Donor Spotlight: Gretchen Cuddy
Gretchen Cuddy: A Lifelong Learner’s Commitment to UAA
For some people, a university is a place they pass through. For others, it becomes a constant companion; one that grows alongside them, offering new paths, ideas, and connections over a lifetime. For Gretchen Cuddy, the University of Alaska Anchorage has been exactly that: a place of curiosity, community, and continual expansion.
Her connection to UAA began long before it carried its current name. “I started when it was still a community college,” she recalls. What began as a few art classes quickly turned into something much more expansive. As the institution evolved into UAA, so did her interests. She moved fluidly from art and fine arts courses into medical lab technician classes, welding, and even culinary arts.
“I never felt like I had to close the circle,” she explains. “My whole thought process is that your circle never closes. If you can keep putting things on the outside rim of that circle, it just keeps getting bigger and you keep learning more.”
Though she never pursued a formal degree at UAA (she has an economics degree from USC), UAA became a place where curiosity could snowball. One class led to another, and new interests emerged organically. Over time, her engagement deepened not only as a student, but as a supporter and advocate for the university’s mission, especially through the Culinary Arts program and the Community and Technical College, but also in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Gretchen’s connection to CAS is both personal and historical. Through longtime family friendships with the Kimura family, she was drawn into photography, drawing, painting, and other fine arts courses. Gretchen was there when the Fine Arts Building was brand new and witnessed firsthand the caliber of instruction and mentorship that defined the program.
That sense of mentorship, access, and opportunity is what continues to inspire her philanthropy today. Most recently, she partnered with First National Bank Alaska to support livestreaming of the CAS Community Lecture Series across the state, an initiative that brings CAS’s Community Lecture Series to communities far beyond Anchorage.
The importance of that effort is rooted in her firsthand experience working in rural Alaska. “We did Bush clinics,” she says, describing summers spent traveling the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers to vaccinate animals in remote villages. “I saw how much schools in the Bush wanted extra help with extracurricular things to keep students excited about learning and aware of what’s out there beyond a community of 200 people.”
Livestreaming the CAS Community Lecture Series opens a window. It allows students and educators in rural areas to create a sense of community and see what UAA offers through local watch parties – all without having to leave their village. “For those schools to say, ‘Hey, we can see what Anchorage is offering,’ that’s huge,” she says. Gretchen sees the initiative as both outreach and inspiration; something that might spark a student to think, I’ve heard this name before. Maybe I want to visit UAA. Maybe I want to go there.
The partnership itself reflects another value she holds dear: community. When the opportunity arose, she proposed a shared investment; her family foundation funding half, and First National Bank Alaska funding the other. “First National wants Anchorage and Alaska to be a great community,” she says. “When they can help by supporting UAA, which sends out highly qualified students into the workforce, they want to be involved.”
The impact of their investment has come full-circle, as students trained through CAS’s Event Production certificate, taught in the Theatre & Dance Department, long supported by First National, will be running the livestreams that are delivered to communities across the state. The Bill Nye lecture, for example, was streamed to 9 locations from Nome to Ketchikan.
As a lifelong Alaskan, her appreciation for UAA runs deep. What she values most is its accessibility. “UAA is touchable,” she says. “You can take almost any class you want and learn as much or as little as you want, without feeling like you’ve overextended yourself financially.”
She also sees UAA as essential to Anchorage’s future—supporting workforce development, providing reasons for young people to stay, and offering flexible scheduling that allows students to work while they learn. She points to programs like nursing, psychology, welding, automotive technology, and culinary arts as examples of how closely UAA is woven into Alaska’s professional ecosystem. “These are quality students,” she says. “And employers want them before they even graduate.”
That same belief in community is what drew her to the CAS Big Read program, a year-long initiative with the National Endowment for the Arts with the goal to build stronger community connections through a shared reading experience. “It was a fantastic idea…a community book club,” she says. Participating alongside her own book club, meeting author Diane Wilson, and engaging in shared discussion about her book, The Seed Keeper, made the experience especially meaningful. “Everybody was riveted,” she recalls of the author’s lecture.
The program’s reach didn’t stop there. Gretchen passed her copy of the book along to a friend with one request: “Please pass it, pass it, pass it.” To her, that’s the essence of CAS at its best—ideas circulating, knowledge shared, and community strengthened through learning.
In every chapter of her relationship with UAA, one theme remains constant: learning as a lifelong, collective endeavor. Whether through classrooms, lectures, books, or livestreams reaching across Alaska, she continues to invest in a university that keeps her circle, and Alaska’s, growing wider.