Outer Coast educational program pulls in former Wrangell residents

When Lillian "Jing" O'Brien graduated from Wrangell High School in 2020, COVID-19 had taken over the nation and she had enrolled in Loyola University in Chicago with tentative plans to study pre-law and perhaps later corporate law. "I was fully planning to go, but then last minute around July, they sent out a message saying, unfortunately, due to the COVID restrictions, they were going to close down campus and move classes online."

That unexpected complication pushed O'Brien to explore different options, which led her to a relatively new program in Sitka. "I decided Outer Coast would be a much more fulfilling academic experience for me at the time," she said.

Outer Coast's executive director, Bryden Sweeney-Taylor, said it's been operating educational programs since 2018. "Initially, a summer seminar for high school students to earn college credit, engage in the community and govern their own student body," he said, "and then a postsecondary program, the Outer Coast Year, starting in 2020 for high school graduates where students can come for a semester or for a full year and earn college credit, embed themselves in local organizations, nonprofits, travel organizations, and government entities in Sitka."

And now staff and faculty are working toward turning it into a two-year liberal arts college.

The campus is located on the former campus of Sheldon Jackson College and its predecessor, the Sitka Industrial Training School. After Sheldon Jackson closed in 2007, the campus was turned over to the nonprofit Alaska Arts Southeast, which primarily uses the property for over a thousand middle school and high school students who attend the Sitka Fine Arts Camp during the summer.

"But during the academic year, the campus was largely dormant for those first several years once the Fine Arts Camp took on ownership," Sweeney-Taylor said. "That was the inspiration for Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, our local representative for a decade in the state Legislature, to say, 'How can we bring higher education back to this campus?' and so that was really the jumping off point for Outer Coast."

According to Sweeney-Taylor, Deep Springs College, a two-year liberal arts institution in the high desert of eastern California (and Sweeney-Taylor's alma mater) served as a template. "Jonathan knew a bunch of folks who'd been at Deep Springs from his college career, and said, 'Maybe this is a model that we can bring to Sitka.'"

Since the Sitka Industrial Training School, the previous institution on the site, had been part of the Indian boarding school movement, which critics say tried to destroy Native languages and cultures in Alaska, the founders and staff of Outer Coast felt a responsibility to commemorate this history and stand as a model of education that now honors Indigenous cultures and languages.

In September 2022, Outer Coast students and faculty visited Wrangell to serve as volunteers for Sharing Our Knowledge, a regional conference of Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian tribes and clans. The college program also offers free, online Alaska Native language courses for learners across the state and beyond.

Sweeney-Taylor touched on the three main pillars of Outer Coast's curriculum: academics, service and labor, and self-governance.

Service and labor tasks students to maintain partnerships with community organizations and carry out much of the labor, such as cooking and cleaning, to handle Outer Coast's day-to-day operations.

For the final pillar, self-governance, students work with staff and faculty to govern their community, which includes legislating academic and student life policies, as well as shaping academic course offerings.

Moving toward their goal of becoming a fully accredited two-year college, Sweeney-Taylor said they are collaborating with the University of Alaska Southeast and the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities with plans to welcome their first degree-seeking college students in August 2024, planning for the first graduates in spring 2026.

Outer Coast outreach recruitment lead and former Wrangell resident Reyn Hutten first heard of Outer Coast in 2019 from someone at Dartmouth College, where she was a student. "I've really been a strong believer in experiential education," she said. "I've always kept my eye on Outer Coast as a place that's doing important work. I've been aware of it and recommend it to students."

Hutten said students are actively engaged, such as an ecology study of a Sitka trail and a Tlingit folk tales storytelling event with Sitka public radio KCAW.

Since joining the staff in November, Hutten's duties include regularly meeting with staff, spending time with Outer Coast students who may be struggling and traveling to different schools across the state. "I feel that I get a whole lot out of it. I've only been here a couple of months, but as soon as I got there, I felt I was embraced as a whole person," she said.

Hutten also thinks her experience as a Southeast resident is an asset to the program. "I'm already fairly connected to various places of learning in Southeast Alaska."

For O'Brien, the yearlong program at Outer Coast was transformative. "It really did change the trajectory of my life, because I ended up in a totally new college, and a totally new place, on a totally new path."

She is now enrolled in Pomona College, a small liberal arts college in Claremont, California, studying computer science and politics.