In the
Lakota language, the word Tiospaye means “extended family.” That’s exactly what
the Tiospaye program on the South Dakota Mines campus has become for so many
Native American students.
The Tiospaye Program, launched in 2010, was funded
by a 10-year-grant from the National Science Foundation. The program, led by
Mines professor Dr. Carter Kerk, is designed to help increase the number of
Native American students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
And it has done just that. In December 2020, the program graduated its 50th
student. Now at the end of the 10-year grant, Kerk is working to secure private
funding to continue a program he sees as instrumental in ensuring that Native
American students on campus have the support to succeed. For more information,
contact Kerk at Carter.Kerk@sdsmt.edu.
Heather Rogers EE 18 Assistant Electrical Engineer
with Burns & McDonnell, Arizona
Heather Rogers was 12 years old before her family
had running water and electricity in their home on the Navajo Nation. Growing
up, she witnessed family members and peers struggle with alcoholism and drug
addiction. But one thing she had in her corner was a drive to make things
better in her community and the expectations of her family that she would get
an education and succeed. Rogers, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation
tribe, developed an interest in STEM in high school. “I knew I liked the STEM
fields, and they’re promising careers,” she says. “Plus, I really wanted to do
meaningful work, and this was my way in.”After high school, she landed a
scholarship to play basketball at Scottsdale Community College, where she earned
an associate’s degree. From there she moved to another junior college where she
continued to play basketball, but she wanted more academically.She learned
about South Dakota Mines and was eventually offered a Hardrocker basketball
scholarship. By 2015, she was on campus, but the transition was difficult.
Rogers didn’t bond with fellow players who she felt couldn’t relate to her
upbringing. She was far from home, facing rigorous academics, and feeling
alone. “I felt different. I felt out of place,” she says. “It was rough. After
my first semester I was ready to throw in the towel.” Tiospaye made the
difference. “I got really involved in Tiospaye at the end of my first semester,
and that saved me,” she says. “The other students in Tiospaye came from the same
places I came from. They understood the struggle of having so many people
depending on you.”Tiospaye created a supportive community of students who work
together to succeed. “My second and third year I made some of my best friends
there on the basketball team and in the Tiospaye Program.”Now working at Burns
& McDonnell, Rogers is back in Arizona and focused on growing as an
engineer. “My 10-year-goal is to learn all I can and then hopefully transition
some of that back to my home community,” she says. “I want to see my work have
a positive impact on people ... to make an impact on where I come from and the
people who I belong to.
Jacob Phipps CHEM 14 Project Manager with the US
Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9, California
Without the Tiospaye Program, Jacob Phipps wouldn’t
have graduated from South Dakota Mines. But he did, and today the 29-year-old
alumnus, an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation tribe, is a remedial
project manager with the US Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco, Calif.,
overseeing the cleanup of abandoned uranium mines in the Southwest and
particularly on the Navajo Nation. Jacob
grew up in Phoenix and was a first-generation college student when he entered
Northern Arizona University with a full-ride scholarship to play football and
study chemistry. After two years, the load of chemistry and DI football took
its toll. He went looking for a change and eventually connected with athletics
at South Dakota Mines. He arrived on campus in 2012, and from the start faced a
challenge. “I had never been far away from home,” he says. “When I moved to
South Dakota I fell into a dark place. I was unhappy.” Fortunately, he
eventually connected with Tiospaye mentor Dee LeBeau. Suddenly, he felt more
grounded and comfortable. “She was a really big part of my life when I was at
South Dakota Mines,” he says. He became more deeply involved in the Tiospaye
Program, joined the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, and
developed friendships with other Native American students. The experience
brought him closer to his Native American culture, which prompted him after
graduation to work in positions that help Native American populations: Indian
Health Service, the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, and the Columbia River
Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. After graduating from Mines in 2014, Jacob went
on to earn a master’s degree in environmental science and engineering from
Oregon Health and Science University. It’s a program he was unaware he even had
an interest in until Kerk recommended he consider an environmental internship.
