A former Uintah County educator now holds the top spot in the Bureau of Indian Education. Last Thursday, Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk announced that Bartholomew “Bart” Stevens will fill the post opened last November.

Stevens became acting director of the Bureau of Indian Education on Feb. 2.

For the man who was principal at West Junior High for five years and vice-principal at Vernal Middle School for a year, this is an opportunity to structure policy that will help Indian students, especially those who move between boarding schools and the public school system.

“This gives me more authority to make decisions and have an impact,” the new director said. “When I was at West I became very concerned about the transition kids had to make when they were coming back to Fort Duchesne from boarding schools. They often struggled.”

Besides helping students transition from one school to another, Stevens will help implement federal education laws and provide funding to 183 elementary and secondary day and boarding schools and peripheral dormitories located on 64 reservations in 23 states, serving approximately 42,000 students.

The BIE also serves post secondary students through higher education scholarships and supports funding to 26 tribal colleges and universities and two tribal technical colleges. It directly operates two post secondary institutions: Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., and the southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque, N.M.

“I get a lot of phone calls,” Stevens laughed when asked how he is dealing with the variety of problems that come from operating such a large and diverse system.

He was called upon to provide support to the Cheyenne River Reservation in North Dakota who lost their water and power during a blizzard.

“It’s my job to make sure the system of support is in place,” Stevens said.

He will also be involved with making sure that a small school located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon has Internet service and qualified teachers.

Because Indian schools accept money from the Department of Education, they are held to the same standards as other schools in the nation. Stevens explained that the Annual Yearly Progress prescribed by the No Child Left Behind Act must be achieved.

“Right now we rolled out our statewide system of support,” Stevens said detaling a program to help the bottom 20 percent of low performing schools.

Stevens feels like he has brought a new face to the bureau. For ten years he and his wife, the former Jackie White, lived in Neola. They had just moved to Roosevelt when they heard about the restructuring of the BIE.

“I decided to throw my hat into the ring,” Stevens explained. In July 2006, he earned a spot as an education line officer and became responsible for overseeing nine schools.

“It was like a school superintendent overseeing a region,” he said.

Accepting the job meant relocating his wife and two sons to Albuquerque, New Mexico. A year later his responsibilities increased and Stevens was accountable for an additional 7 locations.

With his ever increasing responsibilities, Stevens is required to spend three weeks out of every month in Washington D.C.

“It’s okay,” he said of his hotel home in the nation’s capital. “I’m getting to know my why around. It’s tolerable.”

The couple plans to maintain their home in New Mexico since Albuquerque is the headquarters for much of BIE’s operations.

“I really miss my friends and relatives from home,” the Union High School graduate said about Utah. “I do like the weather in Albuquerque. It gets cold, but not cold like the Basin.”

Stevens holds a Bachelor’s degree in Family and Human Development and a Master’s degree in School Administration and Supervision from Utah State University. He also holds a Master’s degree in Social work from the University of Utah. In 2005, he received his administrative/supervisory education license from the Utah Office of Education.

Stevens is an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona with ancestry from the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes in Idaho and the Ute Indian Tribe in Utah. His wife, Jackie, is an enrolled member of the Ute Tribe.