The National Science Foundation announced this week the Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program (ANSEP) will be receiving a $3,000,000 research grant through the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program. Receiving $600,000 a year over the next five years, ANSEP will use the funding to conduct research aimed at better understanding the barriers to broadening participation in the STEM workforce. The grant will also fund a programmatic expansion across all three University of Alaska campuses. The goal is to increase the number of students who earn a baccalaureate degree in a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) field and become part of a related workforce.
ANSEP is part of the University of Alaska system. Its aim is to effect systemic change in the hiring patterns of Alaska Natives in science, technology, engineering and mathematics career fields by placing its students on a path to leadership. The program plans to place one ANSEP STEM Teacher in every Alaska village by 2025. ANSEP’s success in creating change in hiring patterns is evident at its own university, where ANSEP alumni and co-investigators for the NSF grant application, Michele Yatchmeneff and Matt Calhoun, became the first tenure-track Alaska Native engineering professors in University of Alaska’s history.
“In Alaska, we are up against an enormous challenge when it comes to transitioning students from high school into college, but ANSEP has found a way to do that, even for students coming to the university from rural villages,” said Yatchmeneff, who grew up in False Pass and King Cove.
From Middle School Academy, the first component in ANSEP’s longitudinal model, all the way through the doctorate level, ANSEP has more than 2,000 students in its pipeline. These students hail from more than 100 communities across Alaska, including everywhere from the smallest villages to the state’s largest city of Anchorage.
“ANSEP has proven that when the right people have access to the right resources, Alaska Native students can break down barriers and become valuable leaders in our workforce,” said Calhoun, who still works closely with ANSEP and mentors students in addition to being a professor at University of Alaska Anchorage College of Engineering.
To learn more about ANSEP and how it is effecting positive change in Alaska’s education system and workforce, visit http://www.ANSEP.net.
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