University of Alaska

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, received a surprise on Friday: The Trump administration is proposing deep cuts to the organization, which focuses on fisheries and climate science.

As reported in the Washington Post, NOAA could lose 26 percent of its overall budget. The Sea Grant program, with more than a dozen projects in Alaska, could be hit particularly hard.

Carol Kaynor is a communication specialist at Sea Grant. She’s worked there for about 25 years.

“This is the wildest ride I ever remember,” Kaynor said.

Last week, she found out the organization could lose all of its federal funding by scrolling through Facebook.

“Part of the reason I’ve worked here so long is that I believe in this program,” Kaynor said. “I think it’s an excellent program and I felt like it made a difference, and that’s a big thing.”

Sea Grant helps train villages to monitor coastal erosion, tracks the economic vitality of the seafood industry and studies the impact of climate change, among many, many other things. The organization supports research at 33 universities nationwide, including the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Kaynor says Sea Grant plays a vital role nationally and in the state. So the news that the Trump Administration wanted to eliminate program was hard to swallow.

“I was thinking this is crazy. Sea Grant has such a huge return on investment,” Kaynor said. “Why would you cut a program that has a major return on investment when you’re trying to grow the economy? It doesn’t make sense.”

NOAA is administered by the U.S. Department of  Commerce. The Washington Post obtained a memo that said the new administration wants to “prioritize rebuilding the military.” It mentions the “trade offs and choices inherent in pursuing the goals.”

Paula Cullenberg, the Alaska director of Sea Grant, says she’s not sure why the program didn’t make the cut.

“I have no idea … Maybe this was an easy mark and it was something on a spreadsheet that looked available,” Cullenberg said. “As far as I know there wasn’t any in-depth analysis around that.”

Sea Grant has been in Alaska for about 47 years and Cullenberg says the program has been threatened before. She says the Reagan administration tried to nix the funding but Congress chose to reinstate it. This time around, she hopes it goes the same way.

“You know, it feels like a bit of a blow,” Cullenberg said. “A lack of confidence for sure or a lack of support by the administration. I can’t say I’m confident but I’m certainly hopeful.”

The next fiscal year starts in October. The White House and lawmakers will have the upcoming months to decide. Cullenberg is meeting with NOAA this week in Washington, D.C., to discuss a game plan.

When you open a REI catalog or page through Outside magazine, what do you see? Do the people on the page look like you? Arctic Youth Ambassador Reth Duir is working to make that imagery more representative.

“When you look at the depiction of what people go outside it’s usually white people,” Duir said. “When you look at these catalogs, you look at Facebook ads, and you go to REI, you don’t see a lot of diversity of people. So I think it can be very tough for someone trying to explore the outdoors because there’s not much commonality.”

But the University of Alaska Anchorage junior hasn’t always been an outdoors enthusiast. His childhood was split between Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Omaha, Nebraska. Playing outside meant playing basketball or cops robbers with his friends.

When he was 8 years old his mom told him a story that made him fear the outside world.

“I noticed there was a wound on the outside of my mom’s ankle and her skin was just completely different,” Duir said. “I was like, ‘how did that happen?’ And my mom was like, ‘I was bitten by a snake.’ She became instantly very sick and she could have died that day.”

Duir had a different childhood than his parents.

Before he was born, they fled East Africa because of political and religious oppression.

When he was 10 years old, his life and his parents’ lives were about to become even more different. They were moving from Nebraska to Alaska.

“I thought they were crazy when they first said that,” Duir said. “I knew Alaska, there was a lot of snow it was very cold. I knew about polar bears. I just had this picture of (the) Ice Age, but with people.”

Landing in Anchorage, his new home, the first thing he saw was the Chugach mountain range.

For a kid from Nebraska, it was the first time he’d ever seen a mountain.

At that moment, Duir began think about starting to explore the outdoors.

After graduating high school, he got that opportunity through a kayaking expedition in the Prince William Sound.

Immediately Duir found his calling.

“Oh yeah, I was hooked for sure,” Duir said. “They definitely had me hooked. They reeled me in.”

“A lot of people don’t understand that this is our public lands. It is for everyone,” he said. “It should be for everyone. I want to get rid of these misconceptions that the outdoors is for a particular audience. There are different ways to explore our outdoors — going hiking, backpacking or fishing with your family and friends.”

He wants to help communities find ways to connect to the outdoors that work for them.

“I know Alaska Native communities they live off the land,” Duir said. “We have Hmong communities that like to go fishing. I think it’s really figuring out what the community needs are and how people enjoy their public lands. How they like to be outdoors. Then creating a way to do that.”

He knows he’s still learning.

