The lonely road... Alum helps to change the face of Indian education by Brenda McDonald, MSU Communications Services Photo by Linda Best It's been almost 40 years since a teenaged Sara Young, '87 MEd, left her home in Lodge Grass on the Crow Reservation for an exclusive prep school in Massachusetts. She had scored highly on an achievement test in 1965 and qualified for a program that sent minority students to Eastern prep schools in the belief that young people would thrive academically if removed from the poverty of the reservation. "It gave me the experience of a quality education, and I realized that the students on the reservation got a very different education from the one I was getting," Young said. "I felt that was unfair, so I decided that I wanted to have a role in changing that." This early pledge has led to Young's lifetime of work as an activist educator for Indians. Young is currently the director of the American Indian Research Opportunities (AIRO) program at MSU and was recently named Indian Educator of the Year by the Montana Wyoming Indian Education Association. Young said that her year in the East was a very lonely time. "I never saw another Native American. I couldn't call home because we didn't have a phone." After a year Young returned to Montana to be near her extended family. "It's difficult for Native Americans to leave that sense of security," she said. Education had always been important to Young. "When I was in the sixth grade I decided I wanted to go to college," she said. "I started looking at encyclopedias to learn more about college. I didn't have anyone to talk to about college. My mother didn't finish high school and didn't have much education, but she told me, 'what you learn can't be taken away from you." Young knew that after she received her college education she wanted to first return home to Lodge Grass. "I wanted my own community to benefit from the education I had been given," Young said. Her work has centered on college prep opportunities for reservation students, such as the Montana Apprenticeship Program, a summer enrichment program for Native American middle and high school students interested in biomedical/behavioral research in the health professions. Recently, she's set up opportunities for middle school students to work with native nursing students and mentors. "We want to increase the pool of potential candidates for careers in math and science," she said. "It's so important to reach middle school students so they're ready for advanced math in high school." Through AIRO her work has focused on creating a campus environment at MSU that supports Indian students as they earn their degrees. "In the AIRO program we remind students of why they make the sacrifice to leave their home communities to come to college. The reason is to better serve our people," she said. "Ninety percent of the students in AIRO want to return to their home community to serve in a professional capacity." Young is constantly on the road, commuting from Bozeman to her home in Lame Deer and traveling throughout Montana doing outreach work in reservation communities and the tribal colleges. Her husband Conrad Fisher, '91 Soc, is in charge of cultural affairs at Chief Dull Knife College. "We want the reservation communities to know that MSU will provide a welcoming environment for their young people," she said. Through one of the AIRO programs, Young is working with three tribal colleges to build a seamless educational experience between those reservation colleges and the state's universities. Young's daughters have followed in her footsteps as an educator. Frederica Lefthand, '96 MTA, '01 PR, MSU-Billings, is employed by MSU's Caring for Our Own Program in nursing and Heather Ryan, '97 ElEd, is a teacher.