School of Engineering celebrates 50th anniversary of its Native American Program
November 25, 2025
Earlier this month, dozens of alumni of the Native American Program, College of Engineering gathered to celebrate the program’s 50th anniversary at Fifty Years of Impact: Celebrating the Legacy of NAPCOE, the first university program in the country dedicated to serving Native American engineers.
Throughout its history, the program has provided students with community, scholarships, internships and a pre-engineering summer experience, all with the goal of increasing the number of Native American engineers. NAPCOE, which became NASTEM in 2011, served as a launching pad for the Engineering Student Success Center, which has grown to provide resources to students across five engineering departments and computer science.
NAPCOE got its start in 1975 with the support of a $331,000 grant from the Sloan Foundation and nearly $680,000 from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Tribal support, a total that amounts to about $6 million in 2025. The program had been the vision of Dean Emeritus Bill Gross, Assistant Dean Martin Bradshaw, and Carol Metcalf, a member of the UNM Native American Studies program.
The anniversary celebration, held Nov. 7, welcomed program alumni and supporters back to campus for a social hour with the UNM American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) student chapter and a dinner banquet with remarks from five alumni, two members of the Engineering Student Success Center, and Jim and Ellen King Dean of Engineering and Computing Donna Riley. Alumni spoke about the origins of NAPCOE, the impact it had on their academic and career success, and the role its organizers played in establishing AISES, a national nonprofit aimed at increasing Indigenous representation in STEM.
Origins of NAPCOE
Robert Whitman (UNM ‘77), one of the original staff members of the program, was among just a handful of Native American students in Engineering when he attended UNM in the 1970s. Whitman grew up near Churchrock in a hogan with no running water or electricity. When he came to UNM for college, he was discouraged from studying anything related to math and science and told instead to think about a Native American Studies degree.
“All the Native students were on the other side of campus,” he said. But Whitman wanted to study electrical engineering, so he persisted.
One day during his fifth semester, he was called into a meeting with Dean Gross, who told Whitman the school would be forming a program to support Native American students. As a student well into his degree, Dean Gross wanted to know what had helped him succeed. Whitman explained that tutoring, support from classmates and joining the IEEE student chapter had made the difference. They wrote down everything he said, but Whitman didn’t think anything would come of the idea.
He left for a semester-long work program at NASA and when he returned to school in Fall 1975, NAPCOE had formed under the leadership of Carol Metcalf. Whitman was hired to be a student tutor and recruiter for the Navajo Nation. Being away from his studies was hard, but he made it work.
“I met my future wife, Mary, through the NAPCOE program. We shared a desk because she was Carol’s assistant,” he said.
The following year, NAPCOE hired a new director, Jim Shorty, who became a Navajo mentor for Whitman. After graduating, Whitman went on to earn his doctorate, work for IBM, serve as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at UNM, and eventually an emeritus teaching professor of electrical engineering at the University of Denver.
“Returning to campus and seeing so many Native American students in the STEM fields is fantastic,” he said. “Don’t quit. Don’t let difficulties hold you back.”
Belonging in the scientific community
Throughout the evening, one sentiment resounded: Indigenous people have a place in STEM.
Douglas Williams, who serves as the NASTEM program manager, AISES advisor and UNM Engineering Student Success Center unit administrator, has seen Native American alumni graduate and go on to have tremendous careers in their respective fields.
“We as Indigenous people are meant to be part of the scientific and engineering community,” Williams said. “We have been stewards of these lands for countless generations. Who better than us to have a say in how this world is shaped?”
The celebration served as a bookend for Sandra Begay (UNM ‘87), who retired from a nearly 34-year career with Sandia National Laboratories on the day of the event and took part in NAPCOE as a student. “Isn’t it fitting that where you started and got your credentials is where you celebrate your professional retirement,” she said.
Begay felt like she belonged at UNM from the moment she set foot on campus, but it wasn’t without its challenges. “Coming from Gallup, I thought the world was 80% Navajo. When I got to UNM, it was so much more diverse,” she said.
Begay described her younger self as extremely shy.
As students, Begay and Paul Kabotie (UNM ‘91) were both immediately welcomed to join the Society of Hispanic Engineers, a large student organization with a significant presence across the campus. While they enjoyed the camaraderie of the group, it made them wonder what it might be like to have a student organization for Indigenous students in the School.
In 1983, the national AISES conference was held in Albuquerque, where Begay said “national Native leaders came to the city to encourage students to finish their degrees and work for Indian Country.” At the conference, several UNM students found each other and decided to form a student chapter of AISES, which had been established nationally in 1977 with support from Metcalf and Shorty, among others.