“This program has really opened my eyes to different things that are happening in the state of Alaska and why the voices of people in rural communities are important and they should be at the table,” Duir said. “I want to be able to help with that experience.”

Duir will graduate next year with a degree in elementary education. He used to want to be a teacher in a big city — like Chicago or Oakland — but he’s changed his mind. He wants to work in rural Alaska and give back to the place he’s called home for a decade.

President Donald Trump’s Department of Education is being questioned on its lack of transparency because it hasn’t publicized results of a major investigation into sexual harassment and sexual assault cases on University of Alaska campuses.

The university released the results, but BuzzFeed News reports the education department has not. It’s a departure from past practice.

Because the Department of Education hasn’t been answering reporters’ questions, it’s unclear if it’s a temporary side effect of the transition or true policy shift. Victim advocates are worried the Obama-era practice of releasing Title IX investigation results has ended.

I discussed the story with BuzzFeed National Reporter Tyler Kingkade, who reports on sexual violence and domestic abuse. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Can you sum up what these advocates were concerned with for me?

So, usually when the department would finish a Title IX investigation, it would send out a press release to reporters saying whether or not the school violated Title IX and include the voluntary resolution agreement and the resolution letter.

It’s not crazy to think that the university would have gotten these materials and decided to just push it out on their own, but what was strange was that the education department didn’t have much to say when we asked them, “Hey where’s the materials for this? Why haven’t you guys announced anything? Are you going to announce anything?” And to this week we still don’t have access to these letters on the department’s website.

And to be fair to the department, when I asked about the agreement and the letter of findings, the department promptly shared both of those documents with me, they emailed them to me. But the agency not having them available on their website, what is the underlying problem with that?

Yeah, so I talked with advocates this week, as well, just to follow up. And they’re still concerned because while the department is willing to give away these materials now to reporters who ask for them, they’re worried about what students and parents are going to have access to.

And I know that other universities when they’re under investigation, or even if they’re not and they’re just trying to stay up to date with best practices and what the federal government expects schools to do, they do read these as well. So you can bet that if a school does come under investigation next week for alleged Title IX failures, they’re probably going to look at what happened at the University of Alaska to see what the Office for Civil Rights is looking for schools to do. That’s one issue.

The other is, the advocates just want students to be aware that this is an option. They really want to push hard that students can file Title IX complaints if they think that their rights have been violated. It’s more about the advocates saying that they just don’t want to see any rollback of any transparency.

You mentioned in your report that the department didn’t answer BuzzFeed’s questions about whether the documents would be put on the website eventually. In my own experience, I made a request asking for comment on the investigation, and a spokesperson for the department, I’m quoting him, he told me the department “is not really doing interviews right now while we continue our transition and staffing up process.”

“I’m actually hearing the same thing even from insiders who work on sexual violence issues and Title IX issues, who say in previous administrations under both Democrat and Republican presidents, they’ve had much more access to speak to people in the department early on just to talk to them. And these would be off the record conversations that they’d have. What I’m hearing that they aren’t even getting their phone calls returned.

And one thing to be fair about the lack of the response from the Education Department on the University of Alaska case is that they really are still in transition. They don’t have someone appointed yet to be the … you know, in charge of the communications office. There’s not a lot of players in place yet at the education department. So, there’s a lot still unanswered.

But, I think what a lot of the advocates and activist groups on these issues on sexual assault issues are approaching this as is they’re going to be loud and boisterous early on to show that they’re paying attention. There were a lot of them that were a lot of them that were pretty opposed to Betsy Devos’ nomination because she did not pledge to continue the Obama-era policies on Title IX. And so, I think there’s a bit of them just trying to make a show of force.

All right Tyler, is there anything I didn’t ask you about that you think is important to point out on this issue?

This is definitely an issue where the questions are lying at the Education Department. It’s not necessarily with the university. The advocates, I think, were lucky in this case that the University of Alaska was so forthcoming about their investigation, and a lot of them give them credit because of the University of Alaska Fairbanks interim chancellor a couple of years ago issuing an apology for how cases were handled.

There’s still people who think the university has a ways to go but I think nationally, people are looking at the university as being a bit more transparent and wishing some more schools down in the Lower 48 would follow their lead and post more of these documents and answer more of these questions about Title IX.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said in a letter that the University of Alaska System badly failed students and staff who were sexually harassed and assaulted.

OCR began a Title IX investigation of the university system three years ago. The investigation focused on cases from 2011 to 2015. Title IX is the federal law that outlaws discrimination against, or the exclusion of, any person from a federally funded education program or activity because of their sex or gender.

The University of Alaska is trying to make its campuses safer for students and employees by doing a better job resolving sexual discrimination and assault cases. The university is following OCR’s orders to change the way Title IX cases are handled.

