For James Singewald, a typical week looks like this: Learn about the history of residential schools in your Indigenous Studies class. Get a fresh coat of paint from Southeast Alaska Independent Living, a non-profit serving people with disabilities. Cook breakfast for a classmate celebrating a birthday. Meet your professors on Zoom and talk about your academic plans. Attend student council meetings. When it snows, go swimming in the ocean.
It's the kind of higher education experience that leaders of a new nonprofit, two-year liberal arts, postsecondary education program in Sitka, Alaska, hope more young people like Singewald will soon have. This fall, the first official cohort of 20 students will enroll at Outer Coast, an ambitious university with a campus on the state's southeastern islands, also known as the Alaska Panhandle.
In this day and age, when existing universities are more likely to close, trying to open a new university is unusual. At least 30 colleges and universities will close in 2023, according to an analysis by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
But Singewald, 21, who grew up in California, thinks there are many young people looking for the life he's living now – studying history, literature and ecology just south of Glacier Bay National Park and west of the Tongass. National forest.
“The students are really amazing. I think everyone participates in these programs for similar reasons. They are looking for something different,” says Singewald. “And they really love learning and going on an intense journey.”
The intensity of Outer Coast also comes from the friction of the future slipping over the past.
The new program operates on the former campus of Sheldon Jackson, a religious boarding school and now-closed college. The college was founded to educate Alaska Native students as part of a “seriously assimilationist institution,” says Yeidikook'áa Dionne Brady. – Howard, who is of Tlingit descent and grew up in Sitka.
A former social studies teacher at a public boarding high school, Brady-Howard currently serves as the Outer Coast's Chair in Native Studies, where students study Alaska Native literature, beadwork and Tlingit language. She said she joined the faculty because she was intrigued by the opportunity to be part of an institution that was “actively working to reclaim what has been taken from our people for decades.”
“The Tlingit language is spoken in that space. Aspects of Tlingit culture and other indigenous cultures are taught in the space. Tlingit stories and other Native stories are being read and gaining credibility in that space,” she says. “And it’s very powerful.”
This new program, which focuses on building close-knit communities, encouraging student service, and breaking Western standards, is in many ways an island. But Bryden Sweeney-Taylor, Outer Coast's executive director, believes the Outer Coast doesn't have to be exceptional when it comes to higher education.
He believes this model, which cannot yet be officially called a “university” because it is still pursuing full accreditation, could work in other relatively remote parts of the country that are higher education “deserts.” , “It feels like students have to leave their backgrounds and communities behind in order to move forward.”
But Sitka isn't exactly a higher education desert. This city of about 8,000 people already has a university, and its vision for the future of learning is quite different from that of the Outer Coast.
diverse vision
The University of Alaska Southeast has three campuses located, as Paul Kraft describes it, “on the ground between Canada and the Pacific Ocean, separated by hundreds of miles of glaciers.” He is the director of the Sitka location, which was a community college before it was integrated into the state university system.
For the past 30 years, the University of Alaska Southeast Sitka has prioritized distance learning, especially in the sciences. The shift to distance learning (long before that model was adopted more broadly in higher education) came as institutions looked for ways to remain relevant and accessible to more students in geographically isolated situations, Kraft said. explains:
After all, Sitka can only be reached by plane or boat, and ferries are infrequent, he says.
Alaska has a lower college graduation rate compared to other states. Only about one-third of the state's high school class of 2022 enrolled in higher education within a year of graduation, according to the Alaska Commission on Higher Education.
One reason, according to Kraft, is that Alaskans can find jobs that provide a decent living without a college degree.
“You can make six figures out of high school and working in the oil fields, in a mine, or as a deckhand on a fishing boat,” he says. “They can have a job or career that is very good financially, and while they have a college degree, there is no return on their investment.”
So the college's Sitka branch turned its attention to programs that emphasized workforce training. Students who study on campus tend to take career and technical courses where they learn things like welding, scientific diving, and aquaculture. Most students study online. Kraft says 80 percent do not live in Sitka and most study in two-year programs. Healthcare education is gaining popularity.
“People who are active online do so because it fits into their busy lives,” Kraft says.
In contrast, Outer Coast offers in-person liberal arts courses taught in a small group seminar style. The curriculum emphasizes topics of regional significance to Sitka. For example, all students are required to study the Tlingit language.
