SW0104 Fort Pierce Black Seminole Heritage Informs Specialist’s Outreach Connects Tribal Members with Educational Opportunities

A nagging legacy of the Seminole Wars has been the poor educational opportunities available to tribal members on and off the reservation. That’s changing today. The Seminole Tribe of Florida has made it official. Its Center for Student Success and Services, or CSSS has renamed itself to more clearly show its intent. Hence, the tribe’s CSSS is now simply the Education Department. More customer-service oriented and data-driven than previously, the department is striving to develop and maintain a trust relationship within the Seminole Tribe community. This can be difficult to establish or maintain because seeking assistance or guidance from non-tribal members can be off-putting. More tribal members are being hired to staff the department and all of its members are having conversations with tribal members about educational opportunities through face-to-face engagements. This was difficult during the Covid-19 pandemic but is now a high priority for the department as the tribe emerges.

The Education Department serves about 900 students in K-12; 210 in higher education; 200 are in tutoring programs; and about a dozen are currently under the Tribal Professional Development (TPD) umbrella. The department itself has about 50 staff members.

 

 

The Department’s quality assurance analyst, tribal member and Black Seminole Rollie Gilliam III, is overseeing overreach for staff to meet and greet tribal families with information about programs and services the tribe makes available. Outreach, Gilliam states, is more than handing out scholarship applications.

 

 

Rollie Gilliam III joins us this week to discuss how the department is managing its outreach, what programs are available to members, and what it means to him to be a black Seminole from Fort Pierce, Florida, within the Seminole Tribe of Florida as he ensures quality in the programs used to educate all members of the tribe.

 

 

Host Patrick Swan is a board member with the Seminole Wars Foundation. He is a combat veteran and of the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Kosovo, and at the Pentagon after 9/11. A military historian, he holds masters degrees in Public History, Communication, and Homeland Security, and is a graduate of the US Army War College with an advanced degree in strategic studies. This podcast is recorded at the homestead of the Seminole Wars Foundation in Bushnell, Florida. 

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