Tempe institution works to help American Indians
The Rev. Larry Norris, president of Cook School for Christian Leadership, stands next to a painting, "Indian Christ," in Tempe. American Indians aren't beating a path to Christian colleges, so Cook College and Theological School in Tempe, with 95 years of educating Indians, is reinventing itself.
American Indians aren’t beating a path to Christian colleges, so Cook College and Theological School in Tempe, with 95 years of experience educating Indians, is reinventing itself.
Now called Cook School for Christian Leadership, its administrators and board say they recognize a harsh reality.
Opportunities for Indians for education with scholarships at community and four-year colleges are tough to compete with.
Cook was offering an associate of arts degree in a state with three universities and a metropolitan area with 12 community colleges, all of which can offer attractive enrollment packages, including free tuition in many cases.
“We just can’t compete,” said the Rev. Larry Norris, Cook’s president with more than 20 years of association with the school.
During much of the past decade through a series of presidents and interim leaders, Cook struggled to gain academic accreditation by creative linkage with accredited schools, first with one in Oklahoma and then the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in Iowa.
Indian students showed too little interest, and those plans were abandoned.
“We were having trouble finding enough Native American Christian students,” Norris said. “There were certainly students that would qualify to come here, but they were not interested in coming to a Christian school and we were told that pretty directly.”
Some of that, he said, stems from historical issues between tribes, churches and missionary outreach efforts.
“Only about 6 percent of all Native Americans nationally are Christians, and that is a pretty amazing statistic,” said Norris, a Methodist pastor who became Cook president in May 2005.
Most, if they practice religion, embrace traditional, native religions, with their distinct ceremonies and folklore.
As a result, Cook’s market for students interested in a Christian associate of arts degree was rapidly shrinking, Norris said.
The school will continue to target American Indian church clergy and laity for specialized training and deliver relevant, practical classes to people on reservations.
The school was founded in 1911 by a German immigrant, Charles Cook. It has maintained that affiliation with the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Classes were first offered to the Pima Indians in Sacaton, were moved briefly to Tucson and then, in 1913, to Phoenix.
In 1965, 17 acres were purchased in Tempe for $147,000 for the permanent home. In time, Cook became a magnet for training of Christian pastors on American Indian reservations.
It could boast that 75 percent of Christian pastors on reservations had completed classes through Cook, which today has relationships with about 75 tribes, with more intense ties to 15 in Arizona, Oklahoma and the Dakotas.
With the move away from offering associate of arts degrees, the Cook faculty has been busy designing a range of classes and seminars for what it calls Workshops on Wheels.
About 30 classes will be offered on such topics as domestic violence, youth gangs, dealing with methamphetamine use, healthy families, native spirituality and nutrition.
Outside professional specialists will be enlisted for some classes.
A $100,000 Ottens Foundation grant will be used to develop health and wellness programs, for example.
Norris said the school is debt-free.
With the 17-acre campus estimated to be worth as much as $40 million, options exist for leveraging it for revenue, for development of academic programs and for constructing a conference and retreat center to replace one that has 100 outside groups using it each year.
“Our mission is still to empower and equip native peoples for leadership . . .” Norris said.