The Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Enhancement (SAGE) Program is a province-wide educational intervention that aims to support the development of Aboriginal and Indigenous Ph.D. and Ed.D. credentialed people. Since its official launch in May 2005, there have been ongoing SAGE pod meetings that are held in Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, and Prince George. These once-a-month meetings provide opportunities for sharing one’s experiences, learning about graduate school, as well as, meeting fellow colleagues from a variety of disciplines and institutions. There are also presentations from current doctoral students and Indigenous scholars, who share their research interests and methodological or theoretical approaches.

Another important part of building this capacity is increasing the number of Aboriginal applicants to doctoral programs. SAGE is committed to supporting Aboriginal students in their applications to the institutions and programs that are the best for them. These opportunities create further relationships, which have helped increase the SAGE Program membership to approximately 325 Indigenous scholars, who are currently Ph.D. or Ed.D. credentialed, are enrolled in a doctoral program, or are potential doctoral students.

All these events have helped us move toward the goal of providing culturally-grounded support for Aboriginal doctoral students in British Columbia. You are also welcome to join the SAGE list serve at groups.yahoo.com/group/gradsage1. Any further questions can be directed to the SAGE Provincial Coordinator, Karlee Fellner, at gradsage@interchange.ubc.ca.