When David Gipp starts heading to Washington for congressional hearings, it's like a sign of spring.

He recently testified before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in support of legislation to change the funding mechanism for United Tribes Technical College and Navajo Technical College.

"You have to be persistent if you want students to be persistent," Gipp said.

Congressional testimony is part of the job as the leader of one of the country's first tribal colleges. He has led United Tribes Technical College for 30 years this May. The college is honoring him with a public reception and invitation-only dinner May 2 as part of its spring commencement activities. The reception for Gipp begins at 2 p.m. in the Jack Barden Student Life and Technology Center.

"He is a real gem for North Dakota and Bismarck-Mandan," Bismarck Mayor John Warford said. They served as co-grand marshals when the Parade of Champions and the Folkfest parades merged in 2004.

During Gipp's tenure, he's seen enrollment and programs grow, and occasional cuts in federal funding. Today, United Tribes serves about 1,100 college students and 500 elementary students. It offers 34 programs, including five degrees online.

"We were not really a college, but a training institution," when he began, Gipp said. "We needed to get certification and accreditation."

United Tribes was an over-budgeted, unaccredited tribal college on the brink of closure when Gipp arrived in 1977. Within the first 10 years of his tenure, accreditation was secured, and an associate degree program in licensed practical nursing was granted in 1987.

"It brings validity to what you do," Gipp said. "Are you who you say you are? When you talk about mission, are you serving those people?"

For United Tribes, he said the answer is yes, and the accrediting organization, North Central Accrediting, gave them accreditation for 11 years.

"One of his strengths is that he is visionary," Turtle Mountain College President Jim Davis said. Davis worked as dean of education when Gipp first came to United Tribes.

It was his vision of what United Tribes could be that brought it from what it was to what it is, Davis said, making it a better institution.

The college has grown from a work force training center to providing a liberal arts education. In the process, the college's mission has been enhanced, Gipp said. Just as the mission changed with the times, the student population changed as well. The college went from serving about 10 to 15 tribes to more than 70 tribes.

"Dr. Gipp has shown outstanding leadership," Warford said. "He has made it a great educational force in the Native American community."

Warford chose Gipp to serve on the Mayor's Human Relations Commission at its formation. Gipp was integral to its formation, Warford said. Gipp was a member of the Human Relations Commission from 2003 to 2005.

In addition to academics, United Tribes helps American Indian students live in a world outside the reservation. Gipp refers to this as the native and non-native worlds. The college's goal is to help students, and possibly employers in the future, deal with cultural differences.

The intent of the tribal college movement was to provide higher education for its own people. Gipp helped lead the movement in the early 1970s. He was the first executive director of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which was based in Denver at the time.

He came into this position after working as a tribal planner on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. His work helped establish new elementary schools at Little Eagle and Bullhead, S.D., Standing Rock High School at Fort Yates, and a new community college that eventually became Sitting Bull College.

His path into education, however, could be traced to his involvement in the University of North Dakota Indian Association, of which he is a founding member. While he was a student at UND working on a degree in political science, he noticed a trend in American Indian students coming to school and leaving, he said. Through the UNDIA, they organized tutoring, counseling and other services and events to help other American Indian students transition and persist in college.

"It was kind of my first lesson of things to see at United Tribes, helping fellow students become successful," Gipp said.

He has empathy for the students, Davis said, as well as a desire for them to be successful.

"Over the years, he has been known for wanting native people to make decisions about their own world and be successful," Davis said. "Knowing Dave, he has high expectations that may be read as being too tough or too hard. It is a reflection of him wanting native people to succeed."

At United Tribes, tutoring, counseling and other student support services are offered to help students succeed. It does this with a budget that is subject to federal budget cuts.

Every year for the last five years, the college's federal allocation from the Department of the Interior has been zeroed out, only to be returned by Congress. In the early 1980s, its funding was cut by a third, and it took about a decade to get back to the same funding level, Gipp said.

Gipp is hopeful that will change with an amendment to the Tribal College and University Act to make United Tribes and Navajo Technical College part of the act. It would give an alternative avenue for funding, through the Department of Indian Education, which distributes the tribal college funding.

Currently, United Tribes receives an allocation through the Department of the Interior. It cannot receive money the same way most other tribal colleges do because it is overseen by a board of tribes that already have tribal colleges that receive money through the Tribal College and University Act.

In addition to stabilizing federal funding, it is seeking some state funding for non-native students who attend. About 10 percent of United Tribes' students are non-enrolled tribal members or non-native students, but it does not receive any funding for them.

But Gipp tries to keep the employees focused on their purpose instead of worrying over the finances. The college has a fund drive for scholarships. They want to raise $5 million for scholarships and other endeavors at the school. The campus will expand to the south in the next five years.

It also will expand to meet its students' academic needs. Gipp's goal is to offer four-year degrees in five years. He wants the college to present a plan when its accreditation comes up in 2011.

Following the public reception for Gipp on May 2, a dinner will be served to invited guests in the UTTC Cafeteria. For ticket information, contact Brad Hawk, UTTC development director, 255-3285 ext. 1387 or bhawk@;uttc.edu.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@;bismarcktribune.com.)