University of Alaska

Classes resumed this week at the University of Alaska Southeast after an extended spring break.

Most students are studying remotely, but Lori Klein, vice chancellor of enrollment management and student affairs, said that a handful of classes with 10 students or less are meeting in person with the expressed consent of both faculty and students. Students in those classes who want to study from home have that option.

Klein said campus dorms have also been evacuated except for students who do not have a safe place to return to. Out of about 150 students living on campus, only about 30 are still living on campus within social distancing guidelines.

Most faculty and staff are also working from home except for essential personnel. That includes safety, housing, facilities and dining staff.

“It’s just very quiet around here,” said Klein.  “In many cases, (we are) seeing an increase of volume in how we’re serving students compared to past years because some students are making an adjustment to a new normal that they need a lot of support for.”

Klein said the staff is encouraging students to reach out by phone or online for advising, tech support or counseling.

The health clinic is also open for students — but only for phone or video appointments.

For more, see the UAS coronavirus response page and the student services dashboard.

 

Along with coronavirus concerns, students and staff at the University of Alaska Anchorage are also facing budget uncertainty.

University leaders are proposing to eliminate degree programs to reduce spending, and they say the process is expected to continue — at least for right now — even with students leaving dorms and classes moving online in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19.

There’s still a multi-year state funding cut and declining enrollment to deal with, and cutting academic programs is one of the ways being deployed to close the budget gap.

As university faculty and students in those programs wait to see if the proposals will become reality, they say feel demoralized.

UAA professor Audrey Taylor stood next to a photo of a pair of howler monkeys in early March, as she explained to her class of about 30 college students how to estimate the population of endangered animals.

It was two days before the start of a weeklong spring break, and before the University of Alaska system announced widespread changes, including moving most in-person classes online for the rest of the semester, in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Already, students in Taylor’s class said they were stress and concerned. That’s because the class, conservation biology, is key for a major that university leaders are proposing to eliminate.

“It’s very demotivating, I guess, because you’re putting all this energy into teaching these students who are potentially going to be finishing a degree program in a department that’s no longer going to exist,” Taylor said.

UAA is in the middle of deciding which degree programs it will recommend cutting. So far, UAA deans have proposed eliminating nine degree and certificate programs. The provost wants to erase more. On both of their lists of cuts is environment and society — the degree program for Taylor’s department.

The university chancellor still needs to make her recommendations, and the university system’s governing board will ultimately decide what stays and what goes.

Taylor said she didn’t expect her program to be proposed for elimination.

“I think we were pretty shocked that the entire program was recommended for deletion,” she said.

UAA deans and the provost say there isn’t enough demand for the program, and the university can’t sustain it. They say students can learn environmental sciences as part of another bachelor’s degree program called natural sciences.

Taylor said there are roughly 75 students in her program. One of those students is Grace Wyatt, a junior at UAA.

“I should be really focusing on trying to find summer internships right now, but that’s kind of been pushed off because I’m trying to save my degree program,” Wyatt said.

Wyatt said she cried after she learned her degree program was up for elimination. She said she’s devastated, angry and confused.

“Our professors created this program to prepare students to become scientists in Alaska,” she said. “They went around talking to all of the industries around Alaska, and asked them what they wanted students to be learning, and that’s how they created our curriculum. It’s super-involved with climate change. It’s super involved with the species of Alaska.”

Another student, senior Nabi Qureshi, said she was spending a significant amount of time trying to figure out next steps and how students can rally to save environmental studies at Alaska’s largest university.

“I feel like I have spent a lot of time doing just research. There’s 15 tabs open on my laptop right now, just because, like I said, there’s so many different directions where this could go. There’s so many different steps,” she said. “So it’s taken up a lot of my time.”

Once final decisions are made, UAA programs won’t disappear immediately. The university needs to give faculty notice of job cuts, and it needs to provide students already enrolled in programs with a path to a degree.

UAA junior Grayson Bacon said he’s waiting to hear what that path might look like. A graduate of Palmer High School, he wants to become a wilderness ranger.

He said it’s not really financially feasible to transfer to another university at this point.

“I’m hoping to ride it out because I only have a year left, but I’m not really sure how it’s all going to go. There’s not a lot of communication as to what is going to happen,” he said.

Taylor said she’s telling students to talk to their advisers and sign up for classes early to make sure they can finish the major.

Aside from giving lectures and grading papers, she said she also feels like she’s now entrenched in a fight to save her program and possibly her job.

