ALASKA NATIVES COMMISSION
JOINT FEDERAL-STATE COMMISSION
ON
POLICIES AND PROGRAMS AFFECTING
ALASKA NATIVES
4000 Old Seward Highway, Suite 100
Anchorage,
Alaska 99503
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Witness List | PDF
Version
FATHER ELLIOTT: Peggy --
MR. IRWIN: Wouldn't have been complete without you.
FATHER ELLIOTT: Peggy Wood, please.
TESTIMONY OF PEGGY WOOD
My name is Peggy Wood. And I work for the University of Alaska Fairbanks at the Bristol Bay campus here in Dillingham. I'm the director of the campus. And I have been asked by my council to testify on behalf of the council regarding the concerns for post-secondary education in the region.
Our campus is one of five rural campuses that is in a college called the College of Rural Alaska at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. And these campuses offer local courses as well as courses by audio-conference throughout their regions. The Bristol Bay campus serves not only Dillingham but the rest of the villages in the region, all 30 villages, with local and/or audio-conferenced courses. They're academic courses and they 're vocational courses. And we have between 300 and 400 students per semester throughout the region.
Of the people who are enrolled for credit, approximately 46 percent of them are Alaska Natives.
MR. IRWIN: How many percent, Peggy?
FATHER ELLIOTT: Forty-six.
MS. WOOD: Forty-six. And of those who are the total population, student population who are enrolled for credit, approximately five percent of them are Alaska Native men.
The council is very concerned that the needs of the region are not being met by the university, in that we are notable to attract nor develop programs that promote post-secondary education for Alaska Native males. And although we have a very small budget, our budget -- our operating budget, which is a state-funded budget, is approximately $478,000. But we also have contributions from the region of approximately half again that amount. And we are still very marginal in terms of our efforts out here.
FATHER ELLIOTT: Is that from the regional corporation or would you say from the region?
MS. WOOD: From the region. We have contributions from Lake and Peninsula Borough, the Lake and Peninsula School District. We have contributions from the Bristol Bay Native Association. We have contributions from individuals, businesses, quite a composite. It came -- I figured it out the other day and it came out to about two hundred and thirty-five or thirty-seven thousand dollars. And considering the number of people out here, that's pretty significant. I only wish that the state government would be as generous for us.
We are feeling that probably the reason that we have so few Native males in the post-secondary programs is due to the fact that we are not well funded for vocational programs. And it's not that I would be stereotyping males, Native or not, as being more interested in vocational programs. But frequently, men become involved in post-secondary through a vocational avenue before they expand into an academic avenue or seek a certificate or a degree.
We are only able to offer some individual courses, not full-bore certificate or degree programs out here. The closest we can come to that is an applied small business degree, it's an associate degree. But as far as providing other kinds of vocational education, we simply don't have the funding to do that. And actually, the funding for vocational, for the whole vocational program out here is approximately fifty-five, fifty-six thousand dollars. So you can see that that is a very meager amount.
I have written grants for vocational programs and received them in amounts of like $20,000 to implement, say a welding program or something on that order. But these are very significant in really their impact, they're one-shot things, there's no follow-up, there's no embellishing the skills that they have acquired. And that's really not the kind of approach that vocational education should take.
I think that nearly all of the people out here who have been involved in the fishing industry recognize with the limited entry permits, that there are going to be fewer and fewer people proportionately who will be able to go out and to fish, and that they need to have other kinds of skills and other kinds of human -- in order to support themselves. And we feel that vocational education would be a good place to put an emphasis and to encourage people into this.
Right now, we have a number of young people in our villages in the late teens, early 20's, who have periodically evinced a -- an interest in post-secondary education. But we simply don't really have the resources to go out and go full-bore unless we have an agency behind us, such as BBNA or the health corporation or something like that. So vocational sort of falls between the cracks and I feel that, you know, we have a real need there.
FATHER ELLIOTT: What do you suggest the Commission can do to be of assistance to you, then?
MS. WOOD: I would like to see you encourage the university to place vocational education in a more prominent position. Right now, the University of Alaska Fairbanks has a hierarchy of needs and they have a plan to address these needs. And the first on the plan is research. And then the second is a variety of other things and so on.
I don't believe vocational, per se, is listed at all, although rural education does function in this plan. I believe the overall university -- because this is not just Bristol Bay, this is true throughout the rural areas as well as in the other major units such as in the Southeast. I believe that they all could take a good -- you know, a good chunk of vocational effort and attract more Alaska Native males, and females, for that matter. I don't want to be too stereotyping here.
Also, I would like to see the legislators encouraged to do some appropriate funding for this. Some kind of a supplementary appropriation for vocational education would be particularly good.
We also do not have a facility for vocational education. When we take a welding program to the villages, at great expense, we have to use the public schools because there are no -- we don't have a facility in anyplace except Dillingham, Naknek, and Iliamna. We rent at Naknek and Iliamna. And instead of going to the small communities, it's virtually unfeasible.
But the communities that could come into the hubs could come in if there was a place for them to get the education. But we really don't even have a good vocational place here. This building, although we have used it in the past, does not have adequate area nor capabilities for vocational education. When we put a welding course on here, we had to put a ventilator in in order to carry out the welding course. That kind of thing.
FATHER ELLIOTT: What --
MR. IRWIN: Peggy I -- oh, go ahead.
FATHER ELLIOTT: What subjects would you stress for your vocational? Would it be marine engine repair and so forth? Boat building, perhaps, I don't know. But would you give us an idea of those courses that you --
MS. WOOD: Sure, mm-hm (affirmative). I think that all of our surveys out here have indicated that office occupations and business were one of the primary areas. And this could be adapted to fisheries businesses so that, you know, this would be a -- an Interest, shown interest. The other kinds of things that people have asked for had to do with repairing diesel engines and again, I think they were thinking that they would be able to help, you know, do some of the work on their boats and so on. Welding was a good one also.
