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2005 College Interns

Photograph of four women sitting on a bench outside a stone building.

Pictured left to right at Hopi Old Oraibi Village: Tanya Martinez, Deborah Tewa, Sandra Begay-Campbell, and Jennifer Coots.

"I am currently a graduate student pursuing a degree in Energy Engineering with a solar option ... This particular project has given me the opportunity to become more familiar with communications infrastructures and how they can be tied to remote PV applications. It provided an interesting research topic because of its cutting edge nature. I had the opportunity to visit numerous PV sites within the Navajo, Hualapai, Hopi, and Cahuilla Nation ... Not only did I increase my technical capacity for PV, but I have witnessed some facets of Tribal and federal government relations from the government side. It is important to continue to build and maintain good relationships between the federal government and Tribal Nations while remaining aware of cultural values. Tribal Nations do have unique cultures that must be considered for any government project and it increases the success of the project when that awareness is there." — Tanya Martinez, 2005

  • Tanya Martinez (Mi´kmaq) — Power engineering graduate student, University of Massachusetts Lowell; BS Electrical Engineering. For more, see her paper, Remote Monitoring System Design: Sustainable Systems For The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (PDF 791 KB). Download Adobe Reader.

  • Deborah Tewa (Hopi) — BS Indigenous Studies, Northern Arizona University. For more, see her paper, NativeSUN: A Model for Sustainable Solar Electric Systems on Indian Lands (PDF 338 KB), and this Sandia press release. Download Adobe Reader.

  • Jennifer Coots (Navajo) — MBA Finance, University of New Mexico. Her research focused on tribal mortgage financing of renewable energy systems.