“It feels like some kind of guerrilla warfare here, where we’re going all guns blazing to try to figure out what the best angle to save environmental studies is,” she said.

Now Taylor is also in the midst of figuring out how to continue to teach her classes, and move them online. She said she worries that the program reviews — and the long-term process to reshape UAA — are going to get lost in the shuffle as the university responds to coronavirus.

“It just feels chaotic,” she said.

UAA is currently taking community input on the proposed program cuts. The UA Board of Regents is expected to make final decisions in June. The next fiscal year starts July 1.

A UA spokesperson said to expect in-person meetings to be moved to virtual meetings.

Other programs up for elimination include the master’s in anthropology and bachelor’s in theater.

 

The University of Alaska (UA) system is extending spring break, moving classes online and canceling gatherings in response to the spread of coronavirus, President Jim Johnsen announced Thursday, Mar. 12. It’s also asking students to leave on-campus dorms for the rest of the semester.

“While, as we know, there are no confirmed cases of COVID-19 yet in Alaska, we think prevention is absolutely critical,” Johnsen said during a phone call with reporters. “We want to make sure that our university communities across the state, from Ketchikan all the way up to Kotzebue and many places in between, are safe and that we do our piece to slow the spread of the disease as it may take place here in the state.”

Read the entire message

Across Alaska, the coronavirus threat is canceling events, suspending travel and disrupting the economy. Gov. Mike Dunleavy has signed an emergency declaration. All Anchorage public schools will remain closed for one week after spring break, and the school district is preparing for possibly a longer closure. Alaska Public University is also moving its classes online.

UA will suspend most in-person classes for the rest of the spring semester, Johnsen said. Faculty will instead deliver lessons by other methods such as email, video or over the phone.

Johnsen said he extended spring break an extra week to give faculty time to prepare.

“Classes will restart via distance delivery on March 23,” said a statement from UA. “University offices will remain open throughout the rest of the semester, unless the situation warrants changing that.”

Alaska’s public university system has more than 6,500 employees and 21,000 students across three main universities and about a dozen community campuses. Students have been on their week-long spring break since Monday and were supposed to return next week.

Johnsen said university chancellors may make some exceptions and allow some classes to be held in person, such as lessons that require lab work.

“But again, personal safety measures are paramount whenever these few exceptions will be made,” he said.

He acknowledged that not all students have computer access, and said UA is working to provide ways for students to get online, through computer labs, libraries or other facilities “again ensuring social distancing.”

UA is also asking students to leave on-campus dorms for the rest of the semester as a preventative measure. There are about 1,600 students who live in the dorms.

“Students can either move completely out of the residence halls now, or gather anything they need for the rest of the semester and return later to move out of their rooms,” said UA’s statement. “There will be a mechanism for students to request exceptions if they are unable to leave the residence halls until later in the spring.”

UA is canceling or postponing all events and gatherings of 25 people or more through the end of March.

“University leaders will revisit events guidance later this month and make a determination regarding whether to cancel events for the rest of the semester,” the statement said. “That discussion will include a decision on commencement ceremonies.”

The university joins a host of other academic institutions that have cancelled or postponed in-person classes. That includes the University of Washington, Seattle University, University of California, Berkeley and UCLA, as well as many Ivy League and East Coast schools.

This story has been updated.

Find all our Alaska coronavirus coverage here.

Sealaska Heritage Institute and the University of Alaska Southeast announced a scholarship program aimed at getting more Native language teachers into Southeast communities.

If all goes as planned, eight more scholars will selected this summer and enrolled in the fall into the second year of the immersive program. Come 2022, a total of 16 people should be certified by the state to teach the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian languages of Lingít, X̱aad Kíl and Sm’algya̱x.

Sixteen teachers might not sound like a lot. But Lee Kadinger, chief operating officer at Sealaska Heritage Institute, said, “Average, one teacher has 20 students, approximately. So you’re looking at 320 students impacted annually. And you know, look at that at over a 10-year period, that’s 3,200 youths that could be trained to learn their Native languages. … It is a crucial foundation for the building blocks of growing that language and having that spread to thousands.”

Only 10.6% of Alaska Native students in Southeast Alaska had access to an educator who teaches their language in the 2018-2019 school year, according to SHI.

Tom Thornton, UAS dean of arts and sciences, said these languages are considered “endangered.”

“That simply means they’re not being reproduced by parents in the homes to their children, except in exceptional circumstances,” he said. “And so you need to do something more radical to regenerate speakers.”

SHI is providing the bulk of the funding through a U.S. Department of Education grant; $1.9 million will go to the university to fund the scholarship program, which covers tuition, room, board and part-time employment.

