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Herminia Frias, newly hired by the Graduate College, will focus in improving the number of American Indian students who transition out of undergraduate programs and into graduate school.

By La Monica Everett-Haynes, University Communications
February 13, 2008

The University of Arizona has hired the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s former chairwoman to help improve the rate of American Indian students attending graduate school.

Herminia Frias recently took a senior coordinator position with the UA’s Graduate College, the unit that oversees graduate programs and also offers programs for undergraduates intent on pursuing graduate studies.

Frias, who was the first woman elected to her tribe’s chair position, will work with the Student to Academic Professoriate for American Indians, or SAPAI, initiative and coordinate Graduate Horizons, a pre-graduate school program to be offered during the summer.

“We want to help students understand the graduate admissions process and give them the tools to help them succeed,” Frias said.

She and others have said that while American Indians have improved in some areas of academia, their numbers are still too low in graduate programs, among faculty ranks and also in fields like science and engineering.

Enrollment at the UA have definitely improved over time. Last year, the UA enrolled more than 900 American Indian students – up from 724 in 1997 – a 29.8 percent increase.

Also, the most recent American Council on Education “Minorities in Higher Education 22nd Annual Status Report” shows that in a 10-year period, American Indian enrollment grew nearly 40 percent with 163,000 students enrolled nationally in 2003.

But the number of American Indian students graduating with science and engineering degrees remains a concern, Frias said.

The National Science Foundation’s current “Women, Minorities and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering” report showed that while other minority groups have shown incremental increases in earning master’s degrees in science and engineering, numbers for American Indians have remained flat since 1989.

In 2004 – the most recent year available – they earned 529 of the 118,051 master’s degrees awarded.

Frias knows well the struggles many American Indian students experience when they reach a University campus and also the challenges in luring more of them into science and engineering studies.

She graduated from the UA in 1999 with a degree in biochemistry becoming the first in her family to earn a college degree. Today, she is working toward a master’s degree in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.

“We need to get them beyond their undergraduate years. We don’t have enough students who go on,” she said. “We want them to be able to say, ‘This is doable.’”

SAPAI is focused on boosting the number of graduate-level degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics granted to underrepresented student groups, particularly American Indians and Alaska Natives.

The UA received National Science Foundation funding to administer the program in conjunction with the University of Montana. The focus is helping doctoral degree seeking students with help on dissertations and with finding jobs at tribal colleges.

Meanwhile, Graduate Horizons will focus on students at the undergraduate level.

The program will bring nearly 100 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian college and university juniors and seniors from across the nation and Arizona to the UA for intense mentoring and support July 12-15.

With support from the Albuquerque-based American Indian Graduate Center and others across the nation, the UA is hosting Graduate Horizons, which will inform students about masters programs and professional schools while educating them about financial aid and help them prepare for entrance exams.

“We’re the first university in the Southwest to win the bid to administer the program,” said Maria Teresa Velez, the Graduate College associate dean, who also praised Frias and her commitment to serving American Indian populations.

Facilitators will also provide an extensive overview about the UA, which will also be looking to recruit students for its graduate programs, Velez said.

“Middle and upper class families teach these things to their children,” she said.

Many American Indian students, like other underrepresented groups, do not always have family members who have been to college or understand what is necessary to gain admission and then to graduate.

“We are the parents and mentors they didn’t have to no fault of their own,” Velez added. “We want to show them the master’s and the Ph.D.’s.”