Navajo tribal and New Mexico dignitaries gathered Tuesday to break ground on a new Indigenous STEAM facility that will be built at the site of Alumni Hall, which was demolished in April 2025.
“This is where the next 35 years of Navajo Prep begins,” said Shawna Becenti, head of the school.
The new facility will include classrooms for Diné material arts, visual arts, design technology, film, and music, along with a maker space where students can weave or silversmith.
“I think that’s a wonderful investment,” Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said. “Our Navajo people are very in tune when it comes to engineering and the sciences because we’ve been scientists and engineers for a very, very long time.”
In 2023, Sen. William E. Sharer supported capital outlay funding to investigate whether Alumni Hall could be renovated, according Shawna Becenti, head of school.
Sharer said when there are new investments being made in infrastructure, often funding, construction or plans overshadow the most important part: the students.
He said it is about the students who were present that afternoon sitting underneath the trees and throughout the lawn behind the representatives.
“We’re not celebrating concrete,” Sharer said. “We’re celebrating the young people who are going to be inside this building. We’re celebrating the kid who walk in one of these classrooms and discovers, ‘You know what, I understand this.’ A place like this gives the students the opportunity to discover something about themselves, and that matters.”
Funding for the building came in 2024, when Sen. Martin Heinrich secured $2 million in congressionally directed spending for the project, said Becenti, who added the State of New Mexico has dedicated approximately $10 million to the building through capital outlay funding.
“It’s exciting to invest in success stories,” Grisham said. “In America today, we compete to get to 80% graduation rates.”
In New Mexico, graduation rates are increasing, Grisham said, adding she is proud of that, but “they are aren’t increasing fast enough.”
“They are nowhere near the achievements of these students in this school,” she said.
According to Becenti, the next funding request will be to the Navajo Nation to seek matching funds to complete the final phase of the building.
The name of the facility also was highlighted by Sharer, who said he believes that tradition and culture can be respected while moving into the future.
The protection of art and language while moving into the age of artificial intelligence will be a responsibility of the students who now have the tools to do so with a STEAM facility, Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council Crystalyne Curley said.
The facility will be a space to honor human voices, hands and minds in a time instead of artificial intelligence, Becenti said.
Tradition and innovation will work side by side, “because this is who we have always been. We are creating and preparing the next generation to honor the words and expertise of the five finger beings,” Becenti said.
“When we talk about schools that are in rural communities that represent tribal students or minority students, we have a tendency to start smaller, slower. The issues there, the language barriers, and poverty are often the issues that we struggle and debate until we get to success,” said Grisham. “Here, Diné tradition, Diné language, Diné values are shining a light on all that is possible.”