Marrying Stories and Data for Impact (2020)

In the fall of 2019, the American Indian College Fund published a report about a Gallup survey on tribal college alumni. The report illustrates how tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are institutions that provide Native students with the education, skills, and support they need to succeed. The report also shows that Native students who attend TCUs succeed at greater rates than those who attend other institutions of higher education. Fast-forward to the spring of 2020 when TCUs were forced to move operations to a virtual setting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As businesses shuttered and outbreaks pummeled Indian Country, the College Fund worked to foster greater awareness of the pandemic’s impact on tribal communities, the TCUs, and Native students in an effort to solicit increased support. The approach was simple. The College Fund used data from both the Gallup survey and the #RealCollege survey conducted by the Hope Center at Temple University, which interviewed 1,050 students from seven TCUs in seven states nationwide to determine the extent of food and housing insecurity and to understand the impact the pandemic could have on TCUs, their students, and the Native communities they serve. The College Fund also used data gleaned from surveys conducted with its Full Circle scholars in the spring of 2020 to understand how they would be impacted by the pandemic. But rather than take a purely quantitative approach, the College Fund also reached out to student ambassadors and TCU presidents to ask them to share their personal stories, knowing that people first connect to individuals rather than numbers. “Stories guide us, give us identity, and build shared values,” stated College Fund president Cheryl Crazy Bull, adding, “[the College Fund’s] team members recognize that stories and data go hand-in-hand.” The result of marrying data with public relations outreach increased national and regional attention to the pandemic’s impact on TCUs and TCU students in national publications such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Nation, and Teen Vogue, as well as regional outlets like Montana Public Radio. It is our hope that TCUs can use the data and the following case study for their own public relations and to help raise awareness of the importance of tribally controlled higher education.