Jeanna Beaty and Katherine Beaty Chiste

THE UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE has a heavy program commitment to Native American Studies and a large (5-10%) Native American student population. The majority of these students are of the adult reentry type, often with incomplete secondary school preparation. To attend the university, many move for the first time in their lives from their reserve into the city. With the combination of tenuous academic preparation and considerable dislocation, it is not surprising that completion of a university degree is still quite a significant event for those students.

Yet today in Canada there is an increasing demand for Native American educators and professionals, particularly since Native self-governance is fast approaching. In response to this reality, the University of Lethbridge has initiated a University Preparation Program (UPP) for Native students in an attempt to improve their retention and graduation rates. The program was developed by two professors in the Faculty of Education, with support of the Band Councils of the two local reserves and funding from the federal Department of Indian Affairs.

The initial trail of the six week UPP was launched in the summer of 1984, with 30 students, five student leaders, and five program faculty. A second UPP ran in the summer of 1985, following modifications in student screening procedures, group size, curriculum, staff, time period, and institutional readiness.

The objectives of the program have differed for the various parties involved. Increasing the retention rate for Native American students has been the main goal of the funder, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the host, the University of Lethbridge. The faculty of education has further seen the program as a first step towards training more Native American students as teachers. The program faculty concentrated more on assisting individual students to make the transition from life on the reserve to life in a university community, as well as helping the university in its transition from a mainstream student population to an increasingly diverse, nontraditional student population. Finally, for the students themselves, the program has been more than a preparation for university level work. For some it has provided access to the university, since they lack the credentials for university entrance by any other route. In fact, a program like this may establish new criteria by which the institution can evaluate students from outside the mainstream.

A key to success in developing and implementing this kind of program is understanding that for cross-cultural students all the activities associated with university attendance are going to be what are called "gate-keeping encounters" (Erickson, 1976). These are face-to-face encounters in which one person can affect the social mobility of another within an institution. The applicant's chances of success can be affected by the presence or absence of "comembership" with the gatekeeper and by their individual communicative styles. Native American communicative style usually differs from that of the European North Americans who are the gatekeepers at universities (Scollon & Scollon, 1976). Furthermore, having grown up in most cases on the reserves, Native American students have few chances of comembership with anyone at the university except other Native American students: they don't belong to the same communities, play racquetball together, or go to the same church.

If the idea of a gatekeeping encounter is interpreted liberally, the difficulties these students meet can be further understood. It is not just during a face-to-face interview with a counselor where they may meet a barrier to an institution. The whole Western philosophy of education is an institution ordered according to different rules than their own. The classroom itself is a gate, and the professor a gatekeeper. Clearly, communicative style will affect everyone's performance there. The behavior of students whose culture does not incorporate the Western idea of appropriate classroom decorum and participation may be negatively interpreted as lack of interest, intelligence, or manners. Conversely, the students may be offended or puzzled by the expectations of their professors.

The Western idea of literacy is also an institution for many Native American students. So the writing of an exam and the reading of a textbook become gatekeeping encounters in which they do not know the rules and in which their ideas about words, discourse and communication may differ radically from the ideas of those who will judge their work. Often these students simply do not understand what their professors want, let alone why they want such things. In addition, for many of them English is not their first language and it reflects a different world view than their own.

The bureaucracy of the university is also an institution--the library, the registrar, the academic advising office. All of these offer a variety of gatekeeping encounters, in which Native American students differ from the mainstream and are therefore at a disadvantage. In their personal lives as students this pattern continues. Renting an apartment, taking a bus, arranging for child care--these too present gatekeeping encounters for students who have not grown up with the social and economic institutions of mainstream Western society.

Our view is that students negotiate these institutions and make a successful transition to university life by undergoing some degree of "perspective transformation." This necessitates a critical appraisal of the assumptions underlying their roles, priorities and beliefs (Mezirow, 1978). It also requires that an individual "know himself/herself." And for a student, it certainly implies the need to develop a consciousness of his/her own process of learning and development (Mezirow, 1981).

