The goal of the new American Indian Studies director is to raise program awareness.
On July 1, Angela Gonzales took up her position.
Angela Gonzales will take over as the head of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University, according to a statement from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. On July 1st, she assumed her official duty.
Gonzales is leaving her position as the Center for Indian Education (CIE) as ASU’s acting director. She is a professor at the School of Social Transformation and has held the positions of associate director and faculty lead for justice studies in the past.
Gonzales is a citizen of the Hopi Nation and a native of Arizona. She was an instructor at Cornell University prior to joining the faculty at ASU in 2016. She worked with Haudenosaunee villages in upstate New York during her time there, but she continued to monitor ASU’s increasing number of Native faculty members and tribally engaged research.
She remarked, “I really wanted to be at a place where you could count on one hand the number of Native faculty members.” “The level of Native presence and community engagement occurring here at ASU is simply unmatched.”
Gonzales is profoundly committed to research, teaching, and service that advance our knowledge of the history, experiences, and economic, social, cultural, and psychological well-being of Indigenous people. This commitment is the foundation of his vision for the future of American Indian Studies at ASU.
In addition to its staff and student body, Gonzales highlighted that ASU’s charter and dedication to American Indian tribal communities and people are among its many strengths.
She plans to transfer to American Indian Studies and bring with her the online master’s program in Indigenous education offered by the CIE. Teachers and program administrators who work with Native kids can receive advanced training in research, philosophy, and practice relating to Indigenous education and policy through this program. The curriculum features a Native Hawaiian track in collaboration with the Kamehameha Schools of Hawaii, which has almost doubled the program’s enrolment.
“Students from many local reservations, as well as from Indigenous communities across the U.S., have a vital opportunity to earn an advanced degree while staying embedded in their home communities thanks to this program,” she said. “The shift to American Indian Studies will help address critical needs for student mentoring and instruction while also leveraging the expertise of current faculty members.”
Gonzales, a Cornell faculty member, worked with the Hopi Tribe on a five-year study titled “A Cluster-Randomized Trial to Evaluate a Mother-Daughter Dyadic Educational Intervention for Increasing HPV Vaccination Coverage in American Indian Girls.” The goal of the two-part study on the human papillomavirus (HPV) was to find out which American Indian women had high-risk HPV types and to raise knowledge about HPV vaccinations and parental acceptability.
“We were able to develop educational materials that integrated Hopi cultural values and knowledge to increase knowledge about HPV, as well as screening and vaccination rates in the community,” the spokesperson stated, citing the information she had gathered.
Gonzales is assisting in leading ASU’s Indigenous Health Research Equity Initiative, a campus-wide program that celebrates Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being through all facets of the research life cycle and encourages community-centered research. Through funding from the Genentech Health Equity & Diversity in STEM Innovation Fund, the initiative develops solutions that support tribal sovereignty and self-determination in building high-performing, tribally controlled health care systems that improve the health and well-being of tribal citizens. It focuses on the structural drivers of Indigenous health equity.
Gonzales is an interdisciplinary researcher who is currently collaborating with colleagues at the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics on the Arizona Youth Identity Project. The goal of the project is to comprehend the national identity and self-perceptions of young adults who identify as Native Americans, Latinos, and White.
Gonzales, a member of the Hopi tribe, is still in constant contact with the Hopi Nation. He has held positions as founding board member and president of the Colorado Plateau Foundation, as well as board president of the Hopi Education Endowment Fund. The fund serves as a foundation that makes it possible for Hopi students in the future to pursue higher education.
I am dedicated to “paying it forward” to make sure that future Hopi students have the chance to pursue higher education. I am a recipient of tribal grants and scholarships that financed my undergraduate and graduate education,” she stated.
Gonzales studied sociology at the University of California, Riverside, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Her desire to understand more about race, identity, and how people see the racialization of their identity sparked her interest in the topic. She then went to Harvard University, where she finished her PhD in sociology and earned her master’s degree in education.
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