Birch bark texture.

Ahtna Kanas Summer 2016

Stephanie Uses Scholarship to Earn Doctorate

You can now call her “doctor,” thanks to the Ahtna Heritage Foundation.

Portrait of Stephanie

Stephanie Carroll Rainie received the Walter Charley Memorial Scholarship over the past six years as she pursued a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) at the University of Arizona’s Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health (MEZCoPH). She graduated in December.

She now divides her time between the Native Nations Institute and MEZCoPH.  She is an assistant research professor and associate director and manager at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy as well as an assistant professor at MEZCoPH.

Her dissertation papers focused on three distinct areas of research and advocacy:

• The strategic use of data to bolster and enhance Native governance, self-determination and sovereignty.

• Tribal public health, community accountability, sovereignty and self-governance. 

• Reclaiming Indigenous health.

“The Walter Charley Memorial Scholarship provided me with the financial means to continue my writing and distribution of ideas in order to obtain a doctoral degree,”

Stephanie wrote. “Tsin’aen.”