University of Alaska

The University of Alaska’s Board of Regents unanimously agreed on a budget today, a week after the Legislature decided to cut university funding by about $8 million. That cut comes with a $3 million increase in the university’s costs.

To absorb its share, the University of Alaska Southeast is selling property and sweet-talking potential donors.

Rick Caulfield, chancellor of the University of Alaska Southeast, said the University of Alaska’s funding isn’t settled yet.

Gov. Bill Walker could still make adjustments with his veto power, and the Legislature hasn’t passed a capital budget, which Caulfield said could bring more money.

“We’re waiting not only on the operating side, which is the governor’s signature but also on the capital budget,” Caulfield said.

He said UAS will lose $400,000 to $600,000 under the current plan.

“It’s very likely that we’re looking at an additional six or eight positions going away,” Caulfield said. “We try to do that through attrition, but in a couple of cases, it’s been a matter of a layoff.”

Cutting through attrition means not filling positions when someone quits, retires or is fired.

Caulfield thinks this time they’ll only lose one faculty person. Last year, he said UAS cut 32 positions.

This is the fourth budget year in a row that the University of Alaska has taken cuts and they’re adding up.

“About (a) 20-21 percent reduction in University of Alaska Southeast general fund dollars,” Caulfield said. “It’s been a real struggle to try to maintain academic quality even as we’re dealing with those kinds of budget cuts.”

The cuts also mean fewer resources for things like marketing, advising and financial aid, he said.

Caulfield isn’t happy about the cuts, but he knows it could be worse. Originally, the Senate proposed close to a $22 million cut.

“An element of relief there,” he said. “Inevitably, we’re still having to deal with the cuts. But, to the extent that having a budget in hand now minimizes disruption, we want students to know that they can still get an education at the University of Alaska.”

According to a university news release, the budget also sets aside $6 million for a few select areas.

Caulfield said the money is going toward things like academic research, improving office efficiencies, driving up enrollment and improving retention.

He said the university wants to increase the number of students pursuing highly demanded jobs like nursing and teaching; that every dollar put into research tends to bring back about $4 in outside investment and research improves knowledge on issues such as climate change and fisheries.

Caulfield is looking for more money to help make up what UAS will lose.

“Many people will be familiar with our administrative services and bookstore building, which is the old Horton’s Hardware building for those who’ve been around for a while in Auke Bay,” he said. “We put that on the market and I believe we have a buyer for that building.”

The school also recently sold a house previously donated by Alaska’s first female attorney general, Grace Schaible. Schaible passed away earlier this month.

Caulfield said the house sold for about $439,000 and UAS put the money into an academic endowment.

The university also is drumming up support from past donors and Caulfield is asking UAS alumni to help out their alma mater.

“Just a few days ago, I was in Seattle and we were visiting with people who’ve already been generous in providing scholarship support for students at UAS,” he said. “We were having meetings with them and encouraging them to remain engaged.”

He said private donations are a modest part of UAS’ budget, partly because the school is young and has a smaller pool of potential donors, but Caulfield hopes that one day those private dollars will help shore up his budget, especially if the cuts continue.

Flags are at half-staff in honor of former Alaska attorney general and lifelong University of Alaska advocate, Grace Schaible of Fairbanks.

Schaible died Saturday at the age of 91.

Schaible grew up in Juneau, graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, George Washington University and Yale Law School. Returning to Alaska, she practiced law in Fairbanks, and in 1987 became Alaska’s first woman attorney general under former Governor Steve Cowper.

In a news release announcing Schaible’s passing, Gov. Bill Walker refers to her as “giant of Alaska history,” who “shattered the glass ceiling” as Alaska’s first woman attorney general.

Current Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth, the second woman to serve in the Alaska attorney general post, called Schaible “a pioneer who inspired her and other strong female leaders.”

Schaible also served as a University of Alaska regent, on the Permanent Fund Board and the UA Foundation, helping raise money for the Museum of the North and UAF Geophysical Institute. Proceeds from the sale of a home she donated to the University are the basis of an endowment at the University of Alaska Southeast.

Schiable also donated an extensive collection of art to the UA museum.

Flags will fly at half-staff in honor of Grace Schaible through Tuesday.

A creek runs into the river at the base of a bluff along the Kvichak. At the top of the hill, grass covered pits mark the foundations of old buildings, evidence of an abandoned settlement. It likely has a Yup’ik name.

Yoko Kugo, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is hoping to find out from elders in the nearby village of Igiugig what it is.

