For a tribal college or university (TCU), cyberinfrastructure includes not only the campus computer labs, servers, routers, and software applications, but the classroom technology, research laboratories, library facilities, and personnel who operate and maintain these resources. The cyberinfrastructure at a TCU is a foundational tool that ties the campus workforce efforts and therefore the entire institution closer together, enabling achievement of the TCU’s academic, research, business, and service missions.

The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) Cyberinfrastructure (CI) Team formed in 2016 to conduct a study of TCU cyberinfrastructures to better understand the status of their information technology (IT) capacities. Since the start of that study, the AIHEC CI Team has identified major challenges to TCU cyberinfrastructures and worked with the IT staff at TCUs to address their most prominent CI challenges and develop the first community of practice (CoP) for their IT directors and chief information officers (CIOs). Currently, the AIHEC CI Team is led by jim Bottum, former CIO at Purdue and Clemson Universities, and technical lead Dale Smith, a former network administrator from the University of Oregon. AIHEC staffers Alex Grandon and Russell Hofmann serve as the team’s CI coordinator and research and education facilitator.

ORIGINS OF THE AIHEC CI TEAM

In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) sought to assess the state of cyberinfrastructure at TCUs and determine whether capacity was sufficient to support their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and research missions. The TCU community saw this study as an opportunity to better understand the needs of their cyberinfrastructures and how to better position their IT resources to support their institutional missions. The initial TCU CI study began in 2017 with site visits by the AIHEC CI Team that included an AIHEC CI coordinator, an IT network engineer, and an IT-CI management expert. The visits served to assess TCU cyberinfrastructure, provide an individualized report with recommendations for development, and draw on the array of data from the individual reports to ascertain widespread CI challenges in the TCU community. From 2017 to 2019, the AIHEC CI Team completed site visits at 34 of the 35 accredited TCUs, missing one tribal college due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020.

Each site visit of the TCU CI study involved two information gathering tracks. The technical track, led by Dale Smith, involved engaging with members of the campus IT staff and assessing the physical cyberinfrastructure. The management track, led by Jim Bottum, engaged the campus CI stakeholders—the administration, faculty, staff, and students—in focus group meetings to determine the extent to which the IT department, decision-making processes, and campus technology served the programmatic needs of the institution. At the conclusion of the TCU CI study, the AIHEC CI Team had gathered the information necessary to prepare reports for each of the 34 TCU campuses’ cyberinfrastructure and their effectiveness in supporting the colleges’ programs and missions, and then provide expert recommendations for improvements to their physical technology systems as well as their CI policies and practices. The first site visits of the TCU CI study immediately revealed a fundamental cyberinfrastructure challenge: the difficulty of recruiting and retaining IT staff due to TCUs’ stretched budgets and remote locations. For this reason, many institutions have turned to the short-term solution of expensive third-party vendors and IT consultants. In response to the staffing shortages, the AIHEC CI Team, in collaboration with the University of Oregon’s Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) and at the request of their IT director, implemented a single “enhanced” site visit in 2018 at Tohono O’odham Community College (TOCC). AIHEC and the NSRC spent three days at TOCC, producing a report with a detailed set of recommendations for specific network changes. The AIHEC CI Team’s enhanced site visit to TOCC demonstrated how significant, cost-effective improvements can be made to a TCU’s cyberinfrastructure when there is access to impartial, high-quality, and low-cost technical assistance.

CI STUDY FINDINGS

The final summary report of the TCU CI study consolidated the data and recommendations of the individual campus reports into three distinct categories of challenges for the cyberinfrastructures in the TCU community: 1) technical IT equipment deficiencies, 2) insufficient connectivity, and 3) high IT staffing turnover and shortages.

A decade of discussion on the digital divide in America has thoroughly documented the first two findings from the TCU CI study. Internet2, The Quilt, and EDUCAUSE, three nonprofit organizations that work to advance research and education through CI, explained the current institutional digital divide in their May 2021 report, The Minds We Need. The report revealed that minority serving institutions, which include TCUs, still lack the connectivity and technical IT equipment to participate in the digital research and education domain. In the report, Matthew Rantanen, a self-described cyber warrior for tribal broadband access, concludes by asking, “What if the mind we need is the last mind connected?” Highlighting the digital divide at TCUs, the CI study reported that the average connectivity at a TCU campus was 270 megabytes per second (MBps), approximately half the 2015 national average—513 MBps—at associate’s degree-granting institutions. While the TCU connectivity average has surged to 461 MBps since the TCU CI study and the COVID-19 pandemic, so too have the average connectivity rates at all institutions of higher education.

