IGE: Track 2: Cultivating an Indigenous Graduate Research Environment to Enhance Retention and Scientific Careers

Indigenous communities have led scientific innovation by providing knowledge on medicinal plants, environmental impacts on health, and sustainable agriculture. Despite these important contributions that have been transformative to society, Indigenous scientists are under-represented in scientific research. In the US, Native Americans account for only 0.24% of master and doctoral students in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields even though Indigenous people make up 2.9% of the population.

Of these Indigenous graduate students, only 25% will go on to complete their graduate degree. Several studies on the success of Native Graduate students have identified the critical factors for completion of a degree as mentorship, connection to community, and an emphasis on situatedness―the ability to connect self with environment, society, and culture.

A major obstacle in the implementation of success-supporting factors is the lack of systemic infrastructure and studied interventions. This National Science Foundation Innovations of Graduate Education (IGE) Track 2 award supports the Center for Indigenous Research to Create Learning and Excellence (CIRCLE) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. CIRCLE’s goal is to increase the number of Native American students who complete graduate degrees in STEM fields by developing, implementing, and studying a model of Indigenous science support.

The development of CIRCLE has been led by Indigenous scientists and educators with a focus on Indigenous values of community, interdisciplinary approaches, and a strong sense of purpose. CIRCLE will focus first on mentorship training to create an environment that supports Indigenous graduate student development providing tools for conflict resolution and situatedness.

The second focus of CIRCLE will be on developing a rigorous scientific community, that brings together Indigenous researchers and Tribal communities from different disciplines to cultivate innovation. Globally, the implementation of CIRCLE will provide a holistic approach for graduate student support that can be applied to all scientific training. A secondary impact of CIRCLE will be increasing the number of Indigenous scientists who will tackle challenges faced by Indigenous communities including the higher rates of exposure to environmental contaminants, metabolic disease, poverty, and a decreased lifespan of 20-years compared to the general population.

The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.