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Heritage University commencementAll photos are courtsy of Heritage University.
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THeritage University commencementAll photos are courtsy of Heritage University.
"I look up, and I feel the spirits of my ancestors all around me,” Gilmer says. “I feel that they’re bonding with the ancestors of the first people of this place.”
It’s an unlikely setting for a university — the middle of the Yakama Reservation in central Washington. But Heritage University has always been about defying expectations. As the largest private institution situated on a reservation in the United States, it stands as testament to what becomes possible when Native communities and committed allies work together toward educational equity.
“Tell us one thing we can’t do”
Dr. Chris Gilmer
“Most of them had no education beyond high school, but they were someone that was a good mother with their own kids or a good aunt,” Sister Kathleen, who served as vice president of academic affairs at Fort Wright, recalls. “Part of what impressed me was, there’s a lot of talent here that’s never been developed. We have untapped talent, talent that can be so meaningful if it’s developed.”
But before she could make the four-hour drive from Spokane to Yakama, Mount St. Helens erupted, covering the region in pulverized volcanic glass for more than a week. When she finally delivered the news, the women’s response surprised her: “Let’s start our own college.”
Sister Kathleen’s reaction was immediate: “What? You guys are crazy.”
Martha Yallup had a challenge for her: “Tell us one thing we can’t do.”
That line — now inscribed on a wall as students enter the academic skills center — became the founding principle of Heritage University. Today, 43 years later, the institution has awarded more than 11,000 diplomas and is thriving.
A tribal council’s wisdom
The Yakama Nation Tribal Council, led by Chairman Mel Sampson, faced a crucial decision: Should Heritage become a tribal college? After deliberation, Sampson’s answer was no — but his reasoning reflected a generous vision for the entire valley.
Heritage quickly became a Native American-Serving Nontribal College — the only private university in the nation that is both federally designated as Hispanic-serving and Native American-Serving Nontribal.
“We serve the tribe in every way we can, but we’re not directly governed by the tribe,” Gilmer explains. “We are located on the reservation and 17 percent of our students this year — the highest in our history — identify as Native American, but we have our own independent board which includes members of the Yakama Nation and others.”
The first facility was a decommissioned 1926 elementary school in the city of Toppenish, right in the middle of the reservation, rented for $100 a month. Behind it stood a four-room building that had once housed a school janitor.
“The paint was coming off the walls,” Sister Kathleen, the school’s founding president, remembers. With no money for renovations, the earliest staff members did the work themselves.
Financial crises were constant. Fifteen years in, during a 1997 board finance committee meeting about an impossible budget shortfall, Sister Kathleen was interrupted by her secretary, Betty — the wife of the tribal council chairman who had helped launch Heritage. A call couldn’t wait.
On the line was Alan Pifer, the recently retired chair of the Carnegie Corporation, who was calling with some good news. Sister Kathleen had been named a MacArthur Fellow, with substantial funding over five years. “I said, ‘What’s a MacArthur Fellow?’” she recalls with a chuckle. Heritage lore holds that just before the call, she had told the worried finance committee that “God will provide.” When the MacArthur money came — designated for Sister Kathleen personally as a member of her religious order — she turned to the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary for guidance about how to use it.
“Of course, I have the order that I belong to,” she explains. “I thought, ‘I’m going to have to ask the order for all that money for Heritage.’ And of course, they said yes. They cared about what was happening, and they didn’t have extra money of their own to provide, and so they said, ‘Oh, yes, you keep it.’” She poured the money along with her love into Heritage University.
A president who understands the mission
When Dr. Christopher Gilmer arrived at Heritage in July as the university’s fourth president, he brought more than just credentials — he brought lived experience of what Heritage students face every day.
“Heritage University creates access to the education that makes dreams come true,” Gilmer said when his appointment was announced. “My family sacrificed everything for me to be the first to attend college, and my life is living proof of their sacrifice. Education is the great equalizer because it unlocks transformational power in families and communities.”
Gilmer’s career has been dedicated almost exclusively to serving the students most often left behind. He served as president of two Appalachian universities — West Virginia University at Parkersburg and West Virginia University Potomac State College — where he worked with rural, first-generation students navigating economic hardship and geographic isolation. He has served as faculty member and administrator at three Historically Black Colleges and Universities, including Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, where he was vice president for strategic initiatives and social justice. He also served at Adams State University in Colorado, a Hispanic-Serving Institution, as vice president for academic affairs, and over the years he earned the faculty rank of tenured full professor.
His commitment to underserved students extends beyond individual institutions. Gilmer is the founder of the National Institutes for Historically-Underserved Students, sharing best practices across institutions that serve similar populations.
This background made him immediately recognize what makes Heritage special. His initial interview visit with the board and community impressed E. Arlen Washines, an elder of the Yakama Nation, who currently serves on Heritage’s Board of Directors.