Portions of the funding in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act are meant to bridge some of the institutional digital divide affecting TCUs. Fortuitously, during the issuance of Congress’s COVID-19 relief funding, the TCU CI study report acted as a detailed roadmap for TCU CI equipment and connectivity, specifying the needs so Congress and TCUs could work together to address them. At the onset of the pandemic, the AIHEC CI Team and their summary TCU CI study report were instrumental in discerning the direction of the initial $22.9 million in immediate emergency Bureau of Indian Education CARES funding, which could be used to advance campus CI in support of expanding virtual instruction at TCUs. Unfortunately, despite the U.S. government’s effort to close the gap in the digital divide at TCUs, global supply chain disruptions and inflation have reduced the funding’s positive impact, as TCUs struggle to obtain technical equipment and improved connectivity.

Beyond equipment and internet access, TCUs’ greatest persistent cyberinfrastructure need continues to be sustained budgetary resources for adequate IT staffing and retention. Many TCUs operate with only one or two IT staff members to support all aspects of technology at the institution. Based on a recent AIHEC survey comparing IT staff size before and after the pandemic, TCUs currently operate their entire cyberinfrastructure with a median of 3.5 full time equivalent (FTE) staff members. Based on a 2022 EDUCAUSE survey, the average IT department at a higher education institution employs almost double that many FTEs among student IT employees alone. Without sustained funding, TCU IT departments cannot develop long-term CI strategic plans or retain a technical staff with the combined skills necessary to effectively operate, maintain, and secure the growing systems to support their campus missions. Due to their small IT departmental staff, TCUs attempt to cross-train and extensively develop the skills of their existing staff. But the loss of an IT staffer—in many cases, their only IT staffer— for even a single day of training can strain their campus cyberinfrastructure. Therefore, formal opportunities to develop TCU IT staff are limited. Due to these staffing issues, many TCUs have become reliant on expensive IT vendors for ad-hoc services and decisions that are not guided by their holistic campus CI strategic plan. In some cases, vendors have sold and installed IT solutions that are inappropriate for the TCU, and in other cases the vendor has not installed or configured equipment properly.

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

As a first approach to address the IT staffing shortages at TCUs, the AIHEC CI Team established the first TCU IT directors/CIO community of practice (CoP). Since developing a community of practice is a low-cost and far-reaching means of engagement, it was a logical first step to strengthen the skillsets of every IT staffer in the TCU community. Using the IT directors/CIO CoP, the AIHEC CI Team recruited and shared common resources and expertise among the existing staff. As the human network of the CoP developed, the AIHEC CI Team invited various subject matter and industry experts to provide guidance and professional development opportunities and to answer campus-specific questions on CI-related topics of interest. The IT directors/CIOs CoP has offered opportunities for professional development in topic areas such as virtualization, cybersecurity, and cloud computing. The CoP has resulted in a significant no-cost professional development partnership with the Cisco Networking Academy. Between 2020 and 2022, 72 IT staffers from 18 TCUs have participated in the Cisco Networking Academy coursework for a total tuition value of $182,000, at no cost to AIHEC or the TCUs. In appreciation for their efforts, Cisco presented the TCU IT directors/CIOs CoP their “Be the Bridge” award in November 2021.

Since its inception, the CoP has also seen growth in leadership, collaboration, and education among its members. The IT directors and CIOs have presented topics from direct experience with their campus cyberinfrastructures, including security breaches, specific IT/CI resources, and collaborations on proposals for additional CI funding and support. Since 2017, the CoP has evolved into a closeknit group of IT professionals in the TCU community who no longer work in the vacuums of their separate institutions. Instead, the TCU IT staff use the CoP to lean on one another for perspective, solutions, and direct assistance in a rapidly advancing industry.

