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P18
December 2013
S
ydney Poolheco
and
Prudence Tsosie
grew up a decade and 200 miles apart in
or near Indian Country, nurtured by large
communities that valued education.
Each took a different path to Grand Canyon
University, which has a Native American student
population of nearly 750 on campus and online.
Both found encouragement, guidance and
friendship in their new homes.
Poolheco, an 18-year-old Hopi from Winslow, Ariz.,
visited GCU during high school. “I grew up being
told I was going to college whether I liked it or not,”
said the freshman pharmacy major. “When I got on
campus, students just came up to say hi, and I felt
like I could fit in here.”
She had traveled to the East Coast on middle-school
trips, so homesickness wasn’t expected. Two weeks
into the semester, however, she felt overwhelmed
and tired, and she went home to see her mother,
Stephanie Poolheco
,
two brothers and other
relatives. It was the right medicine.
Poolheco, who lives on campus and has grown close
to her three roommates, knows that
Kim Judy
,
a
GCU tribal liaison, “has open arms if I need to talk.”
Poolheco meets periodically with Hopi officials
wanting to ensure her well-being, as the tribe
funds part of her education.
“They want Native American kids to go to college
and succeed, to become known as doctors
and lawyers in the world, and to know they can
become anything they want,” she said.
Tsosie, an education major, studies online and
lives in Phoenix with her two children and their
father,
Spencer Dan
. She grew up in Shiprock,
N.M., on the Navajo Nation, and her father,
Larry
, was a school principal. Education was the
family’s priority.
Armed with an associate’s degree from Diné
College, Tsosie, 32, moved to Phoenix in 2005,
planning to attend Arizona State University.
“Coming from reservation land with three stores
and nothing else to the city was a huge transition
for me. I didn’t know how to get on the bus, I
didn’t know the major cross streets. Everything
was so cluttered.”
She put her education on hold and found a job,
working her way up at a local carpet-cleaning
company from receptionist to office manager.
In 2010, she noticed a GCU billboard near
the freeway.
“Something told me later on that this was going to be
in my future,” she said.
That future was 2011.
“When I started out years ago, I didn’t have a
purpose,” said Tsosie, who will graduate next
October. “I have that now, and I like what GCU says:
‘We are going to be here for you from the start to
the finish.’”
Poolheco and Tsosie are inspired by family members
who, in contrasting ways, have spurred them to
succeed. Poolheco is her family’s intermediary with
doctors for an elderly, diabetic aunt. She wants to be
that for her family and tribe, possibly from Flagstaff.
Tsosie wants to return to Shiprock to teach.
“I don’t see a lot of Natives becoming teachers,”
Tsosie said, “and many teachers back home are
older and retiring. And I want my daughter to know
her relatives.”
There’s another reason. In June, Tsosie’s nephew,
DamianYas Chee
, was struck and killed by a motorist
on a highway in northeastern Arizona. At 9, the boy
already knew he wanted to be a school principal.
“I am motivated to do well and finish for him,”
she said.
■
WITHOUT RESERVATION
Hopi, Navajo students are
inspired by others to succeed
– by Janie Magruder
Sydney Poolheco (left) and Prudence Tsosie see the value of having
a college education in their Native cultures. Photo by Darryl Webb