The Northern Tier Network Consortium meetings convene regional network providers and universities in the northern United States. They address high-capacity connectivity, collaboration, and infrastructure planning. The consortium supports cross-state networking to strengthen access to national cyberinfrastructure.
Tribal colleges benefit significantly from attending Northern Tier Networking Consortium (NTNC) meetings due to the organization’s explicit commitment to inclusion and its focus on critical cyberinfrastructure (CI) advancements. All tribal colleges are welcome to be non-voting members and are encouraged to participate in all NTNC meetings and activities. This welcoming structure ensures that TCUs have a voice and can engage in dialog and supportive conversation regarding networking successes and challenges, which was foundational to the Northern Tier effort. Attending these meetings is crucial because the NTNC’s mission is specifically focused on addressing mutual interests in advanced networking facilities and shared cyberinfrastructure. The NTNC aims to develop and sustain these advanced networking capabilities and shared CI facilities to support the educational, research, and economic vitality of the Northern Tier region. By participating, TCUs can access resources and engage in community-driven efforts that are supportive of their work to improve their network and CI capabilities, helping them connect researchers with a full spectrum of support services and technology.
Furthermore, attending NTNC meetings helps tribal colleges leverage established connections within the region, recognizing that a number of tribal colleges have network connections to the universities that are core members of the NTNC. The NTNC membership includes major institutions in states like Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington. The primary goals of the NTNC include providing a premier research network and maximizing network peering and interconnection opportunities between Northern Tier networks and other consortia. By engaging with this consortium, which empowers collective research faculty to engage in holistic research, TCUs benefit from the network’s function as a tool that facilitates new ideas and collaboration between universities, researchers, and educators globally. The ongoing collaboration helps members avoid constraints associated with being in a cyber-isolated part of the United States, thereby accelerating research and discovery.
