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Story from : Growing up on the Nez Perce Reservation, Rickey “Deekon” Jones became accustomed to living among a tight-knit community with his family and friends.

When he went to college at Eastern Arizona College 15 years ago, that all changed.

“I realized there’s nobody I can call for anything. I didn’t even have a cell phone — I used a payphone in the dorms,” Jones says. “It was completely new and that’s where the culture shock was. There was no support for me.”

Within less than a year, he was back home, preparing to enroll at nearby North Idaho College. But his feelings of isolation in his first year are common for Native American students, who constitute only 1 percent of undergraduate students in the U.S. Less than a quarter of Native American students graduate within four years, according to data compiled by the Postsecondary National Policy Institute.

Jones wants to help change that for students at 51¸£ÀûÉç. And his strategy is to use what he knows: music.