Marie Wilson grew up on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin. She moved to an area of Minneapolis -- largely populated with American Indians -- with her husband where she applied for an American Indian Fellowship.

Wilson (graduate-special education), one of the 11 recipients of the American Indian Fellowship this year, has every intention of returning to her native tribe to contribute to Indian education.

"I plan on eventually working on my home reservation," said Wilson, president of the Native American Indian Association. "That's the whole purpose of the fellowship."

The University's College of Education offers fellowships for graduate students in the American Indian Leadership Program, said Ted Wright, director of the American Indian Leadership Program and assistant professor of education.

American Indian students from all over the country participate in these fellowships for administration and education, Wright said.

The first fellowship was given out when the program began 21 years ago to address the lack of American Indian administrators and teachers in "Indian Country," Wright said, adding that Penn State is the first university to develop an American Indian program.

"The program has done what it's supposed to do," Wright said. "We've produced a lot of administrators and teachers."

Wilson said the program has a good reputation and enables American Indian students to attend graduate school who normally wouldn't have the opportunity because of financial barriers.

The need to replace non-native Indian administrators with Indian administrators sparked the development of the program, Wilson said.

Wright reinforced the need for Indians to hold educational positions in Indian populated areas.

"We needed to provide the leadership that a non-Indian can't," Wright said. "We needed to design programs with more of an understanding of what the tribe is all about."

The AILP currently has about 75 past fellowship recipients holding administrative positions since the program began, Wright said.

"There's still a need for Indian leadership, but it's pretty amazing how many people our program has gotten into schools," Wright said.

About 90 percent of the program's graduates have returned to contribute to Native American Indian education as administrators, professors and teachers, Wright said.

"Upon graduation, people are going to go back and work with their own tribes," Wilson said. "That's basically what happens here in this program."

When recipients accept their fellowships, they usually have every intention of returning to their home tribe, Wright added.

"I'm definitely returning," he said about the Tlingit tribe located in Sitka, Alaska.

Wright is currently working for a grant to start a tribal college in Alaska. Only 26 tribal-controlled colleges exist in the country, mainly in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, he said.