Indigenous Youth Native STEAM Program and Conference

K-12 STEAM education

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit) City of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a citywide benefit) Antelope Valley San Fernando Valley West LA East LA Long Beach

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Native Americans are significantly underrepresented in universities nationwide, with a college attendance rate of 25.8%, compared to 39% for the overall U.S. population. This results in Indigenous people experiencing higher poverty and mortality rates, especially within LA. Even smaller fractions of Native students go on to pursue STEAM. Initial student surveys suggest that this is because of the lack of Indigenous representation in the field as well as culturally incompetent education. Current models for increasing Native recruitment and retention in STEAM often ignore Indigenous cultural values and experiences, resulting in resources that do not adequately address Native student needs. Increasing Native people in STEAM has the ability to transform modern technologies by promoting more Native-centered approaches to combat modern issues like workforce development and climate change. Studies already show that Native burning practices aid in reducing wildfires.

To increase the recruitment and retention of Indigenous students in STEAM, we will develop a Native Youth Indigenous STEAM conference. The first phase will include a meeting among American Indian Studies faculty at CSUN, The CSUN American Indian Student Association, Native community members, and Native youth from LA to understand the current needs of Native youth--including barriers to attending college--and how to increase access them. Ideas from this listening session will validate promoting Indigenous youth in this conference setting. From these high school students, we will select a cohort of six students who will receive further individualized training. Throughout this coming year, we will work with students to prepare them for college and to co-develop the 2026 conference. This conference will be online and in-person, and will diverge from typical academic conferences toward promoting more Indigenous-centered approaches. Preliminary plans for this conference include cultural workshops and presentations, children's table, planting workshop, live art demonstration by the Pacific Islander Ethnic Art Museum, booths from local nonprofits, networking activities, and vendors. In addition to organizing a Native scientist panel from different fields, there will be separate workshops for educators. Workshops will focus on teaching educators about the experiences and needs of Native students and will work with them toward developing Native STEAM curricula and activities.

Increase Native students attending college, leading to lower poverty and mortality rates among Native folks.
Increase retention and graduation rates among Natives with STEAM degrees and increased graduate school pipeline, including research.
Increased Indigenous teaching practices for LA -based educators.
While this will assist with the retention of Native students and will reduce chronic absenteeism, this initiative also has the ability to help students holding non-Indigenous identities who struggle with learning from current science teaching practices.
Following this conference, we plan on holding youth conferences annually and monitor these students' progress throughout the academic year. We also plan to partner with AISES, a Native Sciences organization, to offer even more professional mentorship opportunities. Once CSUN's Native Science lab is complete, cohorts will gain hands-on research experience. We plan to integrate Native youth into the HSI Equity Hub for STEM education.