UI hires pair to help Indian students

MOSCOW, Idaho – The University of Idaho has made two new hires to try to recruit more Indian students and help them succeed.

Steven Martin, 35, has been hired to head the newly created Native American Student Center. Martin, who comes from South Dakota State University’s Office of Multicultural Affairs, starts at UI next month.

In August, Arthur Taylor, 42, will become UI’s first tribal liaison. A Lapwai native and a Nez Perce tribal member, Taylor is the assistant director of multicultural student programs and services at the University of Notre Dame.

The school said Taylor will be paid $62,000 a year and Martin will earn $55,000.

Taylor is to work with students before they arrive at the campus, while Martin will help them become successful students.

UI Provost Doug Baker said the school wants to give all students the chance to mix with people from different backgrounds.

“They’re not going to have that if they just interact with students that look exactly the same as themselves,” Baker told the Lewiston Tribune. “You need a diversity of perspective and opinion, and the tribes allow us to really enrich our environment.”

Martin, born in Oklahoma, is half Muskogee Creek and half Choctaw Indian. He received a master’s degree in counseling and human development form South Dakota State University, and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Oklahoma at Norman.

Taylor worked for the UI previously as an anthropology lecturer on the Plateau Indians. He was a member of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee before taking the job at Notre Dame in 2002.

“The overall goal is to provide better recruitment initiatives and strategies for Native American students,” he said. “It’s being able to prepare high school students, especially Native American students, to enter a university setting and be successful.”

Taylor is a doctoral candidate in cultural and educational policy at Loyola University of Chicago.

He received a master’s degree in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University and earned his bachelor’s degree in foreign languages and literature from Washington State University.