That newly found interest led to Oregon and eventually the EPA. “It’s the folks
you meet along the way ... they led me to where I am today,” he says.
Jessica Muxen IEEM 10 / MS IEEM 13 Senior Associate
Industrial Engineer at Collins Aerospace, Iowa
When Jessica Muxen first arrived at South Dakota
Mines in 2005, she was a single mother of a baby boy with little money and few
prospects. Today, Muxen is a senior associate industrial engineer at Collins
Aerospace. She credits the Tiospaye Program for helping her get there. “It’s
programs like Tiospaye and people like Dr. Kerk who helped me become an
engineer when it was never anything I thought I would or could even do,” she
says. Muxen’s parents met in the US Army. Her mother is Native American and
grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation; her dad is Creole and grew up in
Louisiana. When her parents divorced after leaving the Army, Muxen lived with
her grandmother in Pine Ridge while her mother worked in Rapid City. Thanks to her good grades in high school, she
landed a scholarship to Carthage College in Wisconsin. She describes herself at
that time as “aimless.” She dropped out after freshman year and returned to
Rapid City, where she worked at Walmart and reconnected with a high school
boyfriend. They married and “the veil came off,” she says of her ex-husband’s
abusive nature. She tolerated the abuse until the day she witnessed her husband
screaming at her two-week old son, LeRoy. Muxen says she packed her bags and left
the next morning. Working minimum wage jobs in Rapid City, she was “just barely
getting by” when she enrolled at Oglala Lakota College for accounting. That led
to a meeting with a fellow student who also attended Mines and encouraged her
to apply. “I took my first class at Mines, Algebra II, and I loved it. I loved
the campus, I loved the challenge. Maybe I was finally ready. I had a goal in
mind.”Muxen went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Mines, all
while raising her son. She leaned on the Tiospaye Program and her fellow Native
American students for support and encouragement. Tiospaye provided scholarship
support as well as a place where she felt at home. “I think having the
opportunity to be with a community that will support you when you’re new at it
... it’s a huge help,” she says of Tiospaye. “The only way I was able to get
through Mines was the support."
Logan Gayton CEE 17 / MS CEE 19 FMG Engineering, Rapid
City
When Logan Gayton first arrived at South Dakota
Mines in 2012, he was perplexed by fellow students who didn’t finish drinks or
left goodies half eaten. “Students who
got care packages from home and left half of it ... not finishing it,” he says.
“Those were some cultural shocks. I would have never done that.”Gayton, an enrolled
member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, would never have done that because
growing up his family “didn’t have a lot of anything above necessity.” Raised
primarily by a single mother in Rapid City, Gayton and his three brothers
learned early to take nothing for granted. From high school on, he worked a job
to help pay his way. In his senior year at Rapid City Central High School,
Gayton was forced to quit extracurriculars to get a job because money was
tight.From the start at South Dakota Mines, he took advantage of what the
Tiospaye Program had to offer – scholarship money, programming, mentorship,
and, most importantly, a sense of community. “Tiospaye definitely made it
easier,” he says. “When you go to college and you come from a certain background,
some students just can’t relate. It was a way to find other people who come
from similar backgrounds. We were all broke in the same color.”What he also
found in Tiospaye was fellow students who wanted to help each other succeed.
“We were in service to each other to make sure we all made it,” he says. “I had
three other friends who were in civil (engineering) and when we all took
classes, we took them together. It made it fun and easier to succeed
together.”Still, it wasn’t easy. Near the end of his bachelor’s program, Gayton
was working four part-time jobs in addition to going to school. With the
support of Tiospaye and fellow Tiospaye students, as well as his wife Dani,
Gayton went on to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil and
environmental engineering. Today, he works as an engineer with FMG Engineering
in Rapid City and has plans to someday get his PhD and possibly teach. He
credits Tiospaye for helping to make it all happen.