Two Northeastern professors receive awards from American Indian Science and Engineering Society - Northeastern University College of Science

In 2011, Mary Jo Ondrechen (Mohawk Nation) was elected as chair of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) board of directors, and in 2013 she pitched a new project to the National Science Foundation on behalf of AISES: a pathways program to help Native American undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students find their way to faculty positions in higher education.

Little did she know that, 10 years later, a member of the program’s first cohort would find his way into the same department at the same institution where she also works.

Jesse Peltier (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Nakota from White Bear First Nations), an assistant professor at Northeastern University, joined the chemistry and chemical biology department where Ondrechen is a full professor this year. But Ondrechen has been a mentor for far longer than that, Peltier says.