Contact Sandy Grande

"Colonization can only disfigure the colonizer. It places him before an alternative having equally disastrous results; daily injustice accepted for his benefit on the one hand, and necessary, but never consummated self-sacrifice on the other. That is the situation with the colonizer who individually decays if he accepts, and repudiates himself if he refuses to accept."
- Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized

"While the language of imperialism and colonialism have changed, the sites of struggle remain. The struggle for validity of indigenous knowledges may no longer be over the recognition that indigenous peoples have ways of viewing the world which are unique, but over proving the authenticity of, and control over our own forms of knowledge."
- Linda Tuhiwai Smith

"The first step to educate the people is to introduce them to the revolution. Never pretend you can help them conquer their rights by education alone, while they must endure a despotic government."
- Che Guevara

• Native American education
• Critical race theory

Sandy Grande is a professor in the education department.

She was appointed Special Adviser to the President for Institutional Equity and Diversity by then-President Fainstein for 2004-05. She also served as a faculty representative on the Strategic Planning Committee.

She was named “Higher Education Multicultural Faculty of the Year” 2004 by the Connecticut chapter of the National Association of Multicultural Education (NAME). NAME is an international organization that brings together individuals and groups with an interest in multicultural education from all levels of education, different academic disciplines and diverse educational institutions and occupations. The Connecticut chapter has conveyed this award annually since 1998. Read the news release.

Professor Grande received a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship from the Ford Foundation in 2000-01. As a Ford Fellow, she worked with graduate students and faculty in the American Indian Leadership program at Pennsylvania State University. Professor Grande is also currently serving as a member of the Executive Board of the American Educational Studies Association (AESA) and as an educational consultant for John Marshall High School in Cleveland, Ohio.

Her current research examines the intersections between critical theory and American Indian Intellectualism. Her approach is profoundly inter- and cross-disciplinary, and has included the integration of critical, feminist and Marxist theories of education with the concerns of American Indian and environmental education.

Professor Grande has written several articles including "Beyond the Ecologically Noble Savage: Deconstructing the White Man's Indian," Journal of Environmental Ethics; "Critical Theory and American Indian Identity and Intellectualism," The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and "American Indian Geographies of Identity and Power: At the Crossroads of Indigena and Mestizaje," Harvard Educational Review. In addition, she is featured as an "up and coming scholar" in an interview with acclaimed critical scholar Peter McLaren in an issue of the International Journal of Educational Reform. She published a book, Red Pedagogy: Critical Theory and American Indian Education, in 2004.

As a teacher and scholar, Professor Grande centers her work in the belief that education is the heart of democracy. She asserts that questions about education cannot be reduced to disciplinary parameters, but must include issues of power, history, self-identity and the possibility of collective agency and revolutionary struggle. Thus, rather than reject the language of politics, Professor Grande constructs teaching as the link between public education and the imperatives of democracy. Moreover, in her work with American Indian schools and communities, Professor Grande draws connections between the political project of forming a new critical democracy and the Indigenous struggle for self-determination and tribal sovereignty.

Professor Grande teaches Foundations of Modern Education, School and Society, and Methods of Teaching. In addition to these courses, she has also taught courses in Multicultural Education, History of American Education, and the Pedagogy of Revolution. Read Professor Grande's comments included in the article "Why I Teach" in the Winter 2004 issue of CC:Connecticut College Magazine.

Visit the education department Web site and the Teacher Certification Program page.