{"id":34749,"date":"2019-01-28T16:55:10","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T22:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/?p=34749"},"modified":"2019-01-28T16:55:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T22:55:10","slug":"chelsey-jourdain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/2019\/01\/28\/chelsey-jourdain\/","title":{"rendered":"Chelsey Jourdain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chelsey<\/a>
Chelsey Jourdain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

C<\/b><\/span>helsey Jourdain<\/b> grew up across the street from the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ campus in a house purchased by her great-grandfather, Roger Jourdain, who hoped that his grandchildren would attend the university.<\/span><\/p>\n

The man Jourdain considered her grandfather spent more than 30 years as the chair of the Red Lake Nation, a lifetime of service she didn’t fully appreciate until after his passing in 2002. She was a seventh grader at
\nthe time.<\/span><\/p>\n

“My grandfather lived upstairs,” Jourdain said. “He wasn’t the chairman to me and my siblings — he was the old guy upstairs. He always liked his coffee, gum, Milky Ways and his newspapers: the Star Tribune, the Pioneer Press.”<\/span><\/p>\n

While her grandfather had only an eighth-grade education, he never stopped learning.<\/span><\/p>\n

“He had a pretty strong voice and that has stayed with me,” she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jourdain is now a junior at Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ and is working toward an elementary education degree. She aspires for a future teaching on the Red Lake reservation and serving the people and the place where her grandfather devoted his life. <\/span><\/p>\n

She balances her studies with family life. She and her partner, fellow Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ student Brian Hawkins, have two children, Talon, 5, and Lily, 9 months in December. <\/span><\/p>\n

She is president of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Council of Indian Students. In November, she was awarded the Minnesota Indian Education Association College Scholarship and named the association’s Outstanding American Indian Post-Secondary Student of the Year. She also serves on a higher learning committee charged with crafting Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ’s cultural and diversity statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Chelsey is community driven,” said Bill Blackwell Jr. director of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ American Indian Resource Center. “She wants to be an educator to give back to the community. The foundation of her leadership is clear in her family. I know if her grandfather were here, he would be extremely proud of the person she is.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Her own children, especially Talon, who started kindergarten this year, inspire her to want the best for all children. <\/span><\/p>\n

“I want to make them feel important in their community,” she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jourdain enjoys the opportunities Bemidji State has provided. She plans to pursue a master’s degree and eventually a doctorate. The foundation of her classroom, she said, will be the Anishinaabe Teachings of the Seven Grandfathers, which focus on moral and ethical values.<\/span><\/p>\n

She believes those teachings are worth handing down to a new generation. <\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s important to keep this family
\ntradition going, of being role models to others,” she said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chelsey Jourdain is a junior at Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ and is working toward an elementary education degree. She aspires for a future teaching on the Red Lake reservation and serving the people and the place where her grandfather devoted his life.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[958],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34751,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34749\/revisions\/34751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}