HOUSTON, Texas — None of the 34 Native American tribal colleges scattered across 12 states offers a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering. Lee Snapp of NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston is working hard to change that.
Snapp is beginning the second year of a two-year assignment to the Salish Kootenai College at Pablo, Mont., on the Flathead Indian Reservation. He is working with tribal colleges, government agencies, engineering societies and others toward establishing a common effort and goals to foster technical education, particularly engineering.
“NASA is committed to development of the next generation of space explorers, scientists and engineers by encouraging young people to study technical subjects,” said Jefferson D. Howell Jr., Johnson Space Center Director. “NASA is also aggressively pursuing a more diversified workforce.”
Early in his two-year assignment, Snapp and colleagues surveyed the 34 tribal colleges, many of them two-year institutions. Initially, six expressed interest in development of engineering or pre-engineering curriculums. Today 11 colleges, including two four-year institutions, are directly involved in the effort.
Goals of the project include establishing at least one degree-granting engineering program at one or more of the colleges, perhaps at Salish Kootenai College, where Snapp serves as dean of engineering. Another goal is to establish common pre-engineering standards to enable students to transfer seamlessly among tribal institutions that will develop engineering programs, and to make it easier for students to transfer to non-tribal universities for graduate studies.
As the effort progresses, information and lessons learned are shared among the partners. “The answers are exciting, complex and will require study,” said Snapp, who holds a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy and a master's in astronautics from the Air Force Institute of Technology. He retired from the Air Force to join NASA in 1989.
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