The origin of the program Nurturing American Tribal Undergraduate Research and Education (NATURE) can be traced to an informal collaboration between the North Dakota State University Colleges of Engineering and Architecture and Turtle Mountain Community College, Belcourt, North Dakota in 1998. A team of North Dakota State University (NDSU) science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculty worked with the five ND tribal colleges to develop a proposal to increase STEM educational opportunities for American Indian students. The effort paid off when Turtle Mountain Community College (TMCC), in partnership with NDSU, was awarded a five year grant from the Office of Naval Research (An Adaptive Systemic Initiative of Tribal Collaboration for Increasing Native American Participation in Mathematics, Science and Engineering, 1999-2004), to support activities designed to stimulate the interest of Indian youth from North Dakota reservations in careers such as engineering and those involving higher level mathematics, science and technology skills. This project allowed the team to develop and implement activities such as summer camps, Sunday Academy, workshop for tribal college faculty, and a scholarship program to create new, and strengthen existing, pathways for American Indian students to pursue STEM education successfully and to seek careers in those fields. After the Office of Naval Reserach grant ended in 2004, the activities were funded piecemeal by NSF TCUP (Tribal Colleges and Universities Program) grants written by TCUs as well as Dr. G. Padmanabhan (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at NDSU) and individual NDSU faculty. This project also received support from NASA PACE program (TMCC), 2002-2005, ND EPSCoR FLITE equipment funding, 2001-2004, and NSF BRIDGES program planning grant, 2004. Though it had provided partial support initially, ND EPSCoR took the program completely under its wing in 2006 after the funding from ONR had ended. At that time, the program assumed the new title NATURE. Since then,

• ND EPSCoR has a Tribal Partnerships Manager who works to improve the effectiveness of the university-tribal college communication and collaboration,
• the University of North Dakota joined the collaboration, and
• the quality of activities previously developed has improved and participants numbers have increased.

• Tribal Colleges in North Dakota:
  • Cankdeska Cikana Community College
    • Twitter @cankdeskacikana
    • Facebook @CCCCWolves
  • Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College:
    • Twitter: @NHSC1973
    • Facebook: @NHSC1973
  • Sitting Bull College:
    • Twitter: @SittingBullColl
    • Facebook: @SittingBullCollege
  • Turtle Mountain Community College
    • Facebook: @TurtleMountainCommunityCollege
  • United Tribes Technical College:
    • Twitter: @UnitedTribesND
    • Facebook:@unitedtribestech