Audrey Alstrom from the small Yukon River village of Alakanuk came to the KuC prior to the inception of our TCUP. She began her study of Mathematics and Science at the Kuskokwim Campus. She was encouraged, instructed and tutored by our TCUP staff and faculty and under the mentorship of Dr. Bob Brown completed her AA degree with a strong emphasis in mathematics and the core sciences. As valedictorian of her class at KuC her perserverence and persistence won her that admiration of staff, faculty and students. Audrey then matriculated to the KuC – UA Anchorage Alaska ‘Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP) where she has excelled in her career interships and Engineering academics. Audrey is recognized as one of the top woman ANSEP students across the Nationwide Indigenous Alliance and has a great future in the field of Cicil Engineering ahead of her.

Follow-up information for Martin’s presentation at the ANSEP dissemination conference.

Power Point slides presented individually as a flickr set archive. YouTube video of running presentation. YouTube video of ‘fun faces’ from the conference. Enjoy!

Quyana for coming to Alaska! Nice to see you all and looking forward to working with you.

Contact Martin at martinl(at)bethel.uaf.edu for more info.

ML

link to .jpg images of slides BRIDGING

Running Slide-show from Martin’s Bridge .ppt

Fun Faces From the Conference

As part of their Natural History of Alaska class, the Ellikarrmiut Summer Science students have been participating in a limited (but very productive) dig on the site of an old kiiyaq, or men’s house. Exciting artifacts from the dig could eventually prove that humans have been inhabiting and using Nunivak Island and the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta for much longer than has previously been proven.

It turns out that our camp here at Nash Harbor isn’t at the site called Ellikarrmiut at all. That village site sits on a spit of land just across the river, while we’re camped on the site of a different, higher village called Qimugglugpagmiut (loosely translated as “people of Big Bad Dog”). Oral tradition maintained that Ellikarrmiut was the older village, and an earlier dig at Nash Harbor focused almost exclusively on that side of the river. However, two afternoons of a tightly focused and supervised student dig at the Qimugglugpagmiut kiiyaq have already turned up artifacts very likely to prove older than anything found during two summers of digs across the river.

The kiiyaq was used and inhabited during the twentieth century; Joe David, our camp elder-in-residence, remembers taking fire baths and sleeping there. However, it is rapidly becoming apparent that the kiiyaq was built on the foundations of structures thousands of years old.

The most exciting finds so far have been exquisitely chipped, tiny projectile points and side-blades (microlithics????) that could be early indicators of a site from the Arctic Small Tool (AST) tradition. AST peoples took advantage of a warming trend and melting ice sheets to spread rapidly across the Arctic from probable origins in Siberia around 4500 years ago. These highly mobile and adaptible people probably followed rapidly expanding populations of game animals like caribou.

Allowing for students to complete testing for Information Technology certificates in their own Bethel hub community.

KuC Summer Science Program – The Ellkarmiut Summer Science Field Camp is one of the programs offered to encourage Y-K Delta high school juniors and seniors to consider education and careers in Science and Technology.

The camp is located in a remarkable wilderness environment on the shores of the Bering Sea’s Nunivak Island. The camp provides a learning environment that is a hands-on and adventure-based.

Students can earn six college credits if upon successful completion of the course of study as well as winning stipends and other incentives based on performance in the course. The program instructors are Dr. Rick Knecht and Skip Snaith. Courses offered include Biology, Field Videography and Anthropology.

The development of the facility has spurred economic development activities within the local Native community of Mekoryuk inciting business, local jobs as well as training for young people in the community.

Link to the Alaska Journal of Commerce Article

Link to economic development project as part of Summer Science field station.

KuC Talent Search Program – Recruitment – KuC hosts over 200 students at the Bethel Campus each summer. Students participate in career and academic pathway exploration as well healthy lifestyle activities. Advanced students participate in Rocket Science curricula with TCUP faculty; instructors Dan Solie and Bob Brown.

These students are nutured and hopefully leave the campus with a positive ‘first’ college experience.  Watch as Drs. Brown and Solie nurture our students through their first ’serious’ rocket experience.

click here to download

ANSEP Pre-college Program –targeting local high school juniors. All participating students are required to contract with us to enroll and successfully complete chemistry, physics, and trigonometry. In the lab, juniors assemble the computers and learn to use AutoCAD, MS Office, and other appropriate software. These software tools are needed within our industrial partner organizations. Instructor mentor is Martin Leonard III, Matt Calhoun and Dennis Deshion.

Students completing the program have priority access to other ANSEP core activities like the Bridging Program. Most students live up to their contracts and you will find many of these students performing to top standards at Pacific Alliance Campuses.

TCUP STEM capacity building at the Kuskokwim Campus.

ANSEP Building was dedicated the last week of October in Anchorage on the UA Campus.

Link to the project web-page


click here to download

The NSF TCUP KuC Summer Bridging Program runs for 7 weeks each summer and is based on the highly successful ANSEP Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program model. A typical weekday for a Bridging student begins with an 8 am Calculus prep class at the KuC Campus. The class runs until 10am and the students then report for their intern jobs.

Each job teams a student with an engineer or scientist at a local Bethel organization. We ask the companies to give the students jobs that they think the students can’t do. The sponsoring company challenges the students with projects that will take nine weeks to complete. Lunch is at noon and they are back at work at 1pm.

At 5pm the students travel back to the University residence hall where they eat and then work collaboratively on Calculus prep with peer mentors from the Pacific Alliance University Retention Program until bedtime. Weekends are dedicated to cohort building and students enjoy a joint outing; fishing, plane ride, hovercraft excursion, etc. The pace of the summer is tough, but students enjoy it and rise to the challenge year after year. Students are awarded 4 college credits upon completion of the Mathematics course.

Here is a short (7min) video about the College Bridging students on their retreat / trip to Platinum, AK.

Click image below to view.

click here to download

Here is the final revision of Oscar’s video “Ellikarrmuit Archeology”.

Click image below to view.

click here to download

Here is a silent film about Nunivak’s wildlife,
by the naturalist Eddie Corp.

Click image below to view.

click here to download

NIA stands for Network Innovation Associates
http://www.getnia.com

In addition to providing satellite broadband, they also provide a full range of internet and IT solutions.
http://www.getnia.com/products/internet/satellite/index.html

The satellite network they use is provided by ViaSat with the gateway earth station in Atlanta, GA. http://www.viasat.com/
Service is provided on the Horizons 1 satellite at 127 degrees west longitude with the service speed being 256×256 kbps.The terminal equipment is the ViaSat DVB/RCS LinkStar modem with a 2 watt Ku band transmitter mounted on a 1.2 meter satellite dish. The VOIP adapter is as Digium IAXY using the IAX2 protocol.

VOIP service is provided through the Microcom IP switch in Anchorage using an open source Asterisk IP software package. The VOIP adapter is as Digium IAXY using the IAX2 protocol.

A big thanks to Mr. Tom Brady of Anchorage-based Microcom for facilitating the support from NIA and to Chip Carpenter, KuC ITS student, for putting the system together w/ Tom and organizing the deployment at Nash Harbor.

Thanks to Shortie Salzbrun for welding-up the non-penetrating mount…it blew 40 last night and the dish didn’t move an inch.