Published Sep 19, 2023 by Ariane Aramburo, Peggy McCormack

That same summer, the University of Alaska Anchorage sent out a catalog for its culinary arts program. Puff didn’t know the university had a program, but she took a tour and was hooked.

From there, Puff’s cooking career took off, landing her at places like Orso, Glacier Brewhouse and Kincaid Grill. She also ran the cooking school at Allen & Peterson and worked at the King Career Center for 11 years.

“I often get students who walk in on the first day and say, ‘I don’t bake, I don’t like to bake. It’s not my thing,’ and then by the end of the semester, they’re like, ‘Man, that was so much fun. I can’t believe it’s over,’” she explained.

Many still can’t believe — or even know — that UAA’s culinary program has been around for 50 years.

“We like to think of it as Anchorage’s best-kept secret,” Puff said. Half a century later, Alaska’s culinary scene continues to fill up with students turned local chefs.

Published Sep 19, 2023 by Lauren Maxwell

The Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program (ANSEP), run through the University of Alaska, offers an Acceleration Academy that allows students to take full-time college classes while still in high school. The program, for students in grades 8 through 12, is free and can help families save on college costs as well as give students a head start on their careers.

“By the time they’re out as a 12th grader, if they start with us as a ninth grader, they’ll have accumulated at least two years of college before graduating from high school,” ANSEP’s University of Alaska Anchorage regional director Janelle Marie Anausuk Sharp said.

The Acceleration Academy is currently offered at UA campuses in Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Bethel and Kotzebue. At 187 students, this year’s class is the largest in the program’s history.

Sharp said the program is open to all students, not just Alaska Natives, and taking STEM classes like science and engineering isn’t required at the high school level. She said once students graduate from the academy there’s no requirement they complete their college education at the University of Alaska.

“But we really encourage them because we are trying to keep our students here as leaders when they graduate from high school and college,” she said. “Because we really believe that our people are going to make the best decisions for our communities.”

Published Sep 19, 2023 by Ashlyn O'Hara

From deepwater exploration to citizen science projects, marine researchers and enthusiasts from around Alaska converged in Seward on Sunday for the inaugural Seward Marine Science Symposium.

Held over the course of three days out of the K.M. Rae Marine Education Building on Third Avenue, the symposium kicked off Sunday with a series of panels highlighting the marine science work different state groups are doing in Southcentral Alaska. Other activities planned for Monday and Tuesday included tours of local marine facilities.

Facilities toured included the University of Alaska Fairbanks Seward Marine Center, the Chugach Regional Resources Commission’s Alutiiq Pride Marine Institute and the Alaska SeaLife Center. Attendees were also invited to participate in a community mural painting portraying sea life, to be displayed near the Alutiiq Pride Marine Institute.

Sam Candio, an expedition coordinator for NOAA Ocean Exploration, managed this year’s series of Seascape Alaska expedition series, which had a stated mission of improving knowledge about unexplored or poorly understood areas offshore in Alaska and was conducted aboard NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer.

The series consisted of five expeditions, three of which focused on mapping. Candio said their work started in May in the Aleutians, but ultimately spanned the whole Gulf of Alaska, including Kodiak, Prince William Sound and Seward. Candio said his team’s expeditions are meant to help fill in information gaps that exist in different areas.

“I think we have a responsibility to make that accessible to the public, and make people care, because there’s a lot to care about and this stuff is extremely interesting,” Candio said.

Dr. Tuula Hollmen, of the Alaska SeaLife Center and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, presented work her team has been doing with students in Seward to collect community data about local seabirds. Their Resurrection Bay survey is the only year-round seabird survey in Alaska and has been running since 2011.

Published Sep 18, 2023 by Rod Boyce

Most of Earth's near-surface permafrost could be gone by 2100, an international team of scientists has concluded after comparing current climate trends to the planet's climate 3 million years ago.

The team found that the amount of near-surface permafrost could drop by 93% compared to the preindustrial period of 1850 to 1900. That's under the most extreme warming scenario in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

By 2100, Earth's near-surface permafrost, within the upper 10 to 13 feet of the soil layer, may exist only in the eastern Siberian uplands, Canadian High Arctic Archipelago and northernmost Greenland—just like it did in the mid-Pliocene Warm Period.

The research, published Aug. 28 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by Donglin Guo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology. Scientists from the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Canada, The Netherlands, France and Sweden collaborated in the research.

Professor emeritus Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute is among the co-authors. Romanovsky is a leading scientist in permafrost research.

"The loss of this much near-surface permafrost over the next 77 years will have widespread implications for human livelihoods and infrastructure, for the global carbon cycle and for surface and subsurface hydrology," Romanovsky said. "This research rings yet another alarm bell for what is happening to Earth's climate."