UNCW to Host Conference

UNC Wilmington will be the site of this year’s National Institute of Native Leaders in Higher Education Summer Institute. This three-day professional development conference seeks to effect change in educational policies and practices to support Native and Indigenous people within higher education.

UNCW’s Watson College of Education is partnering with the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion and the Native, Aboriginal and Indigenous Coalition and the Indigenous Student Affairs Network to host the institute, which runs July 26-28.

“This is the first time that NINLHE will be hosted on the east coast and is even more important since North Carolina is home to the largest population of Indigenous people east of the Mississippi River,” said Dr. Symphony Oxendine, professor in UNCW’s Watson College of Education and a member of the institute’s governing council. “We have a responsibility to improve and strengthen support, resources and programs that increase access and success to all aspects of higher education for our Indigenous students, staff, faculty and community members.”

Eight tribes and four urban Native communities are located in North Carolina.

“It is an honor to have the leadership within OIDI and the Watson College of Education partnering to support the institute, illustrating a commitment to supporting and increasing recruitment, retention and graduation of Native and Indigenous students,” said Oxendine. “This is an amazing opportunity for Watson and OIDI to bring a higher level of visibility to a community that has experienced continued erasure of and lack of awareness about Indigenous peoples and histories within education.”

The institute is open to anyone committed to supporting and increasing recruitment, retention and graduation of American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Indigenous students at public, private, and tribal colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, Oxendine said. The registration deadline is July 14, 2022, and information can be found here.