FROM PLAN TO FINISH: Turtle Mountain Community College interior building views: The top photo features a railing with a tree branch motif symbolizing the surrounding forest of the site and the middle photo shows the main entry rotunda built of birch wood in an abstraction of the teepee shape. In the lower photo, United Tribes Technical College construction students frame buildings in class. Photo Credits: Jeff Welch, principal architect at Jiran Architects (building designer) provided the TMCC building photos. Dennis Neumann, the director of Public Information at UTTC, provided the construction class photo.

Tribal colleges pay a lot of attention to their economic impact on the communities that charter them. The need for this is clear. The “3-year average poverty rate for American Indians and Alaska Natives [from 1998-2000] was 25.9% higher than for any other race groups,” according to a report by the U.S. Census Bureau cited by U.S. Senator John Kerry at a 2005 Congressional hearing.

The Massachusetts Democrat was questioning proposed budget cuts for the Small Business Administration’s Native American programs (including at least one affiliated with tribal colleges). He noted that tribal communities face “unemployment as high as 70% and poverty rates well above the national average.”

Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) have taken aim against this chronic economic imbalance. Although they do not always report their efforts, they seek to promote culturally appropriate development and to improve the financial situations not only of their students but the tribal matrix they come from.

Tribal colleges benefit their local communities both directly and indirectly. TCJ looked at the efforts of five in different regions of the country: Northwest Indian College, United Tribes Technical College, Salish Kootenai College, Sitting Bull College, and Leech Lake Tribal College.

A study by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) and the Institute for Higher Education Policy identifies various ways that tribal colleges impact their communities: direct spending and employment, workforce development, business attraction, small business and entrepreneurship development, technology transfer, leadership, and communication linkages.

The 2000 study (“Tribal Colleges’ Contributions to Local Economic Development”) says that tribal colleges share these traits with all community colleges.

In addition, the study says, tribal schools “tend to take on a more expansive role in community development. TCUs have two traits unique to themselves. First, “tribal colleges integrate cultural relevance into their development efforts, as tribal traditions and values permeate the curricula and learning styles of the colleges.”

Second, “tribal colleges have a special responsibility to help local communities understand the nature of choices between different types of economic growth, given the specific history of economic development on reservations.”

Reporting back to tribal communities

The degree to which tribal colleges report these efforts and successes to their local constituencies varies. Northwest Indian College (NWIC, Bellingham, WA), for instance, has written a stringent set of reporting requirements into its strategic plan (see sidebar).

Not all tribal schools are as transparent, even when the prosperity of both students and the surrounding community is a top priority. At Leech Lake Tribal College (LLTC) in Minnesota, President Leah J. Carpenter (White Earth Band of Ojibwe) states, “At this point, there isn’t any formal reporting we do to the local community. I would like to start—possibly at this year’s end or at the end of this fiscal year—running an ad in the local newspapers briefly detailing the amount of money we put into the community.”

She knows the numbers well for her college on the reservation of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. During 2005, the 216-student community college in Cass Lake, MN, paid $2.1 million in wages and benefits to its 45 fulltime staff and faculty and another dozen part-timers. Its students received more than $1 million in financial aid. The college spent more than $2.5 million that year on its operations, “mostly in the local marketplace.” It is one of the top five employers in economically depressed Cass Lake, according to the president.

“Educating the people and providing them a good quality education raises the economics of the whole community,” she says. In addition to academic programs, the 16-year-old tribal college also offers workforce training in the construction and electrical trades. Carpenter says 65% of its employees are tribal members, and about a quarter of them are LLTC graduates.

The school is involved in a big construction project as it consolidates its campus on a 30-acre tract donated by the tribe. Two buildings had been constructed at a cost of about $7 million and a third was going out to bid the day TCJ spoke to Carpenter (that will be another $400,000 or so, she said).

The college used Native-preference on the first two buildings, and the results are an American Indian architect (Dennis Sun Rhodes) and two American Indian-owned contractors. The first, Shingobee Builders, is from the Twin Cities area, and the second is a local company, Frontier Construction of Deer River, MN. The school, formerly scattered all over town in various buildings, has now begun its second school year in its new home.

In addition, LLTC has won an award from Computer World magazine for a more modest economic development endeavor, a pilot project to train local residents to develop their own cottage e-businesses over the Internet. This project modernizes the micro-business culture found in many tribal economies. Carpenter says the college is now looking for a second round of financing to continue it.