OCR made a list of 23 specific cases as examples of the university’s Title IX failures. The schools responsible for each case weren’t identified.

The first problem in the list is the system’s failure to investigate or finish investigating multiple reports of misconduct.

“In 2013 a student was found in a university residential building intoxicated, unconscious, and wrapped in a blanket with her clothing partially undone.  She said that she had met a soldier, but could not recall what had happened because she had blacked out. The soldier was ultimately court-martialed for sexually assaulting the student and university staff testified at the court-martial for which the soldier received three years of confinement and a dishonorable discharge.  The case records indicate that Residence Life handled the situation and the university failed to conduct a Title IX investigation or offer the student any interim measures, but it did investigate and discipline the student for underage drinking on the night of the sexual assault.”

The university has also prematurely stopped investigating employees accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault many times after the accused person resigned.

“In 2013, a student reported that a professor was sexually harassing female students.  The complainant stated that she knew at least four students with whom the professor had had a sexual relationship.  When interviewed, a female professor said that several students had complained about this professor’s conduct towards female students.  The documents provided to OCR contained a draft Title IX investigation report, concluding that the respondent behaved inappropriately with students and recommending a letter of expectations of behavior from the Dean.  The investigation was not completed, and neither a final report with findings nor a letter from the Dean was issued.”

OCR also found that investigations took too long at each of the system’s three universities. In addition, multiple times university investigations were “delayed or suspended” when law enforcement investigated.

“In 2015, university police reported the sexual assault of a female student by a member of a men’s athletic team to the university’s Title IX office and Residence Life.  Ten days later, university police reported to the Title IX office that two other students allegedly had been raped by the same respondent.  Soon after the complainants reported their sexual assaults, members of the athletic team began calling the complainants and their friends ‘whores.’ Investigation of all three cases was put into abeyance at the request of the district attorney’s office. OCR received no indication that the university resumed the investigation.”

And the list keeps going.

Lori Klein was hired to be University of Alaska Southeast’s full-time Title IX coordinator in 2016. In the past, the position was part-time. OCR stressed in its findings that each university must have at least one Title IX coordinator to help their schools comply with federal law.

“I think the biggest trend that I saw when I reviewed the findings from that past time was a failure of documentation,” Klein said.

OCR found the majority of the three universities’ records were “incomplete and poorly maintained.” There were very few cases from campuses in rural communities and many files from the 2011-2012 academic year had no record of investigations.

“In OCR’s belief, and rightly so, if it’s not documented it might not have happened,” Klein said. “How are they supposed to know? How am I supposed to know? How is anyone supposed to know if it’s not documented? Did it happen or did it not happen?

OCR and the University of Alaska negotiated a list of ways the university will fix its shortcomings and on Feb. 17, university president Jim Johnsen signed it.

That agreement is long and it would take a long time to summarize everything in it, but here are a few of the requirements:

The university has to rewrite a number of policies and regulations.

Klein said, “that’ll be one of probably those priority areas that we address immediately.”

During an investigation, each university has to give equitable rights to the people reporting assault or harassment and to the people accused. For example, in some past scenarios, only the accused person got copies of witnesses’ names, their statements or other documents used in their case. And only the accused could object to people appointed to sit in on their hearing who they thought were biased.

Some of the requirements, Klein said the university system has already adopted. UAS is trying to do a better job teaching its satellite campuses how Title IX cases are handled and now rural campuses are reporting more assaults and harassment.

“While it feels counterintuitive, I think the reports are reflective of the fact people now understand the process better, that it is more transparent,” Klein said.

Now, each of the system’s three universities require all faculty and staff to take Title IX training and they provide training opportunities for students.

In 2016, all three universities entered formal agreements with local police departments and the Alaska State Troopers that establish the universities’ rights and the agencies’ rights during a Title IX investigation.

Also, students who report sexual harassment or assault, won’t be punished if they broke minor university policies like multiple students who were punished for drinking in the past.

OCR said in a letter to the university system that if the university doesn’t meet the agreement’s conditions, the office will force them through administrative or judicial proceedings.

A machine the size of a mini-fridge sits on the counter of a college science lab. Three half-constructed plastic models of fetal orca bones are visible through the glass front. The 3-D printer’s extruder moves across the models, adding plastic layer by layer. It whirs, hums, and beeps like a “Star Wars” droid.

In September of 2011, three killer whales puzzled biologists by traveling about 70 miles up the Nushagak River. Orca’s natural habitat is saltwater. Sometimes they swim up the freshwater river for salmon, but not that far. By October all three whales had died. That raised the question of what to do with the bodies, which led to an unusual science project. Bristol Bay area scientists, students, and educators have been working to make a plastic model of the fetal orca’s skeleton.