Kugo is in the midst of research for her dissertation, a three-year project to document the Yup’ik names of places around Iliamna Lake.

As she conducts field work at the old settlement, she photographs the creek, house pits, an old cross that would have marked a grave and a metal bell that lies in the dirt.

She will take these photos back to the village. From there, she will interview elders about the area’s history and about what the creek, site, and artifacts are called in their native language.

“I ask them about the place names, also how they used to get there, what time of the year they went there,” she said. “It’s not just the place name. But it’s the story behind the places.”

In Igiugig, Kugo’s work dovetails with the work of Village Council President AlexAnna Salmon. Salmon has dedicated years to recording the history and Yup’ik names of places around the village where she grew up.

“It’s just learning about how the Yup’ik chose to orient themselves and what they chose to name and why,” Salmon said. “There’s a lot of cultural, ecological knowledge that are in those place names as well as, for some people, family history that would be lost without having recorded that.”

To underline the importance of native place names, Salmon points out that they can be key to understanding how the area has changed over time.

“A lot of times the place names were places where they harvested certain resources, like Naruyatuli, an island that was known for all of its seagull eggs. If you went back there today and saw that there were no seagulls that would tell you another story,” Salmon said. “Thousands of years ago there must have been a lot of seagulls here, but today there aren’t any. So what’s happened?”

Kugo’s research will broaden the context for the work already done in Igiugig.

Salmon is excited that Kugo is bringing that energy to other villages around Iliamna Lake.

“Yoko is just expanding what we’ve done to the whole region, which is extremely wonderful because Kokhanok, and Levelock, and Iliamna and Newhalen, they’re our cousin villages,” Salmon said.We’ll have the whole picture rather than just our piece from our elders.”

Since Kugo began the project last summer, she has visited Newhalen, Iliamna, Kokhanok and Igiugig.

In those villages, she has interviewed more than a dozen people.

Kugo has funding from the National Science Foundation to continue for two more years.

When she is finished she plans to create a physical map and an online database of place names and their histories for the communities that she studies.

This month, 30-year-old Marcos Galindo graduated with a bachelor’s degree in social science with a concentration in political science.

Now, he’s working on a master’s of public administration and wants a Ph.D. in Chicano studies – a choice weighted by his early life on the streets and in the prisons of California.

“Especially in the gang culture of California, it’s a lot of false propaganda about what it means to be one’s brother’s keeper, what it means to be para la raza — being Mexicano and being Chicano,” Galindo said.

Feeding into that “propaganda” landed him in prison, he said.

“I want to know the historical accuracy of what it means to be my brother’s keeper, and I want to know the true meaning of what it means to be Chicano,” Galindo said.

Galindo’s story starts in California. He said he came from a broken home and like a lot of kids from broken homes, he started partying and acting wild in his teens.

He was arrested for fighting and was sent to juvenile hall where he said race determined everything.

“Since I’m Mexican, and you can see it just by looking at my features, I was accepted by the Mexicans pretty quick,” he said. “You become a product of your environment, so I lost that free love, party life, party, everybody happy; I became a cholo, I became a gangster. I got cliqued up as soon as I got out and got jumped in at 13.”

He used his new status to vent the anger he was holding in.

“I loved it. I loved the fast lifestyle; I loved people being afraid of me; I loved the fast money; I loved packing a gun; I loved all of that,” Galindo said.

But of course, that put him in prison where he ended up doing someone a favor.

“When I was doing my time there, fighting my case, I ended up getting celled up with a … they called him a ‘big homie,’” Galindo said. “Which is an individual that’s cliqued up with O.C., with organized crime, which is no longer street gangs, this is prison gangs — this is big deal stuff.”

That favor increased Galindo’s time from 18 months to five years.

He was released at 25 but ended up going back pretty quick.

“So, I got thrown up in the hole and then I seen the individuals who are running the show, right? These big time players in the O.C., of the organization I was part of and they were all heroin addicts. They were all old 60-year-old, 50-year-old heroin addicts.”

Then Galindo ran into his brother, who is serving life in prison for murder.

“He was like, ‘I’m never going to be able to hold my daughter again. I’m never going to be able to hold a woman again. I’m never going to be able to enjoy an In-N-Out cheeseburger,’” Galindo recalled. “‘All these things because I killed for a corner of a street that’s not mine. It’s a corner of a street that we’ve been fighting over since the ’40s and none of us own it.’”

