With Rocky Mountain College back in session, assistant chemistry professor Robin Jose will once again hit the road to work with the state's tribal colleges.

Jose, who aside from his on-campus teaching duties is director of the college's nuclear resonance magnetic facility, shares his knowledge with the faculty and students of six partner schools. He has been teaching at Rocky and traveling to the tribal schools since 2007.

His work is the brainchild of Rocky chemistry professor Cristi Hunnes. Hunnes, who has taught at the Billings college since 1994, said that when she first arrived that there was very little chemistry equipment. So she began writing grants to secure equipment.

"To be unique, I felt like we needed a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer," she said. "I also knew that we didn't have enough use to justify it."

An NMR spectrometer is used to determine the structure of organic or biochemical molecules.

It can be operated both on campus and remotely.

Hunnes became interested in American Indian education because of Rocky's efforts to coordinate with reservation colleges. She figured this newest connection could generate excitement for science among students at the two-year tribal schools.

Hunnes secured $620,000 to buy the $300,000 piece of equipment and to hire an NMR director and pay travel expenses for the director to go to the schools and for students to travel to Rocky. The money also allows the tribal school instructors to remotely operate the spectrometer and paid for video equipment so the schools could watch it work.

The spectrometer has been in use since 2004.

Rocky's partnership with NMR and the tribal schools gained recognition this summer, when a weekly magazine, Chemical & Engineering News, featured it as its cover story.

The national magazine is a publication of the American Chemical Society, Hunnes said, and it highlights what's important in the world of chemistry. She called being featured in the magazine "a big, big deal."

"Everybody in the society receives it," she said. "So it is the primary news journal for chemistry people in this country."

The magazine learned of Rocky's tribal partnership through Douglas Crebs, a chemistry teacher at Stone Child College in Box Elder, Jose said. The writer, Linda Wang, contacted Jose and asked if she could accompany him on one of his treks to four of the tribal colleges.

In April, she drove with him to Stone Child, Fort Belknap, Salish Kootenai and Little Big Horn colleges. Jose also works with Fort Peck College. Wang's piece ran at the end of June.

One of the biggest challenges of teaching NMR in the tribal colleges is the high turnover rate of teachers in the schools.

"That's been the major roadblock to this project so far," Jose said.

The reasons for the turnover vary, but it means Jose has to start all over again every time a new faculty member comes on board. It hasn't discouraged him from making regular trips to the schools to interest the instructors and their students in the uses of NMR.

Each fall Jose drives to all of the colleges to speak with the teachers to see how he can be of help.

"I build a relationship with the instructor, and if I already know them, I see what they're doing and what help I can offer," he said.

In the spring, he retraces his steps and delivers a 45-minute lecture to students on the uses of NMR. And he works with the schools that want to do an NMR lab.

In the past, the students at Chief Dull Knife College, in Lame Deer, made aspirin. Then they used the spectrometer to see if in fact they had successfully made the medicine. Graphics appearing on the computer linked to the spectrometer show the chemical structure of the substance.

Students either travel to the Billings campus to run the analysis, or they send in a sample that Jose runs, and then they use a computer on their own campus loaded the with necessary software to do the analysis.

NMR is more often used at the graduate level, Jose said. So working with the technology can give the undergraduate students a leg up toward their future academic careers.

He is a bit reluctant to talk about his being featured in the magazine's cover story, calling himself "just a facilitator" of the program. He gives credit to Hunnes to getting the NMR program off the ground.

But he isn't shy about talking about the value of bringing to technology out to the state's tribal colleges.

"There's an almost 80 percent poverty rate on the reservations," Jose said. "The only way to eradicate that is through education. And I believe if tribal schools are given more exposure to fascinating technology, it will open up a window to improve their quality of life."

While the grant Hunnes secured initially paid all the costs of the program, the couple of years, Rocky kicked in half the money, she said.

"Rocky is committed to continuing that partnership as long as we have active involvement from at least some of the tribal schools," Hunnes said.