Community impact correlates to college size

The bigger the college, the bigger the financial impact. United Tribes Technical College (UTTC), has just released a detailed study measuring its fiscal 2005 impact on local communities and the state at nearly $47 million. The 37-year-old college in Bismarck, ND, is operated by five tribes in North Dakota.

Of the total, $15.6 million was in direct spending by the college (salaries of 360 fulltime employees, vendor outlays, construction, and student and visitor spending) and $31 million came from secondary sources such as grants, tuition and fees, and financial aid.

During the study period, construction began on the new Lewis Goodhouse Wellness Center, providing employment for an estimated 52 construction workers, including eleven UTTC students employed by local contractors, the study reports.

UTTC says enrollment is rising rapidly, up 26% in a year to 1,118 students in the 2005-06 school year, creating more demand for housing. The demand is being addressed by a 24-unit apartment complex, currently under construction, for married students.

UTTC President David M. Gipp (Hunkpapa Lakota) comments that UTTC has gotten its due for the educational impact on members of the Fort Berthold, Standing Rock, Sisseton-Wahpeton, Turtle Mountain, and Spirit Lake tribes. “Often overlooked, however, are the contributions we’ve made economically to Bismarck-Mandan and the surrounding areas.”

“It is my hope this authoritative study will help improve understanding about the considerable impact we have in the community and around the area, particularly in terms of bringing in new dollars,” he says.

The study estimates that the college provided 1.8% of all taxable sales in the Bismarck-Mandan area and that it is the 20^th largest local employer. And the college claims bragging rights among its peers, saying that it has “comparably greater economic impact on the Bismarck-Mandan area than BSC (Bismarck State College) and wage and benefits impact 5.6% greater than BSC.”

It also breaks down local impact and state impact, with Bismarck-Mandan tallying $44.3 million and the rest of North Dakota another $2.4 million. The college estimates that it generated $12.2 million of sales and that residents earned $19.1 million in income. Other economic impacts include $3 million in construction, $4.7 million in the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, real estate), $2.2 million in services, and $1.75 million in government.

Four and a half million dollars in economic impact comes from the annual United Tribes International Powwow, which the school has hosted for decades. UTTC’s capital expenditures in 2005 were $163,707 and the study estimates that the college’s seminars and training generated $777,746.

Government grants boost TCUs’ economic power

The federal government has a part in funding tribal colleges’ economic adroitness, adding to salaries and college expenditures made in local communities. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) just awarded $3 million in housing money to five tribal colleges (the program has awarded a total of $17 million). HUD acknowledges the schools’ local impact in its award announcement, saying “a growing number of local residents have come to depend heavily on TCU-sponsored education, counseling, health, and economic development initiatives.”

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has made 43 awards to tribal colleges to stimulate Native participation in science, the environment, and natural resources since 2001. According to NSF, Northwest Indian College has received one award for $194,000. Sitting Bull College (SBC, Fort Yates, ND) won another of more than $1 million. Leech Lake has received $500,000 to date, and Salish Kootenai has gotten $212,000.

The Small Business Administration administers Tribal Business Initiative Centers (TBICs) in at least eight tribal colleges, although Native funding has been under pressure at SBA in recent years as the overall agency’s budget has been cut by a third.

Sitting Bull’s TBIC promises to help startups not only with training, research, and access to software, but also financing. It is part of a vigorous culture to develop business on the economically depressed Standing Rock Reservation of the Lakota tribe. Fortune Small Business recently named Sitting Bull College as one of “the top 10 cool colleges” for developing entrepreneurs.

How did the 300-student college get such a reputation? According to Vice President for Academics Koreen Ressler, SBC “has a strong connection to improving the economic development activities of the reservation, and our business administration curriculum has a strong focus on business start up.”

“Much of these efforts were due to our former President Ron His Horse is Thunder (Hunkpapa Lakota), who took part in an entrepreneurial conference at Babson College a few years ago and made quite an impression on many people,” she says.

SBC’s website details how the school started a construction company which has built 21 houses and eight office buildings since its 1997 startup. But SBC Construction is planning to accelerate eighteen more structures in connection with new campus construction at the college.

