A $2.5 million federal grant awarded to WSU researchers will support the university’s efforts to increase indigenous student participation in the STEM fields.

ISTEM, a university project to raise the interest of Pacific Northwest Plateau tribes in STEM-related majors, will receive a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation in September.

The program was founded in 2012 with an initial $70,000 from WSU’s Office of Research. The tribes taking part in this program are the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, located in Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington, and the Coeur D’Alene Tribe in Idaho.

Paula Groves Price, an associate professor in the College of Education, has been working on the program since it began.

“One of the problems, I think, is we approach science from the world view and the perspective of sort of Western science,” Price said. “[We’re] not really taking into account indigenous knowledge systems.”

Price said unlike ISTEM, many cultural programs do not teach indigenous peoples in the most optimal way.

“Instead of driving sort of Western science and then trying to provide some cultural examples,” Price said, “we are actually starting with indigenous knowledge systems and then outward.”

Price said an example of this is when middle school Native American students are taken to a creek to take pH and dissolved oxygen readings. Teachers mentoring through ISTEM learn to first ask students the cultural significance of their readings, such as how the readings may contribute to decreasing salmon populations, instead of outright averages and mathematical statistics.

ISTEM teachers themselves are mentored through a collaboration between WSU and the Tribal Cultural Language Department in this program, because many teachers in tribal communities are not part of the tribe itself, according to a May 24 news release.

The Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal, a collaboration between WSU and the participating tribes of the program, as well as other tribes, is a website of cultural materials ISTEM passes down to teachers to help further educate students on the cultural value of their tribe, according to the portal’s webpage.

A tribal value the program wants to rejuvenate through iPad learning programs is the ability of the members to speak the tribal language, Price said. Currently, only a single tribesman in the Coeur D’Alene tribe can speak the language of his people.

With the new grant funding, the main focus of the program this year and beyond is to get Native American students between grades four and nine energized about STEM fields, Price said.

“A lot of work is actually going to be happening within these tribal communities,” Price said. “The hope is we are helping the tribes grow their own scientists who will also work in their [own] communities.”