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About Our Partnership
The UW Tacoma School of Education partnered with Muckleshoot Tribal College (MTC) to offer two Indigenous-centered EdD cohorts (Cohort 2020 and Cohort 2023) and an MEd cohort (Cohort 2021). This partnership was a powerful commitment to shared leadership, Native-focused education, and Indigenous-centric approaches to teaching, learning, and collaboration. Housed at the Muckleshoot Tribal College, the Muckleshoot Cohort included local Tribal leaders as well as Tribally-affiliated and Tribal-focused educational leaders across Washington State and the U.S. Faculty included EdD core faculty member Dr. Dawn Hardison-Stevens, and the cohort director, Dr. Michelle Montgomery (Professor of Ethnic, Gender, and Labor Studies), as well as numerous Indigenous practitioners from across the U.S. Dr. Denise Bill, Executive Director of Adult and Higher Education, served as foundational host at Muckleshoot Tribal College, supporting all students, faculty, and staff with a deep commitment to Native Education. The entire Muckleshoot Tribal College staff, along with the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe itself, graciously supported this collaboration with the School of Education, the University of Washington Tacoma, and especially the Doctoral Program (EdD) in Educational Leadership.
The EdD Program continues to center Indigenous approaches, faculty, Tribal affiliated leaders, and Native American educators more broadly, integrating local and global Indigenous approaches with a broad critical race theory and decolonial lens. In addition to justice-oriented educators with a commitment to the EdD values, we welcome educational leaders committed to serving Indigenous and Native American communities, families, learners, organizations, and/or Tribal schools to apply to on-campus and/or online cohorts.
Artwork and logo created by Muckleshoot tribal member, Samuel Obrovac, 2021
2023 Cohort Graduates
Carrying on the traditions of her education-oriented family, Marisa Jones, ’23, Ed.D. Educational Leadership, is fulfilling her sacred obligations to future generations.
After years and decades of being told she was in the wrong place, Mona Halcomb, ’23, Ed.D. Educational Leadership, is just getting started.
Eileen Jimenez, ’23, Ed.D. Educational Leadership, embodies the spirits of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, and proudly aspires to be, like them, a persona educada.
Support from the circle of students in the Muckleshoot Cohort Ed.D. program is a key element that got Debbie Hales, ’23, Ed.D. Educational Leadership, through the rigors of her doctoral studies.
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