Grad shaped campus experience for Native American students

Chris DuPré

Dana Miller is eager to get to work — and slow down.

For the last few years, he has spent 12 to 14 hours each weekday on campus studying mechanical engineering before returning to Green Bay for weekends with his family.

Besides hitting the books, Miller, a member of the Menominee Nation, was a driving force in the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES). He worked with Kimberly-Clark Corp., and Menominee Indian and Oneida Nation high schools to bring prospective Native American students to campus.

Having graduated in December, the Navy veteran was preparing for seven days with the Naval Reserve before heading to Idaho to work for Hewlett-Packard.

“I’m pretty busy,” he said with understatement over the phone from his Green Bay home as he readied to depart on his new adventures. “There have been a lot of long days, but in the end it has been worth it.”

Miller earned UW–Madison’s American Indian Alumni Scholarship, which was forged through a partnership among the university, alumni and American Indian leaders throughout the state.

He received the Student Organization Office’s “Excellence in Student Organization Leadership Award,” the Outstanding Returning Adult Student Award and the Harvey Meyerhoff Award for Undergraduate Excellence.

After serving in the Navy as a crack electronics technician, Miller worked for a Green Bay paper company, where he nurtured an affinity for working with mechanical equipment.

“I started going to school at UW-Green Bay part time, but I eventually took all the engineering-related classes they offered,” Miller says. “It was actually my wife (Valerie, a UW–Madison alumna) who was telling me I really needed to consider going full time.”

Miller is proud of his work with AISES.

“That was an exciting venture, to see that group grow,” Miller says. “It means a lot to me.”

Miller became involved with efforts to get all admitted American Indian students at UW–Madison together, “so we could meet one another,” he says. “If we can increase our population, we can recruit other Native American students (to UW–Madison), but that’s hard.”