Kristin Arola has been named Director of American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS) at Michigan State University after serving as its Interim Director since Spring 2022. Arola also is the inaugural Karen L. Gillmor Endowed Professor in Professional and Public Writing and an Associate Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures.
Arola is a first-generation descendant of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of the Lake Superior Band of Chippewa Indians located in Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula.
“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, which is an Indigenous faculty-staff association at MSU, and currently serves as its vice president. She also is 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.
She has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Michigan 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.
“Together, I believe we can make MSU a premiere institution that supports American Indian and Indigenous students, staff, faculty, and Tribal Nations.”
Dr. Kristin Arola
“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.
Written by Megan Winans and originally published by MSU Today.
