FARGO – North Dakota State University will partner with a tribal college in South Dakota to expand that college’s degree programs and increase the number of Native American students at NDSU.
Officials from NDSU and Sisseton Wahpeton College signed a memorandum of understanding Friday afternoon to mark the new partnership.
Among other outcomes, an associate degree in social and behavioral sciences will be instituted at the community college – a program the school has previously not offered.
Sisseton Wahpeton President Harvey DuMarce said a behavioral science degree would better prepare students to return to their communities and fill much-needed roles, in areas such as social work and criminal justice.
This spring, NDSU will select courses for the degree program and train faculty and graduate students to teach on the South Dakota campus, said Gary Goreham, an NDSU professor of rural sociology.
ADVERTISEMENT
Other objectives of the schools’ agreement include creating a faculty exchange, identifying opportunities for collaborative research and service projects, and making it easier for students to transfer from Sisseton Wahpeton to NDSU.
Kent Sandstrom, dean of the NDSU College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, said the latter would be a boon not only to the transfers.
“We see this as a way of deepening and strengthening the pipeline for Native American students to come onto our campus and have a successful experience, but of course that enriches the entire campus because more of our student population gets an opportunity to interact with students from diverse backgrounds,” Sandstrom said.
