Published Jun 11, 2024 by Ben Townsend

Barbara Amarok, Director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Northwest Campus (UAF NW), resigned from her position on Friday, May 31. Amarok served as Director of the Nome-based campus since June 2019. 

Amarok is an Inupiaq Alaska Native from Nome. After earning her bachelor’s degree in elementary education she returned to Nome and worked for Nome Public Schools for 20 years. At UAF, Amarok previously served as the Village Program Coordinator and taught ED 420 Alaska Native Education for educators in the Bering Strait region.  

Her departure comes just over one week after the College of Rural and Community Development was renamed to the College of Indigenous Studies. UAF NW housed one of five community campus locations for the college. 

Interim Dean of the UAF College of Indigenous Studies, Veronica Plumb, will oversee the search for a replacement. 

Published Jun 10, 2024 by Carter Dejong

Three hundred fifty seven thousand, seven hundred and sixty (357,760), that’s how many haircuts Charlette Lushin estimates she gave over the 43 years she worked at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Campus Barbershop.

“What goes on in the barbershop, stays in the barbershop,” says Lushin, who retired last month.

Like many at the time, Lushin moved to Alaska in the early 1980’s because her husband got a job on the pipeline. By 1982, she was working at the Campus Barbershop — a small room in the basement of Constitution Hall just big enough for a couple of old school hydraulic barber chairs.

A friend suggested she become a barber. And that’s what she did for more than four decades. Nations arose and fell, Germany was reunited, the World Trade Center was attacked (twice) and the U.S. elected its first African American president all while Lushin was at work with her clippers and scissors. For some families, she has cut four generations of hair.

In all that time, Lushin witnessed firsthand the evolution of hairstyles.

“Customers would come in and tell me they wanted the Ronald Reagan haircut, just like Ronald Reagan,” she said. Or they would bring in the Eddie Bauer catalog and point to the model they wanted to look like.

But running the barbershop isn’t just about cutting hair and knowing the latest styles. After 43 years, some of Lushin’s customers see her as someone they can share their personal problems with. Because, as she says, what goes on in the barbershop stays in the barbershop.

Lushin, who is in her 70s now, decided that it was finally time to retire so she and her husband can travel more.