All the controlers are regular classes with methods.

Assuming your API controller StudentDashboard has a Get(string name) verb method, you can do this:

public ActionResult Index() //This view is strongly typed against User
{
    //testing against Joe Bob
    string adSAMName = "jBob";
    var apiController = new StudentDashboardController(); //or whatever other API controller returns your data
    var result = apiController.Get(adSAMName);
    return View(result);
}

This should give you strong typing. You can also instantiate and use 'regular' MVC controllers too.

All the controlers are regular classes with methods.

Assuming your API controller StudentDashboard has a Get(string name) verb method, you can do this:

public ActionResult Index() //This view is strongly typed against User
{
    //testing against Joe Bob
    string adSAMName = "jBob";
    var apiController = new StudentDashboardController(); //or whatever other API controller returns your data
    var result = apiController.Get(adSAMName);
    return View(result);
}

This should give you strong typing. You can also instantiate and use 'regular' MVC controllers too.

[EDIT]

Per comment, it's even better if you delegate the controller creation to the framework

ControllerBuilder.GetControllerFactory().CreateController(Request.RequestContext, controllerName);

You can either set the string or extract it from the type if you want stronger typing.

Reference MSDN