“Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions” was the rallying cry outside the University of Alaska Board of Regents meetings in Juneau on Sept. 8-9. Frustration has grown among members of United Academics (UNAC), the union that represents all University of Alaska faculty, as bargaining with UA for a new contract has entered its second year. “We made concession after concession after concession,” said Abel … Continue reading UNAC and UA: Still at Odds
President Joe Biden’s three-part “Student Loan Forgiveness Plan,” announced in August, could provide thousands of dollars in federal loan debt relief for low and middle-income students across the U.S. The White House on Sept. 20 estimated that 60, 500 Alaskan students would qualify, including 37,300 Alaska Pell Grant borrowers. The cost of a college education has steadily risen over the years. Where federal aid once … Continue reading What About It?: Loan Forgiveness
It’s sometimes difficult to keep up on the news. Emails get buried in your inbox and it can be a struggle to stay informed. The following is adapted from press releases and announcements by the UAS and the UA system. Evening at Egan Lecture Series began September 10 The annual fall lecture series Evening at Egan kicked off Friday, September 10 at 7 pm with … Continue reading UA Newsroom: September 2021
By Margaret Everson, Staff Writer In the June 2021 Board of Regents meeting, Interim President Pat Pitney announced that education programs within the University of Alaska system would focus on collaboration between Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau. This decision reversed previous efforts to consolidate UA education programs to the Alaska College of Education, which was to be hosted at UAS. According to a 2016 UA press … Continue reading What happened to the Alaska College of Education?
By Kenedy Williams, Staff Writer The Alaska Native Success Initiative committee recommends a multi-faceted approach to diversify and increase Alaska Native student, staff, and faculty recruitment, identify the key barriers to recruitment, establish coordination with tribal organizations, and eliminate institutional racism. The Initiative was put forth by the Board of Regents. The goal is to have the UA student, staff, and faculty population represent Alaska’s … Continue reading Alaska Native Success Initiative
By Lucas Stewart, Staff Writer What does ranked choice voting mean for the state? Alaskans who vote in the 2022 election will rank candidates in order of prefer- ence as the state moves to a new voting system. Alaska is the second state in the U.S. to adopt Ranked Choice Voting for state- wide elections, with Maine being the first. Ranked Choice Voting allows voters … Continue reading The future of Alaska voting
What does this recent outage show us about news access?By Mike Flunker, Editor-in-Chief Recent Whalesong editorials have emphasized a balanced media diet, critical thinking, and news engagement. It is time to look at access to news. We live in a time when media saturates our everyday lives, beamed straightto our phones, computers, radios, and televisions. We may take that for granted. What happens when part … Continue reading What do you mean Facebook is down?
By Whalesong Staff It’s sometimes difficult to keep up on the news. Emails get buried in your inbox and it can be a struggle to stay informed. The following is adapted from press releases and announcements by the UAS and the UA system. UAS reaccredited for AAS-Health Information Management program The UAS Associate of Applied Science – Health Information Management Program (AAS-HIM) was successfully reaccredited … Continue reading UA Newsroom: November 2021
By Mike Flunker, Editor-in-Chief When Facebook and its services went down for a day in October the world was left reeling. The cause of the outage was later deemed to be an update that took Facebook servers offline, a problem that was initially unsolvable because the ability to fix it was also offline. Facebook’s company-wide practice to keep everything internal caused its worst outage yet. … Continue reading The Facebook Files
By Mike Flunker, Editor-in-Chief The University of Alaska Board of Regents unanimously voted to appoint Pat Pitney UA President on Feb. 25. The vote came at the end of a two-day meeting. Pitney is the first permanent female president of the UA system and has been interim president since former UA President Jim Johnsen resigned in June 2020. “Pat Pitney is the epitome of cooperation, … Continue reading Picking a Permanent President
