Kristin Arola has been named director of American Indian and Indigenous Studies, or AIIS, at Michigan State after serving as its interim director since spring 2022. Arola is also the inaugural Karen L. Gillmor Endowed Professor in Professional and Public Writing and an associate professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Cultures.
“Together, I believe we can make MSU a premiere institution that supports American Indian and Indigenous students, staff, faculty and Tribal Nations,” Arola said. “AIIS will continue to offer a high-quality minor and graduate certificate to support faculty engaging in teaching and research in Indigenous studies and to build toward greater collaborations and visibility across campus.”
Arola is an active member of Educating Anishnaabe: Giving, Learning and Empowering, an Indigenous faculty-staff association at MSU, and currently serves as its vice president. She is also a co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant focused on partnering with rural and Indigenous communities to enable them to achieve energy sovereignty, or the right to make their own decisions about energy implementation in their communities.
An undergraduate alumna of the University of Michigan, she received a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s and doctorate in rhetoric and technical communication from Michigan Technological University. Prior to her work at MSU, Arola worked at Washington State University, where she directed the Digital Technology and Culture undergraduate program and served as director of graduate studies for the Department of English.
“I have had the pleasure of knowing and working closely with Dr. Arola on multiple programs and projects over the past seven years, and I look forward to our continued collaboration,” said Kevin Leonard, director of the Native American Institute at MSU. “She is the perfect choice to lead the American Indian and Indigenous Studies program into the future. Beyond her impeccable academic record, she brings to this role an energy and willingness to look at things from a fresh perspective, drawing on traditional ways of knowing and understanding that I believe will help AIIS move from an undergraduate minor to a major at MSU.”
Arola’s research and teaching focus on composing as culturing. Specifically, she explores the act of writing, designing and making and the relations that bring forth these texts. By looking at the links between land, histories and cultures, she considers how the words, designs and images we compose evoke the past while opening possible futures. To do this work, she brings together composition theory, making culture, digital rhetoric and cultural rhetoric