This is the first in a two-part series on Indians and higher education. The series:

Today: How students decide between bigger universities and smaller tribal colleges.

Today: Developing more teachers for the reservation.

Monday: How tribal schools are working to provide an education for students in poverty areas.

Monday: A graduate tells of her road to a degree.

When Jan Janecek-Hartman says she wants her students in class she's not kidding. She will find them.

Once, she went to a student's dorm room and caught him watching cartoons when he should have been in class.

She is one of many faculty members at United Tribes Technical College who will do the same thing. Partly, it's a strict attendance policy, but it's something more that has instructors checking on their students. They want their students to succeed.

"I honest to God don't believe it's not for trying, but access and opportunity," Janecek-Hartman said.

American Indian students represent about 1 percent of students enrolled in higher education, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report on fall 2006 enrollment. White students, by comparison, represent 59 percent of students in higher education. Other ethnicities make up the remainder of students.

Some students, however, are choosing tribally-owned colleges and universities over other institutions because of the services they provide and the smaller atmosphere.

"The college environment makes me feel welcome, like family," said Keshia Kills Small, a student at Sitting Bull College on the Standing Rock reservation.

Small lives in family housing with her husband and young son. She came to Sitting Bull College from the Navajo reservation. Her mother is a member of the Standing Rock Tribe.

She's studying nursing because she wants to help people. When she's done she'd like to get a job in the Southwest, preferably on the Navajo reservation.

She wanted to go to a smaller college so that she'd have more personal attention. About 300 students attend the tribal college in Fort Yates each semester. Sitting Bull College hopes to draw 200 more students per semester after it completes a student center, which will include a library and cafeteria, and provide more stops to campus with the bus service.

Eventually, they'd like to have 1,000 students enrolled, and think student residence halls could help them attain that, said Koreen Ressler, vice president of academics at Sitting Bull College.

"It's because you're not a number, you're a person," Ressler said. "They (instructors) know everybody and do a lot of tutoring themselves."

Tribal colleges and universities educate almost 17,000 students, 80 percent of whom are American Indian, according to a 2005 report by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, the latest report available. This represents about 7 percent of American Indian students in two- and four-year colleges and universities.

The appeal of the tribal college is the close-knit community. Janecek-Hartman, who is a tribal environmental science professor at United Tribes, treats her students like family. This includes welcoming their relatives into her office. It's common for her students to be parents, as well as for them to be older than the typical college student.

Items in her office at United Tribes Technical College are out of the reach of little hands. Outside her door on the second floor of the tribal environmental science building are some toys and a TV that she can play movies. It helps keep the little ones busy while her students study or get help.

"There's a lot of nurturing," Janecek-Hartman said. "You find across campus that our students become part of our family."

She also is the director of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics education programs and outreach programs at UTTC.

Most colleges, tribal or not, have programs, student services and clubs in place to help students adjust to life on campus. Some programs are targeted at retaining American Indian students and helping them graduate.

At United Tribes, students participate in student government, service clubs and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium student conference. At the conference, students show what they've learned in their course of study against other tribal college students.

But tribal colleges take it a step further to include family services. Sitting Bull College offers a day care for students to drop off their children while in class. United Tribes has a day care, and an on campus elementary school.

"Day care and transportation are big needs for our students," Ressler said.

Sitting Bull College works with the tribal bus service to offer half-price rides, and routes that drop students off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon at the college. The bus service uses Fort Yates as a hub and has buses that come in from reservation communities, as well as Bismarck and Mobridge.

The transportation system is necessary for Sitting Bull College because it does not have student housing outside of 17 family housing units. It hopes to change this in the future with the addition of residence halls. In the meantime, the frequency of bus stops at the college will be increased, Ressler said.

United Tribes offers its own bus service for students into Bismarck.

When American Indian students choose places like the University of North Dakota, there are student groups and services to help them. The American Indian Student Service Center gives students an opportunity to connect with other American Indian students and it sponsors cultural activities.

"It's hard to imagine how wearing it is being a minority member," said Greg Gagnon, indian studies professor at the University of North Dakota.

He likens it to an analogy his wife uses about there being few women in engineering.

At the student center, they can tell jokes that other people understand, and there is a cultural understanding. It's best when they have other people from the same tribe to converse with because they can be related.

As an alternative to increasing American Indian programs at universities like UND, Ressler would like to see these organizations form partnerships with the reservation-based colleges.

The tribal colleges already make partnerships with other tribal colleges to expand opportunities for their students, while helping students stay in their communities. The partnership with Sinte Gleska University in Mission, S.D. to offer advanced degrees in special education is one example.

For institutions like UND, about two-fifths of American Indian students nationally graduate with a bachelor's degree, while three-fifths of white students earn bachelor's degrees, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report of 2000 graduation rates. Students from other races graduate between two-fifths and about two-thirds of their students. About two-thirds of Asian and Pacific islander students graduate with a bachelor's degree.

About equal numbers of American Indian students enter four-year and two-year institutions. More students earn a diploma from four-year institutions than two-year institutions.

It's Janecek-Hartman's goal to educate the students at United Tribes so that, when the time comes for someone to take her place, it will be an American Indian, she said. Janecek-Hartman has hope in people like Marla Striped Face-Collins, who received a full-ride scholarship to the University of New Hampshire to study geographical information systems.

"I've prepared a cadre of students to do what I'm doing," Janecek-Hartman said.

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