HR: 14:10h
AN: ED23B-03    [Abstracts]
TI: Inspiring Tribal College Students In The Earth Sciences Through Government Sponsored Internships
AU: * Grant, T D
EM: tamgrant@comcast.net
AF: Salish Kootenai College, P.O. Box 70, Pablo, MT 59855 United States
AB: Tribal college students represent a sector of the United States that typically do not have access to many large institutional organizations for enhancing career growth or job potential. Many of the tribal students are place-based and look for job opportunities on or near their homes on the reservations. At Salish Kootenai College in NW Montana, our students have had the opportunity to study with NASA Earth Scientists over four summers at Goddard Space Flight Center. The student projects range from monitoring land cover change on the reservation to developing fire prediction models over the Mission Range in Montana. Mentoring assistance on both sides of the student (at the college and at NASA) have provided invaluable help and staying power with the students. Over the past four years, our success rate of placing students in jobs in the Earth Sciences has been greater than 95 percent. A few students are enrolled in graduate school in the Earth Sciences and most of the students will be using geospatial technologies in either their work or graduate studies. We feel their job success has been attributed to the internship at NASA and the mentors assigned to them. Our model of NASA working with a Minority Serving Institution has been a success and continues to serve these underrepresented populations in a meaningful way.
DE: 0855 Diversity
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005