Northern Oklahoma College completed a five-year project “Merging Tradition and Technology: Engaging Native American and Low-Income Students to Complete College” this fall.The $1.74 million project was funded through the United States Department of Education’s Native American Serving Non-Tribal Institutions (NASNTI) grant program and three key initiatives were led by grant staff to help NOC strengthen and improve existing services; expand access, and develop student support.To expand access to high demand, high quality courses, NOC instructors redesigned 29 online courses to meet the rigorous Quality Matters standards and set up six Tribal Access Sites for computer/ITV course access at Kaw Nation, Osage Nation, Otoe-Missouria Tribe, Pawnee Tribe, Ponca Tribe, and Tonkawa Tribe. The redesigned courses and the access sites provided opportunities for students to attend class at a distance, breaking a transportation barrier for many.Sara Hawkins, NASNTI Distance Learning Specialist assisted with setting up and institutionalizing the access sites. She is enthusiastic about the sites adding, “the sites allow Tribes and their communities a place to study, do homework, take tests and a place to work toward their dreams.”“Northern Oklahoma College is a much better place because of the many great services and spaces that we were able to develop due to the funding of the NASNTI grant,” said NOC President Dr. Clark Harris. “Both Native American and non-native students will have an enriched experience because of these services and spaces. The large mural by Osage artist, Yatika Starr Fields will open people’s minds to the Native American experience. We will all consider this excellent art and our Native American neighbors as students, employees and community groups use this gathering space. The access that has been developed at the six tribal locations will be a great benefit to our Native American students. This provides NOC with one more avenue to assist our Native American community. Thank you to everyone that put in tremendous amount of work to make this project a reality.”Tribal Education Director for the Tonkawa Tribe, Lisa Norman complimented NOC’s project and plans to “continue to work with NOC, striving for the betterment of our Native American students.”In addition, the Pawnee Nation plans to retain the equipment and provide access to O-Live, ITV, and online courses offered at NOC. Students interested in utilizing any of these sites may contact their tribal director for the spring semester or NOC’s Enrollment Management Department.The second initiative of the NASNTI project was to ...
