Scientists and Engineers are tasked with tackling some of the largest and most complex national and global challenges this century, making jobs in this sector the fastest growing of any other sector in the United States. But the fields of Science and Engineering have a diversity problem which inhibits a vibrant, creative, and diverse talent pool. Many higher education programs have responded to this issue by creating programs intended to narrow the diversity gap in STEM fields. While these efforts have begun to bridge the gap for some underrepresented minority populations, American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) remain the least represented group of students in graduate degrees in STEM fields. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award in the Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) Track to the University of Arizona (UA) will improve persistence of AI/AN engineering students and impact faculty perceptions and attitudes through the inclusion of indigenous and more conversational methods of interaction. This project addresses the issue of low numbers of AI/AN science and engineering practitioners by implementing and investigating several culturally relevant program components designed to impact the relationships among AI/AN students, faculty mentors, and Tribal Nation leaders. The novelty of this pilot project is in the systematic implementation and assessment of program modules, grounded in education science and social theories that are hypothesized to dramatically improve persistence of AI/AN in STEM graduate programs, especially in engineering. This program will transform the graduate education experience for indigenous engineering students and university engineering faculty. The approach acknowledges and leverages the cultural and social capital present in the AI/AN students at UA, and is framed in research on critical race theories and family education models. UA has a unique opportunity to work with the 22 federally recognized tribes that lie within the state of Arizona. These nations occupy over one quarter of Arizona, and are the home to over 250,000 American Indians. This UA-based IGE testbed uses ethnographic methods to study the meaning of actions and events surrounding the concepts of engagement, belongingness, and other components critical to persistence in graduate school study from the perspective of AI/AN students, faculty mentors and Tribal Nation leaders. The model contains four major components that reflect a holistic, empirically-based, systems approach to the successful persistence of AI/AN graduate students: 1) Financial Assistance: partnering with the SLOAN scholarship program at UA for tuition funding for indigenous engineering students; 2) Community-driven research: relationship building with local tribal partners; 3) Indigenous Faculty Mentoring: Indigenous Mentoring Program as part of a faculty training initiative; and 4) providing student integration and professional skills development to increase a sense of belongingness and professional engineering preparation. These four components are individually critical, collectively powerful, and provide an empowering, positive, and persistent graduate academic career for AI/AN students from all tribes and Native communities. Successful elements of the testbed will be scaled to other regions nationwide. The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The Innovations in Graduate Education Track is dedicated solely to piloting, testing, and evaluating novel, innovative, and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education. This project is co-funded by the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program. AGEP funds research and the development, implementation, and investigation of models to transform the dissertation phase of doctoral education, postdoctoral training and/or faculty advancement of historically underrepresented minorities (URMs) in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and/or STEM education research.