Published Feb 2, 2023 by Peak Trust Company

Peak Trust Company (“Peak Trust”) has announced a $10,500 donation to the University of Alaska Southeast’s (UAS) Senator Ted Stevens Legislative Internship Program, as the first part of a broader commitment to support the program over the next five years. The program seeks to educate students about politics and public policy, as well as prepare them for careers in public service. Today, much of Alaska’s political sector is drawn from the ranks of former UAS legislative interns.

“We are incredibly proud to be part of the 35th year of this storied program,” said Matthew Blattmachr, President & CEO of Peak Trust Company. “As Alaska’s top educational experience in legislative politics, this internship will continue to expand the horizons’ of young adults and provide them with the support to become the next generation of leaders in the state.”

The UA State Legislative Internship Program is unique in the UA system. It admits around ten students each year from all over the state and includes an economically, as well as ethnically diverse student body. The program also provides skilled labor to the legislature and channels bright, capable young people into a life of public service. Roughly twenty-six percent of current legislative staff, including numerous legislative chiefs of staff, are former UA Legislative interns.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with a company like Peak Trust,” said Professor Glenn D. Wright, Ph.D., Statewide Program Coordinator at the University of Alaska Southeast. “In addition to the Ted Stevens Foundation, Peak Trust Company is the only other external corporate sponsor to step up and match our commitment to the program. Peak Trust will now help play a major role in providing the best educational experience in legislative politics available in Alaska. The legislative internship program provides career opportunities that would not otherwise exist for students. It has been instrumental in the development of many of Alaska’s most exemplary public servants."

Published Feb 2, 2023 by Maggie Nelson

The Unalaska school board has narrowed its superintendent search down to three finalists from a pool of eight total applicants.

This is the second time in just two years that the island’s school district has gone through the process of hiring a superintendent, and it will be the first time in more than two decades that the district has held on-site interviews for candidates.

The three finalists include Kimberly Hanisch, an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Alaska Southeast. She has worked as the director of instruction and curriculum for the Kodiak Island Borough School District.

Jesse Janssen is another finalist. He is the superintendent and career and technical education director for a school district in Kansas. He’s also worked as an assistant principal.

The district is also considering Michael Franklin, an emergency medical technician. He’s worked as a principal and assistant principal for schools in Bend, Oregon.

Published Feb 2, 2023

Join artists Thomas Chung, David Joel, and Lauren Stanford as they discuss their work in the 2022 Alaska Biennial exhibition. Following the artist talks, there will be a Q&A with the audience. Free, in-person event.

About the artists

Thomas Chung was born in New Jersey and grew up in New York City and Hong Kong. He received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010 and his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2013. He has participated in numerous group and solo shows throughout the United States. His interdisciplinary work has been written about in Modern Painters, Art in America, and The New Yorker. His artwork has been featured on PBS and Fox News. Chung has lived in Alaska since 2014. He is an associate professor of painting at University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), and the chair of the UAA Fine Art Department.

David Joel is an Anchorage-based conceptual artist. “Baptisms for the Dead; unholy area,” currently on view in the Alaska Biennial, speaks to the complex coexistence between the natural world and our engineered environments. Joel’s work considers certain physical and psychological dualities: natural and manmade, balance and imbalance, independence and interdependence, control and letting go. For Joel, these dualities become a continuum of transformation that form the conceptual groundwork of his practice.

Lauren Stanford grew up spending her summers at her grandparents’ remote homestead on Lake Clark, AK, which fostered her imagination and inspired her love of animals. After earning a Creative Writing degree from Colorado State University in 2010, she returned to Alaska and earned her BFA from the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2018. She was artist-in-residence at the Mendocino Art Center in California for two years, followed by a short-term residency at the Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana. Stanford is also a fourth-generation commercial fisherman and setnets near the mouth of the Naknek River each summer. She is currently teaching ceramics as an adjunct professor at University of Alaska Anchorage.



Published Feb 1, 2023 by alaskabusiness

How can Alaska businesses realize value by integrating sustainability into everything they do? Kevin Wilhelm has insights and inspiration for us as we consider the challenges and opportunities inherent in today’s environmental and social business concerns. For more than 20 years, Kevin has led the way for government agencies and hundreds of businesses to engage in regenerative business practices and to increase their efficiencies and revenue while doing so. UAA’s College of Business and Public Policy is pleased to invite Kevin to Alaska for a free in-person lecture, “Optimizing Alaska Business with a Regenerative Mindset,” on March 30, 5:30 pm, at Rasmuson Hall on UAA’s campus.

Please join us for this important conversation, including:

• What is a regenerative mindset, and why is it important to understand?
• What are the risks, opportunities, and new regulatory and market requirements to address today’s largest environmental and social challenges?
• How do we create business value and develop resilience across generations for the private sector to use sustainability to help diversify our economy?
• How does a just and regenerative mindset apply in Alaska – specifically in resource extraction, tourism, professional services, and finance?
• How do we incorporate sustainable business practices that protect Alaska’s reputation as a responsible steward of our natural resources and environment?

This event is part of the University of Alaska’s Just & Regenerative Business in Alaska three-lecture series, made possible by the Educational Legacy Fund.

Published Feb 1, 2023

The volatile Bering Sea crab fisheries, with a history of highs and lows, are currently for the most part in collapse.

They peaked with a 130-million-pound red king crab harvest in 1980, then closed in 1983 when stock collapsed, suffered repeated closures in 1994-95 and again now for the second year in a row are closed, said professor emeritus Gordon Kruse of the University of Alaska College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences in Fairbanks. 

Goodman and Kruse were keynote speakers at the 2023 Alaska Marine Science Symposium in Anchorage on Jan. 23, offering a history of the crab industry in Alaska, recent stock collapse and prospects for recovery in the future.

The combined economic impact of current closure of the Bering Sea red king crab and snow crab fisheries is expected to exceed $1 billion in losses to harvesters, processors, coastal communities and more, Goodman said.

Published Feb 1, 2023 by Jacob Dye

Classical and Romantic guitar will again sound in the Christ Lutheran Church in Soldotna when Armin Abdihodžic returns to the Kenai Peninsula, joined by Thomas Tallant for a performance called “Classical Guitar Through Centuries,” put on by the Performing Arts Society.

Abdihodžic, an assistant professor of guitar at the University of Alaska Anchorage, has performed multiple times on the Kenai Peninsula, society Vice President Maria Allison said Monday.

On Wednesday, Abdihodžic explained that the show will be broken into two parts, the first featuring himself and Tallant performing early 19th century guitar music by composers Mauro Giuliani, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Joseph Haydn. In the second, Abdihodžic will play contemporary solo music, which he said would include songs from 1980 forward.