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Anselm G. Davis Jr. is the executive director of the White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities, established under Executive Order 13270. President George W. Bush named him to his post on May 25, 2008, and, as director, he supports the nation's 34 tribal colleges and universities, ensuring that they have full access to federal higher education programs. He is also the primary liaison to the President's Board of Advisers on Tribal Colleges and Universities, which recommends actions for all federal agencies to strengthen the capacity of these institutions, which serve more than 30,00 full-time and part-time students per year and offer associate, bachelor's and master's degrees, as well as vocational certificate programs. Tribal colleges serve a diverse student body, including young adults and senior citizens, and both Native and non-Native Americans. In some rural areas, these schools may offer the only postsecondary option for students and also provide crucial services to some communities that suffer from high rates of poverty and unemployment.

Davis joined the Department in the fall of 2004 as special assistant to the director of the White House initiative.

The son of a Navajo father and Choctaw mother, Davis was born in Lukachukai, Ariz., and is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. He earned his bachelor's degree in industrial arts education from the University of New Mexico in 1963.

After graduation, he taught industrial arts at Wingate High School in Fort Wingate, N.M., and spent his summers at Northern Arizona University, working on a technology education master's degree, which he finished after he came to Washington, D.C., in 1968 to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as an education specialist. While at BIA, he received a promotion, served as a congressional fellow and began his Ed.D. studies in educational administration at Penn State University.

In 1973, Davis was recruited to serve as the assistant superintendent for the 400-student Window Rock, Ariz., Unified School District, and, in 1984, as he finished his Ed.D. with a thesis that examined how attitude and attendance affected the achievement of 10th-12th-grade Native American students, he was promoted to superintendent. In 1989, he was hired to run the 900-student Piñón, Ariz., Unified School District for two years.

In 1991, as the dean of instruction for the Navajo Preparatory School in Farmington, N.M., Davis was given the chance to design a new "concentric circle model" curriculum that relied on the tribe's rich history and culture. During his six years with the school, this new curriculum replaced the old "take away and supplant model," and, he hoped, would become a model for other Native schools across the country.

In 1997, he went to work for the Navajo Nation in Window Rock, first, as associate director for the North Central Association and, later, as principal investigator for a successful $10 million National Science Foundation-Rural Systemic Initiative grant to fund high-quality math, science and technology programs.

After two years working to improve math and science education in Navajo Nation schools, Davis returned to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, working on educational systemic reform in the bureau's Center for School Improvement located in Albuquerque, N.M.

Returning to Washington in 2001, he was named program director for the National Science Foundation's Rural Systemic Initiative, conducting site visits and assisting grantees in their efforts to improve math and science education in remotely located and high-poverty districts until he joined the Department in 2004.

Davis divides his time between his residence in Gaithersburg, Md., and a home in St. Michaels, Ariz. His daughter and two grandchildren reside in Colorado.