Ressler says, “Since 1997 the Building Trades Program and the construction company have built over 100 homes. The Building Trades Program and the construction company provide students and graduates with the experience needed to work in the industry in addition to providing the skills needed to begin their own construction companies.”

At the TBIC, according to the vice president, “the program director provides training and services for individuals who are interested in starting a business. In addition, the TBIC has assisted with bringing several entrepreneurial conferences such as Marketplace to the reservation.”

Revenue in construction, golf, forestry, horticulture

FIRST TRIBAL COLLEGE BACHELORS PROGRAM IN FORESTRY: Salish Kootenai College students, from l to r: Jessica Stiffarm, Antoine Incashola Jr., Richard Fisher, Kodi Augare, Zachary Underwood and Amy Croover. The class was on a Forest Ecology field trip to observe a mixed stand of lodgepole pine, subalpine fir, and white-bark pine. Photo credit: Adrian Leighton, Forestry Instructor at SKC.

At Salish Kootenai College (SKC) in Pablo, MT, building trades students are also given hands-on experience. In fact, according to President Dr. Joseph McDonald (Confederated Salish and Kootenai), they have worked on just about every building on the campus themselves. There are more than a dozen buildings on the campus of the college, which now has more than 1,000 full-time students and more than 200 employees.

The college also built a golf course, which is open to the public to generate revenues when students are not using it, and maintains a television station with a Salish and Kootenai culture focus.

SKC graduates run the school’s forestry program, and McDonald said a few have started their own construction companies, as well as a Salish “language immersion” school.

McDonald’s 25^th anniversary annual report for the 2002-03 academic year gives a good look at the economic effect a tribal college can have on its local economy. He pointed out the value of the campus land and real estate “exceeds $15 million.” He reported that job placement of SKC’s vocational and technical education graduates was 77% over five years (331 of 430).

He also writes “during 2002-2003, the college conducted 250 continuing education courses serving 5,377 students.” He notes that the college’s Department of Environmental Sciences “was established in response to tribal and student needs for training in environmental research, management, recovery and protection, while realizing the cultural importance of natural resources.”

The school’s extension program “provides education on native plant horticulture, weed science, water quality, and alternative and value-added agriculture through a variety of instructional media. Extension manages the college’s plant nursery, which functions as a production, research, and teaching facility.”

Tribal colleges make an economic difference for tribes

The AIHEC study says long-term effects on reservation economics are even more important than short-term jobs, salaries, and expenditures with local vendors. “They help communities establish a foundation for future growth.”

Tribal colleges help workforce development because “they match their curricula to local needs,” the study reports. It cites Salish Kootenai College, for instance, which matched the lumbering economy of its chartering tribes to the forestry program.

The schools also “provide essential services to local residents, businesses, and tribal governments. Such public service activities include continuing education and GED courses, health and counseling clinics, library services, cultural programs, managing of public housing, and provision of catering services to students, Head Start programs, and even local prisons.”

In addition, “they can serve as focal points for local development initiatives, providing coordination and leadership.” Two crucial ones in Indian Country are agriculture and land development, the study’s authors believe.

“Reservations with tribal colleges appear to have improved their economic circumstances more than similar reservations without tribal colleges,” the authors state. The study cites findings (especially high employment rates for graduates) that “suggest tribal colleges are directly impacting the economic health of their local communities.”

And, they are setting the stage for the ultimate reversal of the “brain drain”— when tribal members move away from home because there is no opportunity for them on the reservation. “In many cases, tribal colleges are training students for jobs that are needed but that currently do not exist on the reservation. In some cases, graduates develop skills and abilities that allow them to take local positions that were once held by non-tribal members.”

A March 2006 article by the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank also underlines how tribal colleges serve “as economic engines, a means of generating improved living standards for individual Indians and their communities, in both the short and long term.”

Douglas Clement’s article “Growth by degrees” in fedgazette notes that business is the most popular major at tribal colleges. He wrote that while hard data is hard to get, “it is undeniable that the reservations themselves benefit from the boost tribal colleges give to their local economies, and the boost can be considerable in areas so burdened by poverty.”

Mark Fogarty has been writing about American Indian housing and economic development since 1994. His work on Indian Country has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, Indian Country Today, American Indian Report, Native Americas, the New Mexico Business Journal, the Four Corners Business Journal, National Mortgage News, Origination News, U.S. Banker, and Credit Union Journal. He is the editor of National Mortgage News in New York City.