Berkeley Law opening new doors for Native American students

June 27, 2019

This week, Native American college students are considering law as a profession at a five-day admissions workshop on campus called the Pipeline to Law Initiative. It’s the first time the three-year-old program has been offered at Berkeley Law.

The Native American Law Students Association (NALSA) has reinvented itself on campus during the past school year, and the hope is that the initiative, which got underway Wednesday, also will help reintroduce Native American issues at Berkeley Law and across the campus.

“This university was founded on Indian land, and as an institution, we need to invite the Native American community into it,” Kristin Theis-Alvarez, dean of admissions and financial aid at Berkeley Law, says. “We have to make sure that we are reaching out to them in a positive and respectful way.”

Theis-Alvarez and her counterpart at Arizona State University (ASU), Kate Rosier, have spent the past five years developing the Pipeline to Law Initiative, although the program has only been formally in operation for three years. In that time, workshops and get-togethers have been held at ASU, Michigan State University, the University of South Dakota and the University of Washington.

This time, it’s at Berkeley Law, and 36 participants representing 21 different tribal nations from around the country are among the workshop participants.

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Berkeley News