“He’s basically a grassroots kind of guy — down to earth,” says Washines. “He grew up in a similar community atmosphere as we have here, which is one of traditional values. He grew up in that kind of environment with his mother, father, his family, and his elders. He’s a good listener. He likes to listen more so than talk.”
Creating culturally responsive education
What makes Heritage unique is not just its location on the reservation, but its deep commitment to serving Native students in culturally responsive ways. Washines, retired from the Yakama Nation Higher Education Programs, teaches as an adjunct professor at the university and has been instrumental in building Heritage’s approach to Native education.
“I teach humanities, Native American studies — basically the history of our people here, the Yakama people,” he explains. “One of the things we tried to do was to increase the Native student population here, not just Yakama, but all Indigenous students.”
The results speak to Heritage’s appeal. “Our tribe has the most Yakama Nation students here at this university than at any other tribal-serving institution across the United States,” Washines says with pride.
This success didn’t happen by accident. Heritage deliberately recruited a staff that reflects and understands Native students’ experiences.
“Not only has our student population increased, but also the staff,” Washines notes. “All the way from the recruitment people who visit high schools, some are Native. Native students have a tendency to listen and want to talk to them more because they’re familiar with their background. Some of them even know their family, know each other personally.”
Washines’ daughter, Lateet, (his niece by blood, but his daughter in Yakama tradition where brothers’ children are called one’s own children),
experienced this shift firsthand. “Right out of high school, I applied here, but at that time there wasn’t anyone in the admissions office like me,” she recalls. “But a few years later when I came and applied again, they had a Native woman in admissions to help Native students come in, so that way it felt more like a connection and a familiarity.”
The Full Circle Scholarship, implemented at Heritage a few years ago, covers all remaining tuition and fees after federal and state aid for enrolled members of the Yakama Nation.
A place to belong
For Native students who might feel lost at larger institutions, Heritage offers something invaluable: a sense of belonging. “A lot of the students that do come here feel more comfortable than at Washington State University or University of Washington, where they get lost,” Washines says. “Here, you won’t get lost.”
The university’s small size — approximately 1,000 students on the main campus in Toppenish and a second campus in Kennewick — creates an intimate environment. “You get more one-on-one attention here,” Washines explains.
His daughter, a current student, appreciates the diversity of ages among Heritage students. “I actually like it because it’s a way to encourage many more people to come, whether they are right out of high school, a few years down the road later, or middle-aged people,” says Lateet. “I see adults who are my parents’ age there too.”
This intergenerational learning environment reflects traditional Indigenous values of learning from elders and sharing knowledge across age groups. It also serves a practical purpose: many Native students are balancing family responsibilities, work, and education.
“A lot of our students really value the opportunity to live at home,” Gilmer explains. “Almost all of our students have some sort of employment, some sort of responsibility for helping to meet the financial needs of their families, and they really choose to come to Heritage because they want to get a high-quality education without leaving home.”
The university’s decision not to build dormitories allows local students to remain with their families — something many value deeply — though it limits recruitment from distant reservations.
“A tribal member from Oregon wants to come to school here, they have to have a family member that lives here because we don’t have dormitories,” Washines acknowledges. “But then again, the students that come here don’t have to pay that cost for living in the dorm.”
Heritage’s commitment to Native students extends into campus culture. With 17 percent Native American students and 70 percent Hispanic students, Heritage creates what Gilmer calls “a very special cultural experience on our campus.”
Washines sees Heritage’s educational mission extending beyond individual student success to broader cultural understanding.
“One of the things we really want to do is to educate educators — not only the teachers, but the administrators — so that educators that go out into the public schools, the non-Indigenous teachers, they’re aware of our culture, our tradition,” he says. “They have a little understanding when they meet and talk and teach our kids in school, so they have a little bit more appreciation and respect for our culture and our traditional ways.”
Teaching students to succeed
Heritage’s success isn’t just about financial access or cultural responsiveness. It’s about understanding what first-generation students need to thrive. Eighty-five percent of Heritage students are first-generation college students. Ninety-seven percent meet the definition of low income, compared to about 60 percent at other private universities in Washington.
Sister Kathleen wrote extensively about this in her book Breakthrough Strategies, published by Harvard Education Press. Most faculty members come from families where college was familiar, where parents could offer advice. But for students from families where no one had attended college, there is a much steeper learning curve about processes such as obtaining financial aid, requiring extensive wraparound student support services.
Gilmer is planning to launch the Kathleen Ross Institute for Student Success, which will share Heritage’s model with institutions across the country.
“Almost nobody has higher than the 85 percent first-generation student rate that we have,” he says. “Almost nobody graduates and retains them at a higher rate than we do. That tells you that the wraparound services that we offer, the familial environment that we create is very successful.”
His philosophy is clear: higher education must be accessible to all.
