Student Success
Student Success Initiative

Amplifying indigenous voices and their visibility of AI/AN Visibility within Higher Education
AIHEC’s Student Success Initiative supports Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) in building their capacities to provide high quality culturally responsive postsecondary opportunities to ensure TCU student success. Our work focusses on many areas of institutional transformation including enhancing student services, strengthening institutional research and data literacy, developing instructors’ knowledge in effective teaching, and advancing knowledge about best practices in American Indian/Alaska Native education.
AIHEC’s Student Success Team comprises individuals with a range of expertise related to TCU student success. Working on multiple grant-funded projects, team members collaborate closely with TCU personnel, Native communities, and other partners to customize our work to align with TCU contexts and their identified needs.
Partnerships within the Student Success Initiative are crucial to AIHEC's transformational efforts to become an Intermediary for Scalable Impact in the Tribal College Community

AIHEC AIMS: AIHEC’s landmark data collection initiative, American Indian Measures of Success (AIHEC AIMS), was launched in 2004 with generous funding from the Lumina Foundation for Education. AIHEC developed the data collection instrument, AIMS Key Indicator System (AKIS), with input from AIHEC, TCUs, accrediting organizations, American Indian College Fund, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and others.

Institutional Transformation in TCUs: AIHEC as a BMGF Intermediary for Scale: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports intermediary for Scale (IFS). The IFS strategy is a plan to help institutional transformation at scale to build organization capacity for scale intermediaries. AIHEC will support multiple TCUs to undergo an institutional change.

Student Success Stories:
“My college experience is one of the most positive, memorable times in my life. The staff and faculty were very encouraging and supportive of the efforts put forth by the students.”
—graduate, Sitting Bull College

Data, Evaluation and Research: The Tribal Colleges and Universities of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium believe unique cultural connections exist between Indigenous peoples, their environments, and the world of those who came before.