Creating Community on Campus: Attracting, Retaining, and Graduating First-Generation Native American Students

Native Americans are the single most underrepresented racial group in American higher education today; those enrolled in college are also disproportionately first-generation students. In order to help universities attract and retain Native American students, this study utilizes the four Rs of Indigenous research to document motivations of first-generation Native American students who attend and remain at a mid-sized public university in the northwest. Student participants report that social and cultural support were key factors in their decisions to attend and remain at their institution. Implications of these findings are discussed, and recommendations are made to higher education institutions seeking to attract and retain Native American students.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Journal of Minority Achievement, Creativity, and Leadership

• Publication date

  2025-08-01

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.5325/minoachicrealead.3.1-2.0003
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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