University program seeks to create Native biologists

ALEX DeMARBAN

June 19, 2008 at 10:28AM AKST

Janelle Johnson squeezed the trigger on a .12-gauge shotgun.

A burst of smoke clouded past her face as she blasted a hole through a target bear at a shooting range outside Anchorage.

Home was hundreds of miles away, but not far from her mind.

The soon-to-be college freshman has big plans to get a degree from the University of Alaska Anchorage and return to St. Marys along the lower Yukon River.

She might become a biologist managing public lands near the Yup’ik village of 550, where residents still get much of their food from subsistence hunting and fishing.

“They trust me and know me, so it will be a really good thing,” she said. “It’s important to have someone who knows the land and would listen to people’s advice and do something about it.”

Johnson, 18, is part of a new effort at the university to help Alaska Natives overcome dismal graduation rates and earn biology degrees. The effort includes a summer bridging program, where incoming freshmen get the chance to work in the field with state and federal scientists.

But first, they traveled to Anchorage earlier this month for lessons on shooting charging bears, treating wounds and surviving an airplane crash — in case they encounter those problems in the field.

The effort to create more biologists is part of the highly successful Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program. The 13-year-old program, dependent largely on private funding, has boosted retention rates for engineering students by reaching into high schools to grab college prospects early.

By adding biology, the hope is that more Natives will one day become scientists managing public lands in Alaska. That will lead to better management, since people who rely on wild plants and animals for food will work hard to protect them, said Mike Rearden, a former federal wildlife refuge manager from Bethel.   

Alaska Native workers at state and federal land management agencies are increasing, but most lack biology degrees and fill only lower-rung positions, said Rearden, who helped develop ANSEP’s biology track.

The biology branch started last summer with five students. Nineteen are enrolled this year, and more are rising through the ranks.

Students can join the ANSEP program as early as their freshman year in high school whether they’re interested in engineering, biology or neither. The program is open to Native and non-Native students.  

Everyone starts by building a free computer.

ANSEP graduates who returned to the program to work — they’re called regional directors — travel to high schools to show students how to assemble the components.

Once the computers are running, the college graduates teach the basics of sophisticated drafting and mapping programs used by engineers or biologists.

To keep the computer, the students must pass chemistry and physics before finishing high school, plus trigonometry or pre-calculus, said Michael Bourdukofsky, a traveling ANSEP graduate whose family comes from the Aleut village of St. Paul.

The help continues throughout high school — top college students provide long-distance tutoring over computers.

The early preparation has helped ANSEP overcome the pitfalls that give Natives at the university just a 10 percent chance of earning a bachelor’s degree in six years.

Native dropouts are often unprepared for college, have few role models and experience homesickness. Many are first-generation students from tight-knit communities, a recent university study reported.

ANSEP overcomes those challenges with a nurturing but tough environment that captures students’ interest and teaches them what their high schools didn’t, founder Herb Schroeder said.

In the summer bridge program for biology or engineering prospects, students get four intense weeks of college algebra and trigonometry before starting college. Once college courses start, they must attend weekly study sessions, show academic improvement if they fall behind and work summer jobs related to their field of study.  

The strategy has helped ANSEP students post a 70 percent graduation rate. Since its founding, about 100 Native students have received engineering degrees, he said.

Rearden’s son will be one of them.

Sterling, a college senior who is part Yup’ik, joined the program in high school. After Rearden saw how it helped Sterling, he dialed up Schroeder two years ago to suggest developing a biology track.

“I saw what they were doing and the path they had laid out for the engineering students and realized there was a lot of potential for biologists,” Rearden said.

Schroeder agreed to expand the program, if Rearden found sponsors and agencies to provide scholarships and internships.

Rearden agreed. By last summer, he had support from agencies such as the state Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last fall, Rearden left the refuge where he’d worked for much of the last three decades and moved to Anchorage. USFWS agreed to pay his salary for two years to help the effort.

Last week, he’d finished lining up field internships for seven students attending the summer bridge program for biology.

Johnson, the St. Marys student, will start her month-long internship at a state Fish and Game genetics lab, helping scientists determine where salmon spawn in rivers across Alaska.

Later, she’ll head to Bethel to help scientists sample fish and monitor subsistence salmon harvests in the Kuskokwim River. It’s exciting to think that she can use a biology degree to manage the land and animals near St. Marys, she said.   

“This is a good opportunity to come here and have a hands-on experience and go back to my village and do this for my people,” she said.

Alex DeMarban can be reached at (907) 348-2444 or (800) 770-9830, ext. 444.