Shepherd University dean, professor share passion for indigenous studies

When Shepherd University dean Virginia Hicks saw Jennifer Penland’s application for a teaching post, she knew a common bond connected them — a passion for studying indigenous peoples.

Deeper even was the passion the experienced educators shared for the need for their students to learn about diverse cultures through personal contacts.

Hicks, Shepherd’s dean of education and professional studies, and Penland, newly hired assistant professor, have spent years studying and working with Pueblo tribes in New Mexico.

Hicks said she was “fired up” when she saw Penland’s job application.

“I now had someone with the same passion,” she said.

Penland, 49, thinks she was hired in May for the upcoming academic year because of Hicks’ fascination with her background studying and working with indigenous peoples.

Penland bought a house and has moved to the area.

Penland earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

She has taught for more than 25 years at middle and high schools, and universities and colleges, including Lamar University, Texas A&M, Dickinson State University in North Dakota and most recently at Western Wyoming Community College.

Her interest in indigenous cultures began in 2002, while teaching social studies at Lamar University. She helped two Native American students in her class who were having trouble proving their birthright.

“Indians are the only Americans who have to do this,” she said. “Birthrights are proven through blood tests.”

She began to study educational experiences of Native Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. It became the basis for her doctoral dissertation. 

“My work took me across the United States,” she said. “I studied Native American cultures in Wisconsin, Arizona, New Mexico, South Dakota and New York State.”

Since 2004, she has been taking students on field trips to study the Shoshone tribes in Wyoming, Houma in Louisiana, and Navajo and Pueblo in Arizona and New Mexico.

A 34-day cross-country bicycle trip with two companions in 1985 exposed Hicks to the Southwest.

“We rode through Albuquerque. I was fascinated with New Mexico,” she said. “I knew I wanted to learn more about Native American cultures there.”

Hicks, who has been at Shepherd for six years, grew up in the Iowa farm country. She went to a kindergarten-through-12 school that’s still there, she said. Most of her fellow students, like her, were “blond with blue eyes.”

She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Iowa, and took a job teaching at New Mexico Highlands University with its mainly Hispanic and Native American student population.
“It opened my eyes,” she said.

Hicks earned a Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico, and has been studying and working with indigenous people since.

Now that Penland is on board, she hopes Shepherd education department students can student-teach in New Mexico’s Pueblo schools.

“Maybe our nursing students can work in Native American hospitals,” she said.

It might also be possible to bring Native American students to Shepherd on exchange visits, she said.