Published Apr 4, 2023 by Josh Reed

On the college track and field scene, UAA was back in action down in California for the second straight week at the Mike Fanelli Track Classic and came away with victories in a pair of relays and two individual events. The Seawolves won the men’s and women’s 4x400. Junior Max Kremser was on the men’s relay team and also ran the fourth-fastest time in program history to win the 400 with a mark of 47.87, and senior Collin Sample won the long jump with a leap of 22-8.5.

“This was a good weekend of competition for us,” head coach Ryan

McWilliams said in a statement. “We saw marked improvement from last week and we feel like we can continue to build on our growing confidence and work ethic.”

After leading the University of Alaska Fairbanks men’s hockey team to one of its best seasons in decades, Nanooks head coach Erik Largen was named a finalist for the 2022-2023 Spencer Penrose Award. The award is annually given to the CCM/AHCA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Coach of the Year. Under his guidance the Nanooks finished with a 22-10-2 record independently that included impressive road wins over ranked-opponents Notre Dame and Denver.

Published Apr 4, 2023

The Ted Stevens Foundation and UAA Chancellor Sean Parnell signed an agreement under which the Stevens family and the foundation will be able to continue to sanitize the papers of Ted Stevens, a massive collection of thousands of boxes that is to be donated to UAA.

First, it will take one or two more years for the foundation to “complete initial curation of the collection,” according to the agreement with Parnell, the former governor.

Second, the Stevens family would continue to have the authority to define what items are “personal” and should be excluded from the collection.

Third, the curator or archivist to be employed by the university, will be “chosen by mutual agreement between the Ted Stevens Foundation and the university,” paid for five years with money raised by the foundation.

The new plan from Parnell represents the next step in a drive to create a “Ted Stevens Institute,” now being called the “Alaskan Leaders Institute,” a political shrine to be anchored by the papers of Stevens and perhaps of the late Rep. Don Young.

It’s not clear how many more years will pass before historians have access to the Stevens papers or what will be removed.

Published Apr 3, 2023 by Ashlyn O'Hara

More Alaska students could become eligible to receive annual scholarships awarded by the state at higher amounts under a bill introduced by the Alaska House Education Committee last week.

H.B. 148 aims to boost the number of Alaskans that use the Alaska Performance Scholarship, awarded by the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education to pursue education after high school graduation, and would increase those scholarship amounts. Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna, co-chairs the House Education Committee with Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River.

The Alaska Performance Scholarship is awarded annually to high-performing, eligible high school students to help cover the cost of postsecondary education at participating colleges, universities or career and technical education programs in Alaska. Students who meet the requirements for the largest scholarship level receive $4,755 per year for four years, or up to $19,020.

Published Apr 3, 2023 by Yereth Rosen

Russia comprises half of the world’s Arctic region, so how can Arctic cooperation proceed without Russia? And for Alaska, which shares bodies of water, marine ecosystems, animal populations, cultures and, in some cases, language and even family ties across the Bering Strait, how can those shared resources and interests be protected when communication with Russian neighbors has been nearly silenced?

With Russia in diplomatic isolation following its invasion of Ukraine, those questions were raised over the full three days of the Arctic Encounter Symposium that ended on Friday. The Anchorage conference attracted nearly 1,000 participants from 25 countries, including all of the Arctic nations – except for Russia.

The consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have included a halt to important joint research and resource management across the Bering Strait, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski. 

“We do worry about the lack of progress that we may see as a consequence of Russia’s activities, perpetuating this war in Ukraine,” she said at a Friday afternoon news conference.

However, that setback appears to be unavoidable for now, she said.

.........

However, a long-planned on-the-water spill exercise that will take place near the Russia-Alaska maritime border this summer will be a one-nation operation, Moore said. “We’ll just do our us-only version of it,” he said.

Details about the planned summer spill exercise, to take place this summer in the Bering Strait, were shared during a March 22 online presentation organized by the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Nome campus as part of its regular Strait Science series.

Mark Everett, who heads the preparedness branch for the Coast Guard’s Alaska district, said the exercise is planned for June and envisions a spill of 5,000 metric tons of oil flowing from Russia’s Big Diomede Island to Alaska’s Little Diomede Island, continuing eastward to the northern Seward Peninsula.

The scenario was explicitly planned by himself and his Russian counterpart – prior to the Ukraine invasion – as a Russia-based spill scenario that would affect Alaska, Everett said in the Strait Science presentation.

“This was designed as a joint exercise where the Russians would have their fleet on one side, we would have ours on another side, and we’d be talking back and forth. Unfortunately, that just isn’t going to happen,” he said.