Outer Coast's model, which has been in place for nearly a decade, allows students to earn an associate's degree and then transfer to a four-year university to earn a bachelor's degree. The school was inspired by Deep Springs College, a small two-year private school in California founded more than 100 years ago by banking and utility magnate L.L. Nunn to emphasize physical labor, student self-government, and academics. Sweeney-Taylor, Outer Coast's executive director, is a graduate of Deep Springs and previously worked as an instructor there.
Outer Coast aims to start each school year with 20 new students, and the small group size provides intimate learning opportunities (like eating banana bread while discussing books at a professor's house) that Singewald appreciates, and he You think you are less likely to get these opportunities. At a big university.
“It's very approachable, encouraging and easy to meet faculty and really explore and ask questions you might have been embarrassed to ask in class or hadn't even thought of before class. It’s over,” says Singwald. “It’s more personal than simply consuming knowledge and leaving. “We’re looking for intellectual relationships where we can exchange ideas and encourage each other’s thinking, and I think that’s my favorite part.”
Students on the Outer Coast also work in community organizations, putting in hours of work at local fish hatcheries, animal shelters, cemeteries or nursing homes, for example. Students are responsible for cooking, cleaning, and keeping the program functioning through a self-governing system of committees that make decisions about enrollment, curriculum, and faculty. The program requires students to commit approximately 20 hours a week to service and work.
“Ultimately, I think Outer Coast education is about students contributing more than themselves,” Sweeney-Taylor says.
To measure whether Outer Coast is meeting its goals, leaders plan to use administrative data and surveys to track student success over time, looking at indicators related to academics, degree completion, career advancement and community involvement.
Sweeney-Taylor said there are plans to compare the results of students attending Outer Coast with those who do not attend or are on a waitlist.
“We will know that we are achieving our goals and fulfilling our mission when Outer Coast students experience greater success and meaning compared to their peers across their education, careers, communities and lives,” Sweeney-Taylor said in an email. “It is.”
unique partner
Like higher education across the country, the University of Alaska is suffering from a “post-COVID hangover,” Kraft says. It appears that more potential students are skeptical about whether a college degree is worth the cost.
Sitka's two higher education options represent extremes of how higher education could evolve post-pandemic. Will tomorrow's students flock to the convenience of affordable online learning? Or will they crave and pay for deep physical, interpersonal, and residential experiences?
Tuition at the University of Alaska Southeast is relatively affordable, but the university is still grappling with what Kraft calls the “narrative” that most students who go to college leave with “a huge amount of debt.” Meanwhile, tuition on the Outer Coast this fall will be about $45,000. (The program says it will meet students' demonstrated financial need.) Sweeney-Taylor expects tuition to cover half the revenue needed to run Outer Coast, with the other half coming from philanthropy. To date, Outer Coast reports raising more than $3 million from individuals and foundations.
Both institutions are working to serve more students in Alaska. More than half of the state's 2022 high school graduates with post-secondary education enrolled in an out-of-state college or university.
Brady-Howard, director of Native Studies on the Outer Coast, says it's common for many high school seniors to want to experience a new way of life when it comes time to choose college. A campus in the Lower 48 may seem very attractive to them.
But the realities of life far away can be confusing.
“Having taught primarily in Native boarding schools for 23 years, I respect their decision, but I have seen the struggles my former students have had when moving out of Alaska to larger institutions. “ She says, “The disconnect from home is a huge burden for many of them.”
While the Outer Coast wants to attract students from a variety of backgrounds, Sweeney-Taylor said the program “has a particular focus on reaching Alaskan students, especially Alaska Native students and rural Alaskans who have really limited opportunities to pursue higher education.” He said. .”
About 28% of students at the University of Alaska Southeast in Sitka are Alaska Native, Kraft said, adding, “We want to raise that bar even higher.” “Our registration must reflect the communities in which we live.”
Leaders of both institutions say they are not competing for the same students because they have very different models.
In fact, as Outer Coast pursues accreditation as an independent institution, the program has built a relationship with the University of Alaska Southeast, allowing Outer Coast to now offer classes for credit through the university.
“It’s a great neighborhood and there’s plenty of room for more than one,” Kraft says of Sitka’s higher education institutions.