Holistic, student-centered services is an innovative strategy in higher education. For tribal colleges and universities (TCUs), however, these practices are foundational. Since their inception, TCUs have centered culture, community, and relationships in their mission and daily practice – getting to know their students as whole people and meeting them where they are.
Little Priest Tribal College Logo
Little Priest Tribal College (LPTC) embodies this commitment, and the campus reflects the community it serves. Students are balancing caregiving, parenthood, employment, and other responsibilities alongside their education. In fact, 75% of students enrolled in fall 2025 attended school part-time. These realities influence how students move along their higher education pathways and challenge standard definitions about what college success looks like.
As one of 30 TCUs in the Cultivating Native Student Success initiative, LPTC focuses on Indigenizing strategic enrollment management and Native student success by strengthening culturally grounded student support services and relevant degree programs. TCUs use key enrollment indicators (KEIs) to support Native student success, reduce socio-economic barriers, and guide students from enrollment to graduation and meaningful careers.
LPTC is redefining how completion is used as a metric for student success to ensure no student’s effort – or progress – is invisible.
Why traditional metrics miss the mark
Standard measures of college completion focus on first-time, full-time students and exclude part-time and returning students who needed to pause their studies. In addition, completion rates among full-time students are typically time bound, excluding associate degree-seeking students who receive their degrees after three consecutive years or four consecutive years. These measures do not account for the realities of most students at LPTC and other TCUs.
When success is studied through a narrow scope, a student’s total commitment to education can be overlooked.
Measuring what matters
LPTC is committed to using institutional data to foster a deeper understanding of student success. Kavya Mariboyina, Director of Institutional Effectiveness, guides these efforts and designed KEIs to align institutional reporting with the enrollment patterns of their students, developing an evidence-based completion measure to define success on their own terms.
Mariboyina explains:
“Part-time students are not the exception, they are the majority, and when success is measured mainly through full-time student metrics, we miss the real stories of our students. . . we ensure our data reflects who we truly are. This approach helps us tell more honest stories, make better decisions, and ensure that our students’ efforts and successes are not left out of the data.
Rather than relying on time-bound metrics within a cohort, LPTC tracks the overall number of students who completed their degree per term and median time to completion for both full-time and part-time students. Their 2025 institutional data show that part-time students complete their associate’s degree in 9 attended semesters and full-time students in 6 attended semesters.
Mariboyina also tracks total credit hour completion of students who have not yet graduated. This allows LPTC’s Student Support Services department to reach out to students who disenrolled just shy of completing their degree and encourage them to re-enroll with the benefit of free tuition. Because of these combined efforts, LPTC graduated 23 part-time students and 6 full-time students in May 2025 – an increase of 15 part-time students from the prior academic year. LPTC recognizes persistence in college – not speed of completion – as a meaningful indicator of student success.
LPTC President, Manoj Patil, explains the importance of this approach:
“Tracking part-time students is critical at a TCUs, as nearly two-thirds of enrolled students attend part-time, including at [LPTC]. Student success metrics and institutional outcomes can be substantially improved through intentional strategies focused on retaining and supporting part-time learners.”
Honoring Every Student Pathway
Redefining the finish line at LPTC is about more than data. It’s about visibility and accountability to community. Completion metrics that account for the realities of students’ lives acknowledge unique, non-linear pathways.
By honoring every student’s effort, LPTC ensures no one is invisible and celebrates the successes of all students, both full-time and part-time. In doing so, the college serves as a model for higher education that is more inclusive and reflective of the students they serve.