The kind of equipment that -- and the kind of a building that we could use could be a multi-purpose building, where we could set it up for one kind of work, and then clear it, and then set it up for a different kind, as long as we had the equipment.
Right now, we have state-of-the-art welding
equipment, but it's in a mini-storage here in town because
I have no place to store it. So I -if I had a facility here,
the people could come in and use that equipment when they weren’t
-- when it wasn't being used for a course. But right now they
can5t use it because it's in a mini-storage.
MR. IRWIN: Peggy, just a comment, first of all, that you know, the disparities between Alaska Native females and males in higher education problem, that --
MS. WOOD: Uh-huh (affirmative).
MR. IRWIN: -- that's something that shows up all over the board and --
MS. WOOD: That's right.
MR. IRWIN: -- the latest figures I saw from University of Alaska Fairbanks, their statewide figures are holding at about three of every four degree candidates and degree graduates are --
MS. WOOD: Mm-hm (affirmative).
MR. IRWIN: -- female Native, among the Native population are female. And I think that just as a comment, that more and more people are beginning to realize that this probably has some real long-term social and economic implications for --
MS. WOOD: Right.
MR. IRWIN: -- Alaska Natives as a people. I guess my only concern would be, is that, you know, back in the -- I guess the boom days of the '80's, when there were a lot of capital projects going on and --
MS. WOOD: Mm-hm (affirmative).
MR. IRWIN: -- lots of money available and all, that in many places or in several places, there were facilities put in by legislators, you know, who -- you know, a lot of people call the pork barrel projects or those types of things. But --
MS. WOOD: Mm-hm (affirmative).
MR. IRWIN: -- basically having identified the same kinds of issues that your campus has come to here in approaching it from the voc ed, from that perspective, and, you know, you had -- the Kotzebue Technical Center went in, you -- over in Fort Yukon there's a big facility that's just as far as I know never really been used for any kind of voc ed, although that's what it was completely designed for. And these are just examples of what a lot of people are saying --
MS. WOOD: Mm-hm (affirmative).
MR. IRWIN: -- white elephants --
MS. WOOD: Mm-hm (affirmative). Mm-hm (affirmative).
MR. IRWIN: -- around the stare. And I think in many people's minds, gave voc ed in rural areas kind of a bad name. And I think that you're also working against that.
MS. WOOD: Mm-hm (affirmative).
MR. IRWIN: And I would just make, again, the comment, not necessarily a question, but just a comment that I think the -- that the going's going to continue to be tough in that area, and that people, especially legislators, are going to be more -- much more stringent about the planning of those things, long-term economic benefits, and really where that -- and it's that whole black hole of voc ed.
MS. WOOD: And well they should be concerned about that. And I -- I've been to Kotzebue. I've seen the voc ed center up there and how empty it is, And I know exactly, you know, what you're saying.
MR. IRWIN: Mm-hm (affirmative).
MS. WOOD: That is true. And I think that is part of it. We have had a $950,000 request which is not -- would never put up a voc ed center like Kotzebue.
MR. IRWIN: Right.
MS.WOOD: For two years now. And each year, the Governor has not seen fit to go forward with it. And it has rested, you know, with the Legislature to bring it forward and to push it through. And I have provided them with the statistics and with the results of the surveys that we have done out here, and, you know, I'd be glad to do that for anybody that asked. But actually, what we're talking about is something much more simple and would have multi-use, you know, rather than. being set up and forever carved in stone that it's going to be for one kind of a vocational education program.
MR. IRWIN: Right.
MS. WOOD: We also have no computers. And although we offer computer courses, people have to bring their own computers in order for us to, you know, to teach computers out here. Now, for the past six months, Bristol Bay Native Association had a grant that they purchased about 16 computers on. And they generously gave them to us to have in our facility, to use for all students as well as their own employees. And so we've had that wonderful facility for this very short time, we're losing it like tomorrow or the next day. These computers are being sent out to the villages. But what it has shown me is that, you know, when you've got something, people start thinking about it, and then they start thinking of how they can use it. And the next thing you know, why, they're trailing in to ask about courses that would never have been even requested.
Again, we don't have them as of tomorrow or the next day. So, you know, then we're back to ground zero again. It is kind of amusing. You see people bringing their computers in. They'll come in over the snow berms and trailing the cords in the snow, you know, and we'll set it up, and you know, people are very, very flexible out here. They -- they're resilient. They make the most of what they've got. And I can't think of a better way -- a better place to support a post-secondary program, because people are just so receptive everywhere, everywhere throughout the region.
FATHER ELLIOTT: Have you visited the vocational school at Seward?
MS. WOOD: Yes, I have, mm-hm (affirmative). Yes. That was not fun. I just sat there and went green because it was... I was very envious. People say, well, why doesn't everybody go to Seward or -- in fact, some people said, why don't they go to Kotzebue. And I think that, you know, primarily it's the reason that we're out here. A lot of people cannot leave their homes, cannot leave their jobs, cannot leave their families. And so, you know, they're here. And they need to be served here.
And I think it would be easier for a person to come in from Togiak for educational purposes, to Dillingham than for them to go to Kotzebue. And, you know, we're very adaptable. We try to do it in a million different ways. We try to offer the programs in a million different ways. But as I can tell you by our statistics, we're just not cutting it.
FATHER ELLIOTT: Thank you very much. That seems to be the end of our list, but is there anyone else?
This document was ocr scanned. We have made every
attempt to keep the online document the same as the original,
including the recorder's original misspellings or typos.
