WASHINGTON – Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk today announced that he has selected Keith O. Moore as Director of the Bureau of Indian Education. Moore, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, had been serving as the Chief Diversity Officer at the University of South Dakota since August 15, 2009. He takes over from the acting BIE director, Bartholomew “Bart” Stevens. Moore’s appointment will become effective on June 1, 2010.
“Keith Moore has served Indian Country as a dedicated educational administrator for many years,” Echo Hawk said. “I will rely on him as part of my senior management team as we move forward to improve the quality of education in Indian Country. He will be responsible for the line direction and management of all education functions, including the formation of policies and procedures, the supervision of all program activities and the approval of the expenditure of funds appropriated for education functions.”
“I am pleased with Assistant Secretary Echo Hawk’s efforts to strengthen his management team with the selection of Keith Moore as BIE Director,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said. “I am pleased to see that this addition will enable Assistant Secretary Echo Hawk to continue carrying forward our initiatives to improve the lives, and quality of education, of the American Indian and Alaska Native people.”
Prior to becoming the BIE director, Moore had served since August 2009 as the Chief Diversity Officer at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, S.D. In that capacity, he served as principal advisor and coordinator of policies and programs aimed at achieving the university’s diversity goals. Answering directly to the Provost, some of the projects he worked on while at USD have been the South Dakota Partnership for Teacher Quality (PTQ), the Race To the Top Proposal for South Dakota, and the American Indian University at Crazy Horse Memorial Monument.
The PTQ is intended to increase student achievement in K-12 schools by developing highly qualified teachers. The Race To the Top Proposal for South Dakota is another project he has worked on. Its primary goal is to connect the tribes and the state in a collaborative effort to develop a Native American Residential Science, Technology, Engineering and Math School. The American Indian University at Crazy Horse Memorial Monument is a summer program to take place in June 2010. Its purpose is to prepare individuals for the rigors of college, give accepted students introductory university courses that can be transferred to any regionally accredited college or university, offer paid internships at the Memorial, and to fulfill the mission of the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation.
On July 1, 2005, he was named Indian Education Director for the South Dakota State Department of Education, where he was a liaison between the Department and tribal education officials, BIE offices in Aberdeen, S.D., and Albuquerque, N.M., K-12 educators and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Indian Education. During his tenure, projects he directed or was involved with included an Indian Education Summit, Indian Education Advisory Council in South Dakota, the National Indian Education Advisory Committee, the Indian Education Act of 2007 in South Dakota, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Indian Education National Conference, Project Director GEAR UP South Dakota (GUSD), I LEAD, South Dakota College Access Challenge Grant (SDCAC), and Core Concepts Planning Grant (CCPG).
“I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to lead the Bureau of Indian Education,” Moore said. “I want to thank Assistant Secretary Echo Hawk for his confidence and to affirm my commitment to carrying out the BIE’s mission to provide quality education opportunities for American Indian and Alaska Natives in accordance with their tribes’ needs for cultural and economic well-being and in keeping with the wide diversity of tribes as distinct cultural and governmental entities.”
Moore graduated in 1990 from Northern State University in Aberdeen with a B.S. degree in Health and Physical Education/Social Sciences. He received a M.A. degree in Educational Administration from South Dakota State University - Brookings in 2002. He also holds a Governor Rounds’ South Dakota Leadership Development Program Masters level certification and a Specialist Degree in Educational Leadership from Montana State University - Bozeman 2009. Moore is 43 years old and married with four daughters.
The Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs oversees the Bureau of Indian Education which operates the federal school system for American Indian and Alaska Native children from the federally recognized tribes. The BIE implements federal education laws, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, in and provides funding to 183 elementary and secondary day and boarding schools and peripheral dormitories located on 64 reservations in 23 states and serving approximately 42,000 students (School Year 2009-2010). The BIE also serves post secondary students through higher education scholarships and support funding to 26 tribal colleges and universities and two tribal technical colleges. It also directly operates two post secondary institutions: Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., and the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque.