That was it. Galindo’s mom invited him to come to Juneau; he came.

He landed two jobs and started making good money.

But someone called Galindo a racial slur and he beat the guy up and was arrested.

Authorities “threw the book” at him, he said, when his criminal history came up.

“Kudos to Juneau for that, trying to nip this stuff in the bud,” Galindo said.

He was sent to Lemon Creek Correctional Center where he joined the Flying University, a program that brought University of Alaska Southeast courses in philosophy and literature to prison inmates. UAS students on the outside also came. The plan was for the students and the inmates to learn from each other. It evolved into a prison re-entry program.

Galindo loved it.

He also learned he was a father while in prison and he rekindled his faith.

Those three things: school, faith and family, pushed him to change a second time.

“I was like, ‘This is it.’ There’s no more chance. If I ever go back to prison, it’s going to be … It must’ve been my destiny because I don’t want this lifestyle and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure I never, ever, ever go back,” he said. “So I started school and I graduated with my bachelor’s in three years.”

Galindo is one of three Flying University alumni who graduated this month. Another former inmate, Nathan Block, earned a bachelor’s degree with an emphasis in literature and minors in philosophy and Tlingit.

Thomas Spitzfaden, a regular student who took classes in Lemon Creek with the inmates, graduated with a bachelor’s in social science.

Anthropology was his primary and he had concentrations in psychology and political science.

There are three other Flying University students taking classes at UAS, Galindo said.

He thinks education is a powerful weapon and a cure for many of society’s problems, including the high rate of former felons who go back to prison.

Alaska seismologists say continuing budget cuts are affecting their ability to quickly detect and pinpoint earthquakes.

Helena Buurman of the Alaska Earthquake Center testified on Saturday before the House Finance Committee’s subcommittee on the University of Alaska’s budget.

Buurman said they have a fundamental government responsibility to protect lives and property. But she said four years of state budget cuts have affected their ability to maintain their seismic monitoring network.

“In August of last year, we suspended most field maintenance of the state’s monitoring network,” Burrman said. “As a result, more than a quarter of our monitoring stations are offline as of today. With the seismic network deteriorating rapidly, an earthquake occurring right now will take longer to detect, longer to assess, and we will do a poorer job.”

Buurman testified just two days before a pair of magnitude 6 earthquakes on Monday morning woke up Southeast Alaska residents and caused minor damage in Whitehorse.

Waiting on update on status on Lynn building in downtown #Whitehorse which was damaged in yesterday’s earthquake pic.twitter.com/IY8OB7pxaK

— Philippe Morin (@YukonPhilippe) May 2, 2017

She explained to lawmakers how their information is important for drafting building codes, setting insurance rates, mapping tsunami evacuation zones, and for engineers as they design every piece of infrastructure or construction project in the state.

In a phone interview later, Buurman explained how they have 150 seismic monitoring stations located in mostly remote areas around the state. The more stations that are placed around a fault line, the better the speed and accuracy in determining an earthquake’s location and magnitude.

“There is a seismometer which we dig into the ground and is buried below ground,” Buurman said. “And then we usually have some sort of hut or structure that holds all the rest of the equipment, and that includes a large bank of batteries to keep the power running. There are solar panels on the side of the hut to keep the batteries charged, and radio communications equipment to transmit the data 24/7.”

Buurman said about 40 of the 150 stations are currently offline.

Some of the common malfunctions include wildlife getting into the huts and chewing on the cables and equipment. Snow can cover the solar panels, which can prevent station batteries from recharging. Part of the communications network can also break down and prevent data from being passed on from a group of nearby operating stations.

Some of the bigger outages include the southern end of Kodiak Island and north of Yakutat.

Buurman wrote to North Pole Rep. Tammie Wilson that it took 30 minutes to update state emergency officials after Monday’s earthquakes. She writes that the national standard is 10 minutes.

State seismologist Michael West said the Alaska Earthquake Center gets almost a third of its $2.5 million funding from the state, a third from the federal government, and a third from private corporations for specific projects like monitoring a hydroelectric dam or the trans-Alaska Pipeline.

West said state dollars actually serve as seed funding that leverage federal dollars, which have also been declining. He said only $588,000 may be appropriated by state lawmakers this year, down from $800,000 before 2014.

Both the House and Senate have passed their own versions of the state operating budget, but the Senate has delayed negotiations over resolving differences in the bill.

West is hopeful that Alaska’s Congressional delegation will be able to appropriate additional federal funds.