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News & Announcements UA Foundation 2009-2010 Scholarships The University of Alaska Foundation announces the availability of scholarships for students attending any campus of the University of Alaska during the 2009-10 academic year. The UA Foundation has 58 scholarships offering awards from $500 to $8,000. Requirements vary. Please visit www.alaska.edu/foundation/scholarships/ for specific information about the scholarships. Students who submit an online application via UAOnline are considered for all scholarships for which they are eligible. Since most scholarships are awarded early in the spring of each academic year, applications must be received by Feb. 16, 2009, to be considered for most fall 2009-spring 2010 scholarships. Applications received through Aug. 15, 2009, will be considered for any late-awarded scholarships or any new scholarship that may open up. Applications received after Aug. 15, 2009, date will be disqualified. Applications are available at UAOnline.alaska.edu. Visit the UA Foundation Web site at www.alaska.edu/foundation/scholarships/ for more information.
Mortgage Financing available for Alaska Teachers Alaska Housing Finance Corporation Teachers and Health Care Professionals' Housing Loan Program - www.ahfc.us
Childcare Task Force established at UAA Dec 5, 2008 | Chancellor Ulmer pulls together group to address childcare needs of UAA community
ANCHORAGE, AK – UAA Chancellor Fran Ulmer has initiated a Childcare Task Force to analyze and make recommendations concerning the childcare needs of students, staff and faculty. One of the greatest roadblocks to single parents trying to finish their college degrees is the cost and availability of childcare. This new task force will consider how to make quality childcare more affordable and available to more UAA students, staff and faculty.
The group will review how childcare is provided to the University community through Tanaina Child Development Center (TCDC); how to provide affordable childcare to more UAA students; whether there should be a role for College of Education faculty and students; and how the childcare needs of our students, staff and faculty are currently being met. The task force will look at both medium- and long-term strategies.
A variety of childcare options will be considered, including full-time preschool childcare, drop-in childcare (daily and/or evenings) and childcare as part of educational programs (labs, observation rooms, classrooms, etc.) Also to be considered are partnerships with other major employers, such as Providence Hospital, which is planning to build a new childcare facility in the near future, and BP, which is also looking to expand its childcare offerings. Other potential partnerships and sources of information are Best Beginnings, the Anchorage School District and the State of Alaska.
Among its other responsibilities, the task force will also consider the creation of grants or scholarships to help single parents with established financial need pay child care fees.
Members of the task force include:
Mike Humphrey, Statewide Benefits
Trig Trgiano, Risk Management
Chris Turletes, Facilities Representative
Sarah Kirk, Faculty Representative
Bruce Schultz, TCDC Board of Directors, UAA’s Administrative Liaison to TCDC
Dr. Robert Capuozzo, College of Education Representative
Xio Owens, Student with a child at TCDC
USUAA President Karl Wing or student designee
Sandra Barclay, Classified Staff
Marsha Oberlender, APT Staff
Patty Hamilton, Child advocate and community member
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Former professor inducted into adult education Hall of Fame December 24, 2008 | Gretchen Bersch found her calling in early days of continuing ed movement
ANCHORAGE, AK – Dr. Gretchen T. Bersch, UAA Professor Emerita and a widely influential adult educator, was inducted early this month into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame.
The ceremony was held December 4 in Budapest, Hungary, in conjunction with a major conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Dr. Bersch was among 11 international educators recognized that day with one of the most coveted awards in the field of adult and continuing education.
Dr. Bersch, who retired from active teaching in 2006, dedicated almost her entire career to adult education. Whether she was collaborating with international programs, inviting students and educators into her home or researching other scholars, she very early in her career set upon the improvement of lifelong learning as one of her professional goals.
Raised in Homer, Alaska, Dr. Bersch began her career teaching math and science to middle schoolers for five years. She was teaching 7th and 8th graders on an island across from Seattle in 1970-’71 when she got a chance to teach adults at night. That’s when the spark flared.
“I guess I got turned on to adult education at the very first opportunity,” Dr. Bersch said recently from her Anchorage home. “I just loved it.”
In 1971, she and her family moved to the village of Kaltag on the Yukon River, and that winter she was hired by what was then Anchorage Community College. She worked in Kaltag and then Goodnews Bay where she taught for a spell before moving to Anchorage in late 1972. For the rest of the decade, Anchorage was her hub from where she traveled to Bush Alaska spreading the gospel of continuing education. She became an expert in the field, teaching other teachers how to teach adults in rural Alaska villages and writing “whole sets” of pedagogical and curriculum materials.
After a year’s sabbatical to begin her doctorate, she returned to Anchorage and began teaching at UAA. She commuted to Florida, she said, to earn a Ph.D. in the field. Her academic and administrative achievements at UAA and elsewhere include teaching mathematics in the Developmental Education department, creating the master’s degree in Adult Education, teaching and working in adult education at the graduate level and teaching at Northern International University (NIU) in Magadan, in the Russian Far East, annually for many years. At NIU in 1996-’97 she established and funded an Outstanding Teacher of the Year that still continues, and there in 2001 she was awarded an honorary professorship.
One of Dr. Bersch’s more recent projects is to conduct research in her field by recording interviews of noted national and international adult-education scholars and editing them into a series called Conversations on Lifelong Learning. By 2008, she had filmed 76 scholars and produced 35 of the interviews as DVD programs. Some of those scholars are themselves Hall of Fame inductees, and some of them have already passed on, leaving Dr. Bersch as caretaker of a remarkable legacy.
Among Dr. Bersch’s many honors and awards are the 1996 Alaska Professor of the Year from the Carnegie Foundation and the Edith R. Bullock Prize for Excellence, a statewide honor through the University of Alaska Foundation. She was a U.S. Representative to the United Nations UNESCO conference on adult learning held in Germany in 1997. In late 2007, she was appointed by Anchorage’s mayor to the Sister Cities Commission for a three-year term, with a focus on Magadan (her report of a trip to Magadan last month was recently submitted to Mayor Mark Begich, UA President Mark Hamilton and UAA Chancellor Fran Ulmer). In 2006, the adult education collection in the Consortium Library at UAA was named for her.
Gretchen has built one of the most unique learning centers in Alaska, at her family homestead on Yukon Island across from Homer. There she hosts noted scholars, teaches courses, and holds retreats every summer. The topics include adult education and learning, of course, but also archaeology, ecology, geology, botany, marine biology, wellness, Tai Chi/Qi Gong and writing.
Dr. Gretchen Bersch is available for interviews and can be reached at gtb@alaska.net or (907) 278.1300.
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