A post-doctoral fellow at UCLA, Dr. Fann has conducted seven years of research on the historical, political, economic and contemporary educational experiences of American Indian students, who are the most underrepresented group in U.S. higher education. Her lecture in Eureka, co-sponsored by Humboldt State University’s Center for Educational Excellence, Collaboration and Inquiry and the Humboldt/Del Norte P-16 Council, is titled “Building a College Culture: Special Considerations for American Indian College Access.”
Dr. Fann’s work is helping to fill a major gap--virtually no research addresses the college access experiences of American Indian students. Her findings show that, as the most underrepresented group, these youngsters have a unique set of access and outreach needs.
Dr. Fann’s current postdoctoral study at UCLA examines the complicated nexus of barriers to college-going for students from Native nations, the role of higher education in fostering tribal economic development and self-determination and tribally-developed higher education initiatives.
Experienced in working with diverse groups of students at the community college and university level, Dr. Fann coordinated two major college access research projects at UCLA, the first dealing with family involvement in college preparation and planning, the second with organizational change and how to build a college-going culture in a rural high school district.
Currently she serves as a postdoctoral fellow for the University of California’s All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity, advancing research not only on American Indian postsecondary access but also on the role of higher education in tribal sovereignty and nation building.
Dr. Fann’s endeavors also address K-16 and community-higher education partnerships. She earned her doctor of philosophy at UCLA in 2005 with a dissertation based on interviews with American Indian junior and senior high school students from California reservation communities who shared their stories about their aspirations for higher education. Few of them had adequate information about college-going, some were constrained by geographic isolation from postsecondary institutions and many faced difficult decisions about going away to college, only to lose their support system of highly interdependent extended families and the sustenance of tribal life.
Among Dr. Fann’s principal findings: American Indian students need systematic and comprehensive academic preparation and college counseling well before they start high school; postsecondary outreach that responds to youth who grow up in rural tribal nations; and concrete support to help young adults make crucial transitions back and forth between their tribal communities and the institutional families of higher learning.
Refreshments will be provided at Dr. Fann’s Dec. 13 lecture and details are available by emailing cdr11@humboldt.edu.