first-year student” mean the same thing across campus), built dashboards, and held data retreats where faculty looked at their own course outcomes and asked what the patterns meant.
Individual colleges pursued this work with data in ways that reflected their specific campus needs and priorities. United Tribes Technical College asked students what success means to them and built a survey around the answer. Navajo Technical University disaggregated its retention data, found that most students who stopped out had started in developmental courses, and began offering free summer courses, resulting in a significant rise in retention over five years. In one case, a coach helped a college map its resources and fund an institutional researcher position by allocating a percentage of several grants.
Not every challenge was solved, but, in our experience, TCUs are now taking a more active role in shaping their engagement with the Network. They select services based on their own priorities, which were identified collaboratively with American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) and the American Indian College Fund through a participatory sensemaking process rather than determined for them. That changes ATD’s responsibility. Our job is to understand those priorities, work alongside our partners without duplicating effort, and avoid burdening colleges with one initiative after another.
“Education is part of the mission, but core to TCUs is the survival of their nations. Tribal nations are sovereign peoples of this land, living within the borders of the United States. TCUs exist to serve those nations on their own terms. Seen that way, listening first is not a coaching technique but a responsibility. ”
— Alina Randall-Long
Why this matters beyond the data
The evaluation’s central finding is that student success must be defined by the community, and participants often described student success as being prepared and giving back. Students talked about language fluency, becoming educators, protecting land and water, and supporting food sovereignty. Each institution’s student success goals were tied to a way of serving a TCU’s people, communities, and nation(s). That is why the stakes are bigger than an education outcome.
TCUs are sacred spaces because they are reclaiming what was stripped and taken from Indigenous nations, and they are ensuring those nations survive. They are chartered by Tribal nations and offer an alternative to the assimilationist systems that came before them.
Education is part of the mission, but core to TCUs is the survival of their nations. Tribal nations are sovereign peoples of this land, living within the borders of the United States. TCUs exist to serve those nations on their own terms. Seen that way, listening first is not a coaching technique but a responsibility.
Looking ahead
The next chapter of our partnership with TCUs is underway through a continuation initiative that extends our work with TCU partners and includes the Teaching and Learning and Career Advising Holistic Student Support seminar series. The Project Success evaluation recommends expanded professional learning on culturally sustaining teaching, consistent advising, and time for faculty and staff to collaborate, and those are the places where we hope to be useful. The evaluation also indicates a need for ongoing TCU-specific training for coaches and a channel for Native leaders to become coaches.
This piece appears during Native American Heritage Month, a time when many people turn their attention to Native communities. TCUs have been sustaining those communities, and the languages, cultures, and nations that anchor them, every month of the year since the self-determination movement of the 1960s (and before). The attention is welcome, but it is only a starting point. What matters is what we do with it after November to support TCU students and the vitality of their communities.
Reciprocity is how I’ll measure ATD’s part. Our job is to keep earning a place in that relationship, on their terms.