Some 1,200 miles west of Dayton, Ohio, south of Badlands National Park in southwestern South Dakota, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation stretches across 3 million acres of rugged Western plain. It encompasses two of the poorest counties in the United States. But here, in the tiny town of Kyle (population 970), there’s a rich center of learning: Oglala Lakota College. It’s a place where programs have been designed for adults, a place that integrates Native American culture with traditional academic subjects. This tribal college — which uses modern technology and distance learning to provide associate’s, bachelor’s and graduate degrees — is transforming the lives of adult students and their families.

Charleen Eagle Elk wanted to prove to herself that she could get a college degree to set an example for her son and daughter. “I wanted to emphasize that you are never too old to learn and prove to them that just because people may label us as ‘uneducated,’ we are as smart as the next person. We have a strong will to overcome the haunting barriers we’ve had for years. I wanted the satisfaction (of knowing) that I did something positive and that others see that it is possible. We don’t have to live a life of poverty; we can make an impact on future generations.”

Eagle Elk is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business at Oglala Lakota and plans to go on to earn a master’s degree in health administration. She had her own role model of an adult returning to school. Her mother was in her 40s when she received her college degree and today is an accountant. She then encouraged her older children to go back to school. “She is still encouraging me,” said Eagle Elk.

Meanwhile, Eagle Elk’s own children “see that Mom is still plugging away, not giving up”— even though going back to school hasn’t been easy. “The main problem is finding the time,” Eagle Elk said. “I am working full time and trying to take care of kids and run my own business. It is hard to work everything in.”

One thing Eagle Elk likes in particular about Oglala Lakota is that the faculty members “work a lot of the Lakota culture into the courses and look at subjects from the Lakota perspective,” she said.

It was this desire to integrate the Lakota culture into adult courses that drew C. Kim Winkelman back to the Pine Ridge Reservation and its tribal college. Winkelman, Oglala Lakota on his mother’s side, is a retired Army officer who earned a doctorate in adult education from Walden University in 1999. He became vice president for instruction at Oglala Lakota College in 2002, creating new academic programs for the students and developing “multiple tools to engage learners in different ways,” he said.

Oglala Lakota enrolls approximately 1,500 students with an average age of 31. Adult students are required to take courses in the Lakota Studies Department, which offers community workshops, collects materials on tribal history and culture, and provides classes on the Lakota language. Students take traditional on-campus classes, but Winkelman also developed distance-learning programs for adult students living throughout the reservation and, increasingly, elsewhere in the world.

Winkelman, who is Abnaki/Comanche on his father’s side, is now moving on to become president of Comanche Nation College in Lawton, Okla., where he expects to employ many of the same principles and techniques he’s used to engage adult students at Oglala Lakota.

Tribal colleges ‘increasingly essential’

Oglala Lakota College is one of 34 tribal colleges, institutions created during the last 35 years to meet the higher education needs of Native Americans. These institutions are located mainly in the Upper Midwest and Southwest and enroll more than 30,000 full- and part-time students from some 250 tribes. They offer two-year associate’s degrees in 200 disciplines and also provide vocational certificate programs. Some also offer baccalaureate and master’s programs.

Tribal colleges are generally found in geographically isolated areas and have become “increasingly essential to educational opportunity for American Indian students,” according to the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. This is particularly true for adults on or near reservations who would have no other means of gaining access to postsecondary education. Without Oglala Lakota, for example, residents of Kyle would have to travel nearly 60 miles and cross the Nebraska state line to attend the nearest four-year institution (Chadron State College). The nearest in-state four-year college (the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology) is in Rapid City, 90 miles to the northwest. And Black Hills State University in Spearfish is even more distant — about 140 miles northwest of Kyle, near the Wyoming line.

As engines of economic opportunity, the tribal colleges are remarkably successful. According to the American Indian College Fund, 91 percent of the nation’s tribal college students are either working or pursuing a higher degree one year after graduating. About 78 percent of Oglala Lakota College’s graduates have found jobs in the area — either on the reservation or in nearby towns. And that’s no accident. According to Marilyn Kockrow, chair of the department of applied science and technology, the college makes a concerted effort to link its programs to local economic development. That effort suits Oglala Lakota students perfectly because, as Winkelman pointed out, the major reason adult students attend the college is quite simple: “They want a job. They are often single mothers and primarily study business, education or social services,” he said.

Indeed, for Gloria Eastman, returning to school was a matter of survival. At age 46, she was a single mom with two sons, 12 and 14 years old. She was only able to find temporary employment, and she had student loan obligations from a stint at computer school in the 1970s. She attended a vocational school in Rapid City and worked as a practical nurse, but soon reached a salary plateau and could barely make it financially. She is now studying business administration at Oglala Lakota and hopes to earn a bachelor’s degree in accounting. Now, in addition to going to school, she works as a peer mentor in student support services — a job that not only helps her financially, but allows her to aid others who are trying to improve their chances of success.

Dedicated adult student Charles Comes Killing is convinced that postsecondary education is the key to such improvement. He sees college not only as a means of personal empowerment, but also as the engine of community economic development — a vital weapon in the ongoing battle with poverty on the reservation.

He has one piece of advice for other adults who are attending or thinking of enrolling: “Just keep going.”