Thornton said it’s hard to predict if this scholarship program will be a one-off or ongoing because of budget uncertainty. But he said it is part of the university’s  longstanding commitment to build up its Native language offerings.

Throughout the program, the recipients are expected to host community language learning sessions and work in classrooms and at community organizations.

The application period is open until May 12. Eligibility is limited to Alaska Natives, a Sealaska Corp. shareholder or shareholder descendant, or Tsimshian members of a federally recognized tribe. Additional details are spelled out in the application form on the Sealaska Heritage Institute website.

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, the caption for the photo misidentified one of people pictured. The person at left in the back row is UAS Provost Karen Carey, not Keni Campbell of UAS.

 

The head of the College of Engineering at the University of Alaska Anchorage said he found out about BP’s proposal to sell its entire Alaska business to Hilcorp the same way a lot of people did.

“We just heard it from the news like everybody else,” said Kenrick Mock, the interim dean. “And then it was, ‘Oh no. What’s next?’”

BP has long supported the university’s engineering programs, Mock said. It funds youth summer camps and university clubs. Its employees sit on the college’s advisory board.

The company’s departure from the state, Mock said, will leave “a huge hole” at the already cash-strapped university.

“There’s so many things that BP has helped fund,” he said.

UAA is among the nonprofits and programs in Alaska that have long benefited from BP’s donations and employee volunteers — and among those now adapting to a changing philanthropic scene.

Hilcorp’s giving strategy is more about individual employee donations than corporate sponsorship. And, a national expert says, that’ll diffuse donations and make them harder to predict — at least at first. Alaska nonprofit executives say it will require some of the state’s philanthropic organizations to rethink their strategies and diversify their donors.

A different way of giving

Over its 60 years in the state, BP has grown into a major philanthropic force, said Laurie Wolf, president and chief executive of The Foraker Group, an Anchorage-based organization that works with and advises nonprofits.

“And it’s not just in terms of their philanthropic financial investment, but also just in the way that they have encouraged their employees to get involved and engaged in the nonprofit sector,” she said.

BP reports donating $4 million to Alaska organizations in 2018. It hosts teacher awards, funds scholarships and pays for the bright-colored bags for a statewide trash cleanup program.

“We came in and we’ve gotten involved as a big, international oil company with a local energy company touch and feel,” Janet Weiss, president of BP Alaska, said in an interview last month.

“I think that Hilcorp comes in and evolves that model even further,” she said. “The way that Hilcorp operates is, they really unleash their employees.”

Hilcorp, a private company, is poised to buy BP’s entire Alaska business in a $5.6 billion deal. It estimates its Alaska employees will donate $5 million to charities over the next 12 months.

At an event in Anchorage in January, Hilcorp Alaska Senior Vice President David Wilkins said the company’s giving program centers on employee choice.

“We give away a lot of money through our employees, and that will remain to be the cornerstone of our program,” Wilkins told the crowd.

Under Hilcorp’s philanthropy program, the company gives each of its new employees $2,500 to donate to qualified charities of their choice. It also matches employees’ donations up to $2,000 each year.

“In extraordinary cases, corporate sponsorships are considered,” the company’s website says.

Hilcorp says it expects to triple its Alaska workforce as a result of the BP sale, growing from about 500 employees to about 1,500. That includes about 750 BP employees that will move to Hilcorp.

“That means we’re going to be giving a lot of money in the community,” Wilkins said.

But where exactly that money will go is anyone’s guess. As is how much of it will stay in the state.

“Chances are, many Alaskan charities will benefit. However, the distribution of the money is in the hands of Hilcorp employees,” said Elizabeth Miller, vice president of communications and development at The Alaska Community Foundation, which recently announced that it will manage Hilcorp’s giving program for the company’s Alaska workers.

Hilcorp declined an interview request for this story. In a statement, the company said it aims to build a greater community of giving by empowering its employees.

Since 2012, Hilcorp said, its employees have donated more than $2.8 million to almost 400 Alaska-based organizations, including food banks, youth shelters, athletic groups and churches. Nationally, Hilcorp reports the largest chunk of its employees’ donations — some 42%, or about $6.3 million — has gone to religious causes.

That’s not surprising, Wolf said. While most corporations don’t donate to religious institutions, individuals do, she said.

“Giving starts at home, and for many people home starts with their religious congregation, whatever that might be for them,” she said.