The chapter served as the student organization the students had been looking for, and its founding members have stayed in contact even decades later.
Finding support on campus
Kabotie faced challenges before coming to college. He was kicked out by his parents at 14 and forced to live with family that didn’t have a lot of time for him.
“Growing up Native, there are a lot of hard realities a lot of us go through,” Kabotie said. “College was a beacon I thought could be my escape.”
Kabotie earned academic scholarships to come to UNM. He couldn’t believe he had money for the first time in his life, but the sheen wore off when he realized how expensive living in Albuquerque was. It was challenging to navigate a big institution like UNM, but he was approached by Tom Cummings, a recruiter with NAPCOE. Despite the support from friends and the program, Kabotie struggled in school and eventually lost his scholarships. He dropped out, thinking he wasn’t college material and that he didn’t have his life together like he hoped.
Cummings stayed in touch with Kabotie and offered him a place to live for free if he returned to school. The offer allowed him to go back, where he learned to code on a NAPCOE computer donated by HP. During a career fair, a recruiter from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory saw the computer and offered him a summer position. The paid opportunity to live and work in California helped motivate him to finish his degree after nine and a half years of studying.
Cummings’ support made all the difference for Kabotie, who said the NAPCOE recruiter would write a full stack of notes every day just to check in with people. That follow-up made all the difference.
“If you’re ever feeling like you can’t do it, a lot of us have been there,” Kabotie said. “It just takes the right mindset.”
Fostering career growth
When Levi Bowman (UNM ‘04) arrived at The University, he experienced some culture shock. From growing up in Laguna Pueblo where most people were Native, to attending a college with so many other races and ethnicities, he felt a little out of place at first. The student chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers welcomed him in, as it had for Begay and Kabotie decades prior, but when he was approached about joining NAPCOE, things really fell into place. It gave him a place to hang out with friends and nap between classes.
“I have so much gratitude for NAPCOE and AISES for taking people in,” Bowman said.
The program helped Bowman earn scholarships and get an internship with Lockheed Martin. Now he works as a computer engineer with the National Nuclear Security Administration.
“I wouldn’t be where I’m at in my career if it weren’t for NAPCOE.”
George Gorospe (UNM ‘12), now a senior research engineer with the NASA Ames Research Center, was once a university sophomore interested in applying to the NASA summer internship program. When he didn’t get in, Gorospe was distraught. Maurice Thompson, then-program manager of NAPCOE noticed and jumped into action when he found out about Gorospe’s interest in doing the internship. “Let me make some calls,” Gorospe recalled Thompson telling him. Soon after, Thompson had secured Gorospe a spot with the NASA Tribal Colleges and Universities Program. Thompson told him it was just the start, and he would need to go out to NASA AIMS and work hard for everyone back at UNM.
Recalling his first day, Gorospe said his internship mentor showed him an old, defunct rover he wanted Gorospe to develop new software for. Left to his own devices, Gorospe panicked before taking out his notebook and writing down everything he observed about the robot. After two weeks, he hadn’t made anything work. He went to his mentor, thanked him for the opportunity, and said that while he was good at MATLAB, the program wouldn’t work for coding the robot, so he thought he should leave the program.
Gorospe’s mentor reminded him it had only been two weeks, and asked him what programming language he thought might work. When Gorospe told him C++, a language he didn’t know, his mentor handed him a book titled “Learn C the Hard Way,” and told him to try it. He spent eight hours a day for weeks reading the book and learning C++. When he went to his mentor and said he could make it work, his mentor told him, “Great, but I want you to do it in LabVIEW instead.” So Gorospe read another book and learned another programming language. By week nine of the 10-week internship, the robot was still nonfunctioning, but he finally knew how to proceed. Each day of the final week, he worked on the programming. By the end of the program, not only was it up and running, he had programmed his smartphone as a remote controller.
“I will always credit New Mexico and UNM for my work ethic, my humility, and for my ability to push even beyond what I think I am capable of,” he told the audience.
Gorospe went on to intern at the NASA Robotics Academy and the NASA Academy for Space Exploration before finishing his degree.
“Being the only Native in the room, looking around and no one is like you — have the strength to do that and be confident in yourself,” Gorospe told students in the audience.
Reflecting on the support he received through the School of Engineering, he finished his talk with a sentiment many of NAPCOE’s alumni seem to share.
“When I was at the School of Engineering, with every fiber of my being, I wanted to be a professional engineer,” he said. “When I became a professional engineer, it was the greatest day ever, and the next day I immediately wanted to reach back to the next generation.”
Even after 50 years, NAPCOE continues to impact students today through the championship of its alumni, the work of the Engineering Student Success Center and the support of NASTEM.
