Please join the Native American Institute in congratulating Kristin Arola, Ph.D., associate professor and the Karen L. Gillmore Endowed Associate Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures, as the new director of American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS) at MSU. Arola had served as interim director of AIIS since Dylan AT Miner, Ph.D., stepped down in spring 2022 to become the dean of the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities. Arola is a first-generation descendant of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community Lake Superior Band of Chippewa Indians located in the western end of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

“Together I believe we can make MSU a premiere institution that supports American Indian and Indigenous students, staff, faculty, and Tribal Nations,” Arola said. “AIIS will continue to offer a high-quality minor and graduate certificate to support faculty engaging in teaching and research in Indigenous Studies, and to build toward greater collaborations and visibility across campus.”

Arola is an active member of EAGLE (Educating Anishinaabe: Giving, Learning, and Empowering), currently serving as vice president of the Native faculty/staff association at MSU. She is co-PI on a National Science Foundation grant focused on partnering with rural and Indigenous communities to enable them to achieve energy sovereignty, or the right to make their own decisions about energy implementation in their communities.

Arola brings a considerable interdisciplinary range of experiences and knowledge to this prestigious program designed to illuminate American Indian and Indigenous culture across campus and the state and is well positioned to respond to the changing demands of American Indian and Indigenous peoples everywhere.

“I have had the pleasure of knowing and working closely with Dr. Arola on multiple programs and projects over the past seven years and I look forward to our continued collaboration,” said Kevin Leonard, Ph.D., director of the Native American Institute. “She is the perfect choice to lead the American Indian and Indigenous Studies program into the future. Beyond her impeccable academic record, she brings to this role an energy and willingness to look at things from a fresh perspective drawing on traditional ways of knowing and understanding that I believe will help AIIS move from an undergraduate minor to a major at MSU.”

Arola’s research and teaching focus on composing as culturing. Specifically, she explores the act of writing/designing/making and the relations that bring forth these texts. By looking at the links between land, histories, and cultures, she considers how the words, designs, and images we compose evoke the past while opening possible futures. To do this work, she brings together composition theory, making culture, digital rhetoric, and cultural rhetoric.