One orca was pulled ashore, and NOAA scientists performed a necropsy. When they discovered the whale was pregnant, they saved both her skeleton and the skeleton of the fetus. But preserving the fetus was complicated because its bones hadn’t ossified and fused together yet.

Kent Winship teaches construction and runs the fabrication laboratory at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Bristol Bay Campus. He has helped oversee work on the solution to that problem.

“It was basically a bag of bones with skin on it, just like a big trash bag full of partially formed cartilage, and not all the way meshed together bones,” says Winship. “This is all cartilage, so it’s going to decay. What they decided to do was 3-D scan them.”

So the Nushagak Orca Articulation Project was born. The Dillingham City School District, Bristol Bay Campus and Nunamta Aulukestai have worked in partnership to clean, categorize, scan, and print the fetal skeleton’s hundreds of bones.

The project brought high school student Cheyenne Roehl onboard two years ago to scan bones. She works in the campus lab three hours every weekday. A few other people have been involved in scanning over the years, but Winship says that Roehl has done the bulk of the work.

Her job is to create 3-D digital models of the bones in a computer aided drafting program.

“I get one of the bones, and I put it on the scanner,” she says, explaining her process. “We have to get multiple scans, and then align them together. And then we make sure that it looks like the bone, and then we get a finalized watertight model…I’m making it sound a lot more simple than it actually is.

It’s time-consuming work. If a bone has a lot of holes, protrusions, or facets, it can take numerous scans to capture all the angles. Each scan takes about 20 minutes.

Roehl pulls a piece of the orca’s skull from one of tall cabinets where bones are stored in jars and paper bags.

She holds it, turning it over and running her fingers along its different angles.

“I see a lot of holes and places that scanned very well to have a lot more detail for the scan because we use a laser, and if it’s slanted a little bit, the scanner won’t be able to pick up that data.”

When she has the scans, Roehl joins the images to form one 3-D model. Then she prints it and organizes it with the other printed bones.

The project reached an important milestone this week. Roehl finished scanning, and she’s about to finish printing the last of the roughly 300 whalebones.

Then it will be time for the jigsaw phase of this project. Project leaders with the university, school district, and Nunamta Aulukestai are developing plans to begin constructing the skeleton out of the model bones. They aim to involve students in this stage of the work as well. Fully assembled the killer whale fetus will be about 6-feet long.

Roehl reflects on the hundreds of hours she and other students have put in over the years. She says that it’s the idea of seeing this orca skeleton completed is what keeps up the momentum.

“It’s really exciting because you know that they’re going to be turned into a 3-D model skeleton, and that will be beautiful.”

The faculty senate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks voted no-confidence in University President Jim Johnsen’s leadership on Monday, Feb. 6. The vote followed the same move by the Anchorage faculty Jan. 13.

Johnsen addressed the issue this morning at a meeting of the Senate Education Committee.

After absorbing more than $50 million dollars in budget cuts over the past two years, Johnsen and the Board of Regents are in the process of consolidating the university’s administration through what they call the “Strategic Pathways” program.

The no-confidence votes came after Johnsen reversed his recommendation to headquarter the school of education in Fairbanks after the City and Borough of Juneau offered a $1 million contribution to support the school. The faculties say they were not involved in that decision, as well as others.

Sen. Gary Stevens raised the issue.

“I think you made the right decision on moving the school of education headquarters here to the Juneau campus, but still, in all, as a former faculty member I am quite concerned of where you’re going in relationship to the faculty. … They apparently feel they’ve been left out. … How are you going to bridge that gap?” he asked.

Johnsen responded that 89 faculty have been involved in the Strategic Pathways process thus far, and there will be more involvement in the next phase.

“Going forward, there will be two rounds of consultation with every affected organizational unit … In addition to that we’re scheduling time with the faculty senates themselves, so that they have an opportunity to weigh in,” he said. “You know change is very, very difficult and you’ve given us budgets that are tough to meet, and I can’t take seven years to go through processes to make decisions about how we’re going to move forward. We have to make those decisions expeditiously.”

Stevens’ response was light-hearted.

“There’s an old joke that I didn’t like when I was a professor and that is ‘how many professors does it take to change a light bulb?’ and the answer is ‘change?'” he said. “But, I say that in humor because I love the faculty … and we can get beyond this, I believe.”

Sen. Shelley Hughes, who chairs the committee, ended the hearing by encouraging faculty involvement in the consolidation process.

Johnsen is scheduled to talk about the university’s recruitment strategy, the land grant deficit and other issues at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9, in the House Finance Subcommittee on the university.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated which subcommittee University President Jim Johnsen is scheduled to speak in. Johnsen is scheduled in the House Finance Subcommittee on the university, not the Senate.