In the past few years, multiple additional communities, teams, and consortia have grown out of the original CoP to address larger or smaller scale, CI-related issues. One such working group is the Jenzabar Tribal College and University Community of Practice. Jenzabar Inc. is a company that sells an enterprise resource planning system which over half of TCUs use to centralize their campus student services such as academic advising, their learning management system, financial aid, course registration, and most other business office functions. While each TCU campus has customized its virtual Jenzabar environment, TCU staff benefit from sharing their knowledge about the system such as new features in the modules, code scripts that simplify reporting, cost-effective and trusted database administrators to hire, and general best practices.

Another outgrowth of the TCU IT directors/CIOs CoP is a regional cyber team in North Dakota. The AIHEC CI Team joined the five North Dakota TCUs and North Dakota State University (NDSU) in a project to develop a cross-institutional, regional cyber team under the NSF’s Campus Cyberinfrastructure program. The North Dakota Cyber Team (NDCT) established the technical foundations and, more importantly, the regional human foundations of a cyberinfrastructure team that could support greater levels of research and education at the ND TCUs. The NDCT provides a framework for the future technical development of the IT resources at North Dakota’s TCUs. With regular meetings among the North Dakota TCUs and NDSU IT staff, the NDCT continues to seek methods to strengthen limited staffing resources and extend expertise and services within the pilot program. One current effort of the NDCT is a student engagement activity at United Tribes Technical College: the guided construction of 3D printed weather stations for student use in their STEM curriculum and research. In 2021, the TCU IT directors/CIOs also connected with the Minority Serving Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (MSCC), which invited CoP members to join them to represent the tribal colleges in the consortium. The NSF seeded the MSCC Center of Excellence with $3 million in funding to increase access to CI resources, enhance interactions and effectiveness among researchers and CI professionals, and offer professional and career development for IT personnel at minority-serving institutions. With the AIHEC CI Team’s involvement, the MSCC has launched a series of regional workshops focusing on cybersecurity concerns and general cyberinfrastructure practices in higher education. The first workshop was held at North Carolina A&T State University in June 2022, and the second at Salish Kootenai College in August 2022. By the end of the summer of 2022, five TCU IT directors/CIOs had joined the national MSCC efforts.

In an effort to help bridge the digital divide, AIHEC’s TCU CI report illuminated the many challenges that tribal colleges face with IT equipment, staffing, and connectivity. Photo courtesy of Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute

While the AIHEC CI Team developed the first CoP in 2017 to address IT staffing shortages and other challenges revealed in the TCU CI study, the TCU community of IT directors/CIOs has extended its reach and deepened its level of expertise through national partnerships and the creation of working groups and cyber teams. In the short term, the AIHEC CI Team will continue to guide the core community of TCU IT directors/CIOs and channel the working groups and partnerships that form to address specific or general CI concerns or opportunities. In the long term, the AIHEC CI Team hopes to build a core TCU IT directors/CIOs CoP that is indispensable to the TCU IT staff, fully autonomous, and completely sustainable beyond AIHEC’s facilitation and involvement.

CI STRATEGIC PLANNING INITIATIVE

The original TCU CI study also revealed that tribal college CI resources were marginally included in on-campus academic and research considerations. With the sudden need during the pandemic for online learning and virtualization to reach remote students, faculty, staff, and researchers, the fundamental importance of including CI resources in every campus mission became clearly apparent. In many instances, TCU IT staff had only the workforce to solve vital issues that materialized daily or to conduct crucial updates to existing software or hardware. Due to the heavy and unpredictable workload, the modest IT staff at many TCUs rarely had an opportunity to broach discussions with the administration on long-term CI planning that would enhance their institution’s education and research missions.

