“I serve as a program manager in the Center for Native Excellence and Tribal Engagement. One of the fulfilling areas of work that I do is leading the Native Ascent Scholars Program and now the Native Ascent Living Learning Community.

Those particular programs are near and dear to my heart because they speak to the initiatives that are creating culturally engaging campus environments that foster academic success and support for our students. There are different elements in our programming, like professional development and community connection. It ties in and overlays with a lot of things that we do in the center.

Within the center, we’ve been able to create a focus on success initiatives for our students, which tie in with leadership development. We target student engagement through our CIRCLE program—Centering Indigenous Reciprocity, Culture, Leadership, and Engagement. So that has been our unofficial motto in terms of how we ground our programs and make sure that we connect back to that CIRCLE initiative.

It’s a program of creating leadership opportunities with our students in the direction of service learning. That’s something I’m excited about as we’re moving forward. Another aspect within the CIRCLE program has been the Elder-in-Residence initiative that we’ve been able to establish. It’s been wonderful to have individuals from our community who are willing to serve in these roles every year.

I feel pretty gratified. We hear from the community, and we hear from the students about the growth and the impact that we have with our team. We are a small and mighty team.

We each bring a different perspective, different talents and all of that coming together has allowed us to make these strides in where we are today.

We’re making strides and creating milestones. I know that within our community, engagement has been huge. Visibility is a huge component of what really helps us move forward with our programs.

What we’re doing now is creating those lasting impressions, those lasting services that are going to continue to give the sense that when you send your students here, they will be taken care of. And we truly are a home away from home for them.

Creating that sense of students seeing themselves here through our programming is one of the biggest things that we strive for.”

— Tashina Barber, program manager, Center for Native Excellence and Tribal Engagement