University of Arkansas faculty and administrators recently met with representatives of the Cherokee Education Services Administration to seek opportunities for educational collaboration.

Tom Smith, dean of the College of Education and Health Professions; Stacy Leeds, dean of the School of Law and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation; Mike Daugherty, head of the department of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education and Health Professions; and Freddie Bowles, associate professor of foreign language education, traveled to Tahlequah, Okla., capitol of the Cherokee Nation, on March 31 at the invitation of Gloria Sly, education liaison for Cherokee Nation Education Services.

Joining Sly at the Cherokee Immersion Charter School were Leroy Qualls, Sequoyah Schools superintendent; Jolyn Rose, Sequoyah High School principal; and three officials of the Cherokee Nation: Neil Morton, senior advisor; Bill Andoe, deputy executive director; and Principal Chief Bill John Baker. 

Discussion centered on educational partnerships in the area of STEM (science, technology, education and mathematics) education and teacher preparation. Bowles had previously met with Sly, Morton and Qualls in 2012 to arrange for an internship placement at Sequoyah High School.  As a result of that meeting, Rose hosted the first University of Arkansas Spanish language intern in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program in the spring of 2013.

The meeting March 31 concluded with a tour of the immersion school classroom by Principal Hollie Davis, where the visitors had the opportunity to observe instruction in the Cherokee language in a first-grade class. According to an article on the Cherokee Nation website, the Cherokee Immersion Charter School graduated 10 students in its first graduating sixth-grade class in 2012, students who started as 3-year-olds in 2002-03. Students who start in preschool are generally conversational in the Cherokee language by the third grade and graduate fluent in Cherokee, as well as read and write in the Cherokee syllabary, the article said.