University survival depends on the student's ability to take personal responsibility for his/her own learning. This may be particularly difficult for Native American students coming from a traditional society with a causal view of external events. From their point of view, external forces are perceived as having a more significant impact on the outcome of their life than their actions as an individual; in addition, the well-being of the group is valued over the wishes or plans of the individual (Jordan, 1984, and Leighton, 1964). What is often described to Native American students as a lack of motivation and determination may in fact reflect a value system different to that of the majority of university students and professors.

From an understanding of these theoretical issues follow certain requirements for a university preparatory program like this. First, the faculty of the program must be gatekeepers of their institution both academic and administrative. Second, it is essential that the curriculum focus on beginning the process of individual change in students and provide practice for them in handling gatekeeping encounters. Finally, preparing the institution for the students is as important as preparing the students for the institution. The program must be "institutionalized."

A distinctive strength of the University Preparation Program was the staff team. And yet the faculty were themselves not singularly distinguished. They were typical of teaching resources available on every campus. They were representative in their composition: native and nonnative, academic and nonacademic, male and female, younger and older. And they were all gate keepers of the University.

Necessarily, the staff became involved in student screening and selection, a process critical as a way of introducing the institution and the students to each other's demands and beginning the establishment of comembership. It is also critical as a way to improve the retention of students during the entire university experience. As the Australians have found in their recent study of aboriginal students in higher education (Jordon, 1984), low retention rates are almost certainly correlated with inadequate or inappropriate selection procedures.

In the pilot year of this program, Band Councils selected the students. The University had little to do with the process, and there was neither clarity about what kind of student was wanted nor consistent screening criteria. In the second year, three faculty from the program acted as a screening committee, and the involvement of the Band Councils was primarily a courtesy. Also, students identified themselves as prospective participants. This resulted in the selection of a smaller group of students (20), closer in age and with more secondary and post secondary school experience. The different selection process, we believe, contributed to the success of the program.

We have found that a broad screening committee encourages greater institutional involvement in and awareness of this type of program: the university has a greater stake in it. Also, continued Band participation appears to be necessary if the students are to find maximum family and community support for their endeavors. Finally, more rigorous screening of the candidates helps applicants "select" themselves. Those who survive the selection process, and are ready for change, demonstrate the stamina and motivation needed to complete the program. As has been amply documented, lack of motivation and persistence rank high on the list of reasons for failure and drop out of students from outside the mainstream (Anderson & Niemi, 1970; Dun & Dunn, 1979; Jordon, 1984; Leighton, 1964).

Our investigation has not revealed a complete program package designed to fit the diverse needs of Native American adult reentry students. However, we view curriculum as a fluid, developmental process rather than a set of prescribed, fixed components. So we aimed not only at the establishment of a sounder base of academic skills but at an assessment of values and experiences, at the development of self-confidence, and at the improvement of communicative ability. We believed that the transformation necessary for these students could only be achieved by establishing some balance in their lives. The holistic model of education which balances the cognitive, affective and psychomotoric aspects of knowledge acquisition (Della-Dora & Blanchard, 1979) was aptly suited to our needs.

Because the faculty recognized the contribution of Native American culture in presenting us with ways of being that may be essential to world survival, the program began with an introduction to Native American history, traditions and values. This was a reacquaintance for some students, but a new experience for many. It helped students build self-esteem and sort out which values they wanted to retain, as well as establish group bonding, (i.e., comembership). "Indianness" was particularly emphasized in the early stages. Writing assignments concentrated on family life, self-identity, and specific political issues. Communications exercises utilized familiar patterns of narrative style, sequential speaking and consensus decision making. Physical challenges were noncompetitive, and either group-oriented or "lone style."

The program was not intended to provide for the development of all the necessary learning skills, many of which are lacking in a majority of students entering the university. But like Pettit (1978) and GATT-FLY (1984), we were convinced that these students could benefit most by developing the capacity to master their own problems. It would be unreasonable to expect anyone to become a proficient writer, or overcome well-founded fears, or become entirely self-directed in six weeks. Instead, a process of change was begun, by introducing alternative choices, trying out new behaviour patterns, and establishing some different modes of learning.

