4 Native American women earn master's degrees in speech-language-hearing

LAWRENCE -- Four University of Kansas Native American students, all women, have earned master's degrees in KU's speech-language-hearing Project CIRCLE program this spring. Two more will complete their master's degrees through the program during the summer 2003 term.

One of the degree candidates, Kathy Redbird of Whiteriver, Ariz., is plaiting an eagle feather onto the tassels of their mortarboards to identify them in the 2:30 p.m. May 18 commencement processional into Memorial Stadium.

"They are amazing women," says Diane Loeb, Project CIRCLE director at KU and associate professor of speech-language-hearing. "They have overcome many barriers to accomplish what they have. I have great respect for them."

Project CIRCLE is an acronym for Creating Native American Resources to facilitate Communication skills in Learning Environments. A federally funded program, Project CIRCLE was designed to increase the number of Native American speech-language pathologists. Nationally, speech-language pathologists and audiologists are underrepresented in Native American communities. The program gives students a stipend and covers tuition costs for earning graduate degrees in speech-language pathology or audiology. In turn, when they have their degrees, the graduates repay their tuition costs by working as speech-language pathologists or audiologists in a Native American community.

"They left their homes and families to come here and study," Loeb says, adding that in Native American cultures, family is one of the most important aspects of their culture and that to leave their homes to attend college may result in greater emotional hardship than in mainstream culture.

Providing speech-language and hearing services for Native Americans requires sensitivity to cultural differences when diagnosing and determining therapies, Loeb says. For example, educators or therapists in mainstream culture tend to make eye contact with clients or students, but in many Native American cultures, direct eye contact is considered disrespectful. Likewise, Loeb says she has learned that some Native American students may not respond to questions in class because their culture has taught them to demonstrate knowledge only when they have fully observed enough to feel they clearly understand a topic.

Project CIRCLE is funded through the Office of Indian Education in the U.S. Department of Education Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Brief descriptions of the four graduating speech-language-hearing master's degree students are:

Ashley Rose Makes Cry-Humphrey, a Comanche with Ponca and Choctaw heritage, learned about KU's Project CIRCLE program as she was completing a bachelor's degree in speech language pathology at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. With her master's degree, she hopes to locate a position in a Title 7 school, a reference to the federal program that provides grants for Indian and multicultural education at the elementary and secondary levels. There are more than 1,200 Title 7 schools in the United States. She became interested in speech-language pathology through Teresa Caraway, a friend and a speech-language pathologist. As a young adult, Makes Cry-Humphrey spent two consecutive summers working odd jobs in her friend's clinic and was inspired by the progress some clients achieved in a year's time. Several of Makes Cry-Humphrey's family members will attend her graduation ceremonies, including her husband, Troy Humphrey of Yukon, Okla.; her parents, Dwight and Gail Makes Cry; her grandparents, Albert and Gloria Makes Cry; and her brother and sister-in-law, Craig and Crystal Makes Cry, all of Bethany, Okla.; and her in-laws, Larry and Kay Humphrey of Yukon, Okla.

Katherine Maria Lupe Redbird, a White Mountain Apache from Whiteriver, Ariz., says she is proof that "you should never give up on your dream." She is getting a master's degree in speech-language pathology from KU and will become the first White Mountain Apache speech-language pathologist. Redbird is the first in her family of nine children to earn a master's degree. All of her living brothers and sisters have some advanced education. Redbird will wait until her youngest daughter, TK, a sophomore at Lawrence High School graduates, however, before returning to her hometown of Whiteriver. Her son will graduate from Lawrence High School in December. Redbird arrived in Lawrence with her daughter, $200 in her pocket, a rental truck packed with her household goods and an acceptance letter to enroll in KU's Project CIRCLE. Last July, her father, Adam Lupe, who had served on the Whiteriver school board for more than 20 years, died. "Education was very important to him. I know he would be proud," she says. In July, she will return to Whiteriver for the traditional White Mountain Apache memorial for her father to thank those who cared for her family during their time of grief. Redbird earned an associate's degree at Phoenix College immediately after high school. While she raised a family, 13 years elapsed before she returned to college to earn a bachelor's degree and teacher's certification at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Several of her family will be on hand for her master's hooding and graduation May 17 and 18, including her husband, Allen Redbird Jr., KU Facilities and Operation staff member, and her mother, Charlene J. Lupe, who teaches Apache crafts at a junior college in Whiteriver.

Lara Lin Reyes, a member of the Colville Confederated Tribe, Arrow Lakes Band in Washington, and related to the Warm Springs Confederate Tribe, Wasco Band, the Yakama Nation and the Swinomish Tribe, earned a bachelor's degree in speech and hearing sciences at Washington State University in Pullman. After graduating, however, she found that most speech and hearing jobs with good salaries required a master's degree in Washington state. She was working for the Washington Department of Transportation when she received a flier recruiting Native American students for Project CIRCLE and took her first step toward a master's degree by applying at KU. Her friends and co-workers followed her application progress for weeks, asking daily whether she had heard anything from KU. Reyes hopes to work in speech pathology in a Native American community in the Southwest. In addition to having friends in the Southwest, Reyes is interested in the diversity of Native American cultures there and would like her daughter, Cherrise, age 8, to experience that diversity. She is also looking at speech pathology positions in Native American communities where she is related. When she walks down the Hill in KU's graduation ceremonies May 18, her father, Lawney Reyes of Seattle, and her daughter, Cherrise, will be cheering her completion of this journey.

Julia E. Treat Stiefel, a member of the Creek Nation, plans to work with young children, birth to school age, for a nonprofit agency in Leavenworth County with the master's degree she will receive May 18 through KU's Project CIRCLE. Stiefel became interested in speech therapy in 1991 when a friend was going through intensive therapy to recover from injuries she had suffered in a car accident. Impressed with the positive impact the therapist was having on her friend's life and recuperation, Stiefel decided she would like to be a speech therapist. Stiefel, who had graduated high school in 1986 in Murphysboro, Ill., was working in sales and management and began saving for college. In 1998, she combined her savings with student loan money to enroll at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale to earn a bachelor's degree in communication disorders and sciences. By then her parents, the Rev. Jimmie and Marcia Treat, had moved to Baldwin, where her mother read about KU's Project CIRCLE program. At her mother's suggestion, Stiefel applied to the KU Graduate School. She and Scott Stiefel, an air traffic controller she met in college, married after her graduation from Southern Illinois and they agreed that she should go to KU if accepted. By the time she received acceptance, Scott's employer transferred him to Kansas. This spring, the couple bought their first home in Lawrence. On May 18, her husband, Scott; parents; brother and sister-in-law and son, Jeremy and Debbie Treat and Coy of Lawrence; and 13 members of Scott's family originally from Tripp, S.D., will watch Julia graduate. Although she graduated from high school in Illinois, Julia regards Rapid City, S.D., as her hometown because her father served as minister of the First Baptist Church there during her childhood.