‘A bucket of cold water’

Eileen Heisman, president and CEO of the National Philanthropic Trust, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that advises donors, said the transition from corporate giving to a more individualized approach could be a “bucket of cold water” for some of the nonprofits that have leaned on BP.

“You’re going to go from a bird’s-eye view, very organized, corporate look at everything in the community and where the most important needs are, to many individuals deciding what they’re personally interested in,” she said.

“And I think it’s going to diffuse the giving in a way that’s going to be really hard to predict at this point, but after a year or two the charities that have been depending on BP are probably not going to be able to depend on the individual donors.”

Heisman said one big question is how many dollars will stay in Alaska, since the money can go to any qualifying nonprofit in the country.

“Some of them might want to be giving money back to the communities they lived before, or where they grew up or some other place that’s important to them or where their kids might be living,” she said.

Hilcorp says it will encourage employees to donate to charities in Alaska.

Wolf, with The Foraker Group, said Hilcorp’s giving program isn’t better or worse than BP’s. It’s just different. (The Foraker Group has received just under $1 million from BP, she said.)

“The real impact is that you don’t just write a proposal to a ConocoPhillips and a BP and an Exxon and go, ‘OK, I’m good, I’ve done my corporate grant-making process, right?’ Now you go like, ‘The landscape is way bigger, and I have to really be thinking about being in a relationship with a whole myriad of groups now,’” she said.

And that, Wolf said, will take more time and more strategy. It’s writing 20 proposals instead of three.

As for UAA and its engineering college, Mock said they are already making changes. That includes searching for new sponsors and raising summer camp fees.

“With this new landscape, we actually do foresee having a lot of companies pitching in smaller amounts,” he said.

The entire University of Alaska is also pivoting in that direction. BP has donated about $36 million to the public university system, according to Megan Olson, UAA vice chancellor for university advancement.

In a statement, Olson said universities across the country typically receive the majority of donations from individuals and just a small portion from corporations and foundations.

“It has been just the opposite at the University of Alaska historically, and we have recognized for a while the need to reduce our reliance on corporate philanthropy,” she said.

As for the bright-colored bags used to pick up litter, BP will still partially sponsor them this year, and the Alaska Oil and Gas Association is stepping in to fund the other half, said Anita Nelson, executive director of Alaskans for Litter Prevention and Recycling.

“But we’re not sure what 2021 will look like,” she said.

The future of BP’s teacher awards is still uncertain.

 

University of Alaska President Jim Johnsen put a positive spin on the university system’s outlook in his 2020 State of the University address on Friday.

His speech during the AlaskaCAN! Conference in Anchorage largely focused on the public university system’s accomplishments and value to the state.

“Our research really provides terrific quality for what happens in our classrooms. In addition to that, it is an economic engine. With the state’s investment of $25 million, we return $150 (million),” Johnsen said.

But Johnsen did not shy away from UA’s current budget woes.

In 2019, Gov. Mike Dunleavy proposed a $135 million cut to state funding for the UA system — about a 41% reduction.

After a tense budget back-and-forth over the summer, Dunleavy and the then-chairman of the UA Board of Regents ultimately agreed to a smaller, $70 million cut spread over three years. That includes a $25 million cut in the current academic year.

“Had that (initial) cut gone into effect, we would be attending a memorial service here today rather than recommitting ourselves to serving the state’s need for a strong, resilient university system,” Johnsen said.

Johnsen’s speech follows an announcement earlier in the week that University of Alaska Anchorage leaders are looking at deleting academic programs to close budget gaps.

Johnsen said the program reviews are taking place across UA’s three universities: UAA, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Alaska Southeast.

“Yes, tough decisions will need to be made. Programs will be reduced and discontinued,” Johnsen said. “But as we take our destiny in our own hands, as these decisions are made, the interests of our students are first, always.”

The proposal to cut programs at UAA is the latest announcement in a series of concerning news for the University of Alaska system.

In January, preliminary data showed that UAA experienced a 10% drop in enrollment this fall. It’s one of the largest declines the university has seen in years.

But Johnsen likened UA to a “phoenix” that rises “strong, bright, and resilient from the ashes of a most challenging 2019.”

UA, he said, is planning for the future.

“And that vision for the University of Alaska in 2040 is for a seamless higher education system — a network, if you will,” Johnsen said. “With access for students and faculty and staff and community people, no matter where they are in their lives, to all of the high quality opportunities that the university offers for discovery, and learning, and service.”

Johnsen said that UA is in the early stages of its first-ever statewide philanthropic campaign. It is also working to increase enrollment and to generate more revenue through tuition and research funds.