The variety of techniques we used are well documented in the literature of Adult Education, Counseling Group Work, Business Management, Community Development and International Education. They included the use of learning style inventories, personal journals, role play, simulated games, planning strategies, individual assessment charts, public speaking, group projects, diadic and tradic communication problem-solving group games, student critiquing, combative exercise, designated individual "free" time, as well as the accustomed lecture-style presentation, assigned homework, and tests. We could not overlook the reality that most university classes are didactic, emphasizing the transmission rather than the acquisition of knowledge. However, we did agree with Knowles (1975) that good self-directed learners can benefit from didactic teachers. We hoped that sufficient preparation as self-directed learners would sustain these students when faced with a largely one-dimensional teaching style.

The degree to which these aims were achieved in this era of fiscal and philosophical conservatism will be measured by the quantifiable "success" of the students. The reality is that a university has one measure of success--the student transcript, revealing as it does the negatives such as withdrawals from classes, incompleted classes, and periods of inactivity, as well as the key measure: grade point average. For the institution quantifiable success is everything . . . for how can it measure the qualitative success of every student? Yet we are convinced that it is necessary also to measure qualitative progress in some way, though we have not yet implemented an adequate measure. There has been considerable research undertaken in the past decade to develop means for measuring attitude change, evaluating life experiences and valuing different learning styles (Gruener & ter Borg, 1984; Henereson & Morris, 1978; Kolb, 1976; Roberts, 1982, January; Sansregret, 1984, June; Shipton & Steltenpohl, 1980). However, the applications of this work are still experimental in the United States and little in evidence in Canada.

As we continue to monitor the quantitative progress of these students, and in the general context of Native American retention rates in North American universities, 7% to 25% (Falk and Aitken, 1984), the results are encouraging. Of the 1984 students, 57% entered the University, as did 70% of the 1985 students. Of those who came, 415 of the 1984 students completed the first year, 18% completed the second year, and 24% are returning to continue their studies. Of the 1985 students, 43% completed the first year and 36% are continuing on to the next. Other students have chosen to withdraw, appearing (quantifiably) to have "failed" yet they have made alternative choices for personal development--such as attending a community college, studying individually with an elder, or preparing for a new career. They have undergone a change, have passed through new gates, and have been responsible for their choices.

It is clear that this kind of program can be successful. It can open the gates for students who would otherwise not be able to enter the university. It can provide ongoing contact people for both the faculty and fellow students of the program. These people can act, albeit imperfectly, as a form of personal support. In Canada, a UPP may also enable these students to qualify for financial sponsorship by the Department of Indian Affairs. Since surveys of Native American university students (Falk & Aitken, 1984; Jordon, 1984) have shown that personal and financial support are the needs which students identify as their most serious ones, several of the initial program objectives appear to have been attained.

In spite of the early success of the UPP, we are still unresolved about a few issues. There is the dilemma about needing to prepare students for the possibility of failure. What is the merit of preparing these students for the intensive, individual competition found at a university . . . a value they may not hold and which we in fact question? And how can we recognize substantial personal change and progress during the UPP, when acceptable evaluation methods rely so heavily on quantifiable measures?

There is also the problem of time. It is unrealistic to expect a program like the UPP to be able to do much more than initiate a process of change in a six-week period. Questions can be raised, new skills introduced, and the groundwork laid for beginning the university. But without an ongoing, formal program during the first semester at least, we are skeptical about the lasting value of much of the program content. We deem it essential that the university accept some responsibility for nurturing this particular group of students during their first year of classwork.

Finally, if post secondary learning is understood to be an opportunity to question the values and principles by which we live, and even more a challenge to change them, how does this relate to the need for Native American students to revitalize an awareness of their traditional history and an appreciation of their cultural values? Are universities currently requiring them to begin abandoning their traditional view, a source of the kind of self-esteem that is a necessity for effective learning. These difficult questions must be faced by the students, staff and hosts of this kind of program.

The philosophical mission of a university demands that we continue intellectual exploration; we must carry within ourselves the constant challenge and questioning provided by differing cultures, values, and world views. Native American students, whether actively or passively, challenge almost everything which traditional European universities hold dear. Their presence, as challengers, is invaluable to a university. For many reasons, through development of the UPP and similar programs, it is important to encourage these students to remain at our universities.

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