Speaking Up for Native Students in Reno
By Amy Serrano
It’s a Friday afternoon at the University of Nevada, Reno,. Saundra Mitrovich sits at her desk in a middle office at The Center, flipping through folders while answering a phone call. A man enters her office and upon seeing who it is, Mitrovich puts the phone down on her shoulder for a moment and smiles at her visitor, lifting up a finger and mouthing “one sec.”
Mitrovich is on the phone for a minute before taking another minute to discuss an assignment with the man who had just come in. Once he leaves, she sighs, sinking further into her chair.
“Sorry about that, today’s been particularly busy for some reason,” she apologizes before taking her mug of coffee in her hand. She smiles, leaning closer to her desk.
Mitrovich is the Outreach and Retention Coordinator at The Center, an office dedicated to providing programs and services for minority students on the UNR campus. Mitrovich is one of four staff members at The Center, and is the only person at the University staffed with Native American outreach.
While “Outreach and Retention Coordinator,” is the official position title that Mitrovich holds at the University, the reality of Mitrovich’s job extends far beyond what these words entail.
“The outreach and access piece of the job is working with the 27 tribes in Nevada to ensure that they have not only direct contact with someone here at the university, as it relates to them and college, but also reaching out and making those connections to those people in our tribal communities to make sure they have support,” Mitrovich says.
Mitrovich emphasized that one of the job that made outreach services so important were the professional network and partnerships that she has to make and maintain. This includes collaborating with the Nevadan tribes — especially rural tribes — to talk education, early outreach and how these tribes can be advocates for higher education.
The retention aspect of the job, Mitrovich says, is harder, since it directly ties with the resources that the University provides for Native American students, which, as could be indicated by the small staff at The Center, is not much.
Although resources and funding may be slim, Mitrovich still provides as much as she can for her students and is continually always pushing new programs and services to help the students that she works with.
“The retention part of the job lies where we’re asking the questions like, “do they have access to work study,” or potential jobs on campus,” she says. Unhappy with the answers to the latter question, Mitrovich herself has started an initiative that brings in one Native student intern during the summer who can help bring in speakers and coordinate cultural activities for The Center.
Moving Forward
Until recently, Mitrovich was convinced that this wasn’t enough. The Center used to have graduate assistants, but due to funding, this asset to diversity renention and outreach had to be cut. Since then, Mitrovich has pushed for grants that will provide the money needed to help more disadvantaged Native American students, rather than just one per summer.
Many of these grants were shot down. However, at the time of the interview, with a smile, Mitrovich had announced that she had just received news that she had gotten an NYCP grant approved. With this, she hopes she will have enough funding dedicated to her retention resources, where she can have more than one Native outreach intern and can have them year long instead of just during the summer.
This advancement should make the University’s Native American outreach practices run much smoother, since with only Mitrovich working the entirety of the program, services can run thin at times.
“If I’m out there doing outreach, then I’m not here doing retention, persistence, or graduate services. Having more people to help balance the work will definitely help tremendously” she explains.
As she is only one of four working at The Center and with the Center being the office for resources for diverse and minority students at UNR, Mitrovich also spends her time dealing with student concerns, especially where the conversation about safety is involved.
Mitrovich does not receive many complaints from Native American students in comparison to other minority groups on campus regarding safety , citing that this may be because her students are less interested in the political discourse that surrounds university life. The coordinator pointed out that her students take a more apathetic approach to campus life, saying that Native American kids generally just want to graduate and not much more.
One thing that Mitrovich mentioned, however, was that she had begun to notice a question that has started to be repeated to the students that come to her. According to Mitrovich, students at UNR are more frequently asking Native students “why are you here?”
“People tell the students I work with “Why don’t you just transfer if you have problems with UNR?” and it’s like, indigenous people have been removed already. Over and over around the country, around states, around counties,” says Mitrovich.
Giving Back
With so many responsibilities and so few resources allotted to Mitrovich, I had to wonder what kept Mitrovich going and passionate about her job.
When I asked, she initially seemed surprise. Service to Native communities has almost always been an aspect of Mitrovich’s life. Originally from Northern California, Mitrovich comes from the Maidu Native American tribe.
“Just by growing up around the Maidu tribe, I was always surrounded by people with connections to tradition, connections to service and native communities,” Mitrovich explains.
Her service record extends just that of her tribe though. Non-profits and helping others has been an interest to Mitrovich. As a child, she was active in the conversations that were centered around Native American youths, and as a result, attended programs and conferences around the country. In college, she was active in service projects like AmeriCorps and TRiO. From there, becoming the outreach and retention coordinator at The Center only seemed like the natural and right thing to do.
“It’s the idea of resiprocity again — giving something of yourself, your time, your energy, to then help someone else on their journey so it’s always been a part of what,” she says.
Despite the fact that The Center has a long way to go before fully becoming what their staff dreams that they will achieve one day, it’s clear with Mitrovich’s journey that the staff work hard to make sure that students lives on campus are as easy and comfortable as possible.
