Tribal College President and Students Honored by the College Fund and Adolph Coors Foundation

March 16, 2015

The American Indian College Fund honored American Indian scholarship recipients at its 2014-15 Student of the Year reception at the American Indian Higher Education Consortium Student Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The program, sponsored by the Adolph Coors Foundation, awarded each honoree a $1,000 scholarship. The program also honors a faculty or staff member at a tribal college and university for their leadership.

Michael “Mickey” Parish, president and CEO of Bay Mills Community College, received the Tribal College Leader award. Parish has been the president of the institution, located in Brimley, Michigan and serving the Bay Mills Indian Community, for 13 years.

Parish is a home-grown leader. Tribal members saw his potential and asked him to consider attending law school after he completed a bachelor’s degree. With the added encouragement from his wife, he enrolled and later became an attorney, working in areas such as child welfare, land claims, and prosecution. Parish went on to serve in tribal government for many years as a member of their Executive Council. From there he made the leap into higher education.

Parish’s goal is to ensure the tribal college benefits his tribal members. He says he takes pride in seeing how well the tribal college students do when they transfer to other institutions from the tribal college, including his granddaughter, who was named the school’s Student of the Year in 2014 and now attends Lake Superior State College, where she maintains a 4.0 grade point average. They use the school as a springboard for future success.

“Many of our students are non-traditional in that they are older, with families, and they work while they go to school part-time, so they do not always finish in two to three years. But when they finish they are proud and we are just as proud of them. That makes it all worth it.”

Thanks to Parish, Bay Mills Community College is also a leader in Michigan education. Bay Mills Community College is the only tribal college authorized by state law to charter public school academies. BMCC presently has 42 chartered academies serving over 22,000 students throughout the State of Michigan. As part of this work, Parish says student retention is a necessary focus. “We’ve seen a lot of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students dropping out of school. We try to identify programs and activities to retain these students. Although there is no magic bullet, smaller classrooms, closer teacher interactions, and making the schools a safe environment keeps them in school,” he says. Poverty is a major contributor to students dropping out, and Parish says the government does not always look at the conditions that students are living in. Often children in a family do not have money for school supplies or clothing, making consistent attendance difficult for them and leading to them falling behind.
The 2014-2015 Adolph Coors Foundation Students of the Year are:

Charmayne Healy – Aaniiih Nakoda College

Audie Petrosky Jr. – Bay Mills Community College

Burton Butterfly – Blackfeet Community College

Marshall Longie Jr. – Cankdeska Cikana Community College

Danielle Freemont – Chief Dull Knife College

Elizabeth Rice – College of Menominee Nation

Carmon Rudd – College of the Muscogee Nation

Dallas Peterman – Diné College

Alisha Smith – Fond du Lac Tribal & Community College

Connie Greene – Fort Berthold Community College

Carolyn Bigby – Fort Peck Community College

Beverly Foley – Haskell Indian Nations University

Matthew Murray – Ilisagvik College

Terran Kipp – Institute of American Indian Arts

Heather Maki – Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College

Jodee LaFave – Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College

Audrianna Goodwin – Leech Lake Tribal College

Shereena Old Elk – Little Big Horn College

Wayne Vandall – Little Priest Tribal College

Myrna Mitchell – Navajo Technical University

Sarah Zavala – Nebraska Indian Community College

Sean Lawrence – Northwest Indian College

Lacey Thompson – Oglala Lakota College

Anthony Quiroga – Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College

Stormie Perdash – Salish Kootenai College

Roger Ellert Jr. – Sinte Gleska University

Melanie Seaboy – Sisseton Wahpeton College

Jody Wingate – Sitting Bull College

JoVonna Rosetta – Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute

Ina Fox – Stone Child College

Ervin Francisco – Tohono O’odham Community College

Cole Frederick – Turtle Mountain Community College

Logan Maxon – United Tribes Technical College

Isabella Griffin – White Earth Tribal and Community College