Working with the IT directors/CIOs CoP, the AIHEC CI Team turned their focus toward TCUs’ need for cyberinfrastructure strategic planning. CI strategic planning at TCUs would further integrate their technical infrastructure with their research and educational functions. This initiative supports the AIHEC CI Team and a team of additional, recently retired CI consultants to guide and utilize the individual campus efforts with objective expertise, nationally derived resources, and TCU-wide knowledge and best practices. The AIHEC CI Team developed a CI self-assessment tool that TCUs can use to obtain a comprehensive perspective from various CI stakeholders on their cyberinfrastructure, on and off the TCU campus. The tool works with both remote surveys and focus groups. The self-assessment tool analyzes the campus CI using a robust questionnaire that assesses the technical foundation of the campus CI as well as stakeholders’ sentiments and needs. Through analysis of responses, the AIHEC CI Team supports the development of a strategic plan for the TCU cyberinfrastructure to guide growth of the campus CI in a way that synchronizes with the growth of the overall campus, its campus-wide strategic plan, and its educational, research, business, and service operations.

CYBERSECURITY INITIATIVE

Since the beginning of the pandemic and the subsequent need to push campus operations online, TCUs have experienced more frequent cyberattacks. Specifically, two institutions suffered ransomware attacks that shuttered campus operations, one temporarily and another for a much longer duration. In one instance the IT director noted that “the attack didn’t just disrupt operations, it completely disabled us.” Ransomware attacks typically occur without notice, locking access to every file or application on a campus network and only returning access in exchange for a significant financial ransom. The best defense from such cyberattacks is to have a recent backup of the entire campus network stored separately. If attacked, having such a backup detached from the campus network permits IT staff to delete the imprisoned files and applications infected with the ransomware and reload the entire network. Without a secure backup, an institution would either have to pay the ransom—which in most instances does not guarantee a removal of the ransomware—or rebuild the entire campus IT network

In response to the increase in cyberattacks, the NSF awarded the AIHEC CI Team a cybersecurity grant that provides the coordinating support that TCUs need, thereby ensuring that they have sustainable and adaptable cybersecurity policies and practices. Through the development of an additional cybersecurity CoP, the AIHEC CI Team seeks to draft a beginner’s guide or framework for cybersecurity policies, procedures, and configurations. The framework enables a TCU to reduce their initial risk profile by informing their decisions when selecting providers and partners, purchasing and configuring equipment, and developing policies and procedures to support and strengthen their campus cybersecurity.

Chief information officers and IT staff from 11 tribal colleges attended workshops at North Carolina A&T State University and Salish Kootenai College to learn about the latest cybersecurity issues and ransomware threats.

Since TCUs’ entire curriculum is susceptible to cybersecurity threats, concerns, and interests, the AIHEC CI Team and the cybersecurity CoP will develop shared resources, such as a virtual chief information security officer and a virtual security operations center (vSOC), partnering with a Department of Energy-funded cybersecurity program at Turtle Mountain Community College (TMCC). The cybersecurity program at TMCC and its partnering TCUs—Sitting Bull College and Stone Child College—is developing a workforce of cybersecurity students and faculty who can form a small, low-cost vSOC with qualified security officers who monitor and defend multiple TCU networks. The AIHEC CI Team seeks to support the development of the cybersecurity curriculum at these three TCUs and provide a portion of the needed equipment and expertise to start the vSOC. With their recently awarded cybersecurity grant, the AIHEC CI Team complements existing cybersecurity efforts and produces a unified cybersecurity strategy that guides the entire TCU community in their short and long-term cybersecurity posture.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Since its inception five years ago with the NSF-funded TCU cyberinfrastructure study, the AIHEC CI Team has transitioned to providing direct assistance for CI issues and opportunities supporting TCUs. In so doing, the AIHEC CI Team is fostering a foundational framework. At the center is the ongoing IT directors/CIOs CoP that links the TCU CI human network. For the near future, this CoP will establish strategic direction for the entire community, share best practices and research, and assist with CI improvements and transitions, networking, cybersecurity, and planning.

Current initiatives will better secure and advance cyberinfrastructures at TCUs and broaden the reach and expertise of the TCU IT staff. The AIHEC CI Team will continue to seek input from the TCU presidents, faculty, staff, and students about their future directions and needs and how AIHEC can best support their campus missions through additional CI resources.

Jim Bottum is a research professor emeritus at Clemson University and heads AIHEC’s CI Initiative; Dale Smith is the international networking coordinator at the Network Startup Resource Center at the University of Oregon and a CI consultant for AIHEC; Alex Grandon is the CI coordinator at AIHEC; and Russell Hofmann is the CI research facilitator at AIHEC.