“I don’t give anybody a pass. A student needs to bring me the very best they have. They need to try hard all day, every day. They need to be willing to make the sacrifice to make it happen,” he says. “I’m not suggesting that we give it to them, but if they want it and they’re willing to work hard enough to earn it, then I am suggesting that it’s their birthright, just the same as it is anyone else’s. Everyone is ‘college material.’”
Native excellence: reclaiming the narrative
Heritage isn’t just serving Native students — it’s producing Native leaders who return to serve their communities. Dr. Gregory Sutterlict, head of the Yakama language program, earned his doctorate from the University of Oregon after starting as a Heritage student. His work preserving and teaching the Yakama language represents the kind of culturally vital scholarship that Heritage makes possible.
Dr. Shelby Clark’s story is equally powerful. A registered member of the Yakama Nation, she went through Heritage’s nursing program as a student, then earned her doctoral degree in nursing. Today, she is the Gaye and Jim Pigott Endowed Chair of Nursing and brings both professional expertise and cultural understanding to training the next generation of Native and other rural healthcare providers.
Environmental science has emerged as one of Heritage’s most popular majors, particularly among Native students. This makes perfect sense to the locals who point out that Indigenous communities have been environmental stewards for millennia, and the Yakama Nation manages vast tracts of forest and rangelands. Environmental science education connects to traditional knowledge and contemporary tribal needs.
Washines sees potential for even more alignment between Heritage’s programs and tribal needs. He’s particularly excited about Gilmer’s idea for an aviation program. “Within our tribe, that’s something that we could use because of the vast acreage of forest lands, rangelands that we have, not only in terms of management of the forest, but also with fire protection.”
The education programs address another critical need. “Especially on our homelands here on the Yakama Reservation, we need more Native teachers in our public schools,” Washines emphasizes. “We have two public schools located on our reservation, and we don’t have quite the numbers of Native teachers that we need, as well as administrators.”
The master of social work program represents another strategic investment in tribal community health, while graduate enrollment overall has jumped 39 percent in the past year.
Looking forward: expanding Native education
“After three months as president, I call Heritage the essential university,” Gilmer says in an interview. “A lot of extremely talented people probably never would pursue a college education if we weren’t right in their backyard.”
While Heritage will continue serving the Yakima Valley, Gilmer sees potential for growth through online and hybrid programs that serve everyone, including Native American tribes across the country without straining physical infrastructure. This vision would extend Heritage’s culturally responsive model to Native students on distant reservations who face similar challenges.
The university has already collaborated with Salish Kootenai College in Ronan, Montana, hosting cohorts pursuing bachelor’s degrees in forestry, a program Heritage doesn’t offer.
This kind of collaboration among Native-serving institutions could expand through Heritage’s online initiatives, creating networks of support that transcend geographic barriers, particularly through partnerships Gilmer hopes to build with the more than 700 Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) nationwide.
The miracle in the field
When Sister Kathleen drives onto campus today and sees the modern buildings where an open field once stood, she thinks about all the people who believed when others doubted.
One was Father William J. Sullivan, then-president of Seattle University. When Sister Kathleen presented Heritage’s case to join the Independent Colleges of Washington as a brand-new institution, she could see the skepticism on some of the presidents’ faces. But Father Sullivan told the group: “We all started somewhere.”
That support opened doors to national associations, where Sister Kathleen met people like Alan Pifer, who introduced Heritage to other foundation leaders. The university now has a building named in his honor.
The university recently raised $1.2 million in one evening at its annual Bounty of the Valley scholarship dinner. “Out here in the middle of a hops field,” Gilmer marvels. “I know Ivy League universities that would be pleased with raising $1.2 million in one evening.”
“When I drive on campus, it’s just kind of like, wow, this is kind of a miracle,” Sister Kathleen says. But she’s more moved by another number: 11,000 diplomas awarded since the school was founded four decades ago. “I know every one of those people has done something to use the gifts that God gave them to make a difference for other people.”
For Gilmer, Heritage’s location on the Yakama Reservation carries profound meaning. He sees his ancestors’ spirits connecting with those of the Yakama people, recognizing shared struggles and shared aspirations across time and geography.
“It’s a challenging time in American higher education right now,” he says matter-of-factly. “But if three women — two Yakama Nation members and one Catholic sister — could stand in the middle of a field and will a university into existence, who’s to say what’s possible when Native communities have access to education on their own terms?”
As Heritage prepares for its 50th anniversary, its commitment to Native students and communities remains central to its identity. In a nation still grappling with the legacy of Indian boarding schools and forced assimilation through education, Heritage offers a different model: education that respects culture, honors family, and recognizes that Indigenous students aren’t problems to be fixed, but assets to be celebrated.
Gilmer’s commitment is clear: “Since I can never repay my ancestors, I am committed to paying it forward.”
At Heritage, he’s found the perfect place to do exactly that.
