An Interview with Chancellor Caulfield

BY LEXI CHERRY
For the UAS Whalesong

The UAS Whalesong’s Lexi Cherry had the opportunity to sit down with newly-minted Chancellor Rick Caulfield.

Lexi Cherry: Tell us your story. Who are you? Where did you come from?
Rick Caulfield: I came to Juneau in 1975 on the ferry Columbia, and I ended up moving up to Anchorage and then to Fairbanks. I spent a good part of 2 years in the interior, and then I came back down to Southeast Alaska and I worked here during the summers in the late ‘70s. My wife and I met here and were married in Gustavus in 1979, and then we ended up moving back up into the interior so she could finish her college degree. I got my master’s degree in education at UAF, and then took a job out in western Alaska in Bristol Bay. We lived out in Dillingham for 5 years, and then I decided to go back and work on a doctorate in the UK. …I ended up doing field work in Greenland, focusing on aboriginal subsistence whaling. I finished my PhD in 1993, and then came back to Alaska and worked as a professor and later on as a campus director at UAF. Five years ago, I was offered the position of provost here at UAS, so in 2010, my family and I moved back down to Southeast Alaska. … when the position of chancellor opened up this past year, I applied for and was lucky enough to get it. Continue reading “An Interview with Chancellor Caulfield”

Can Susan B. Anthony Save our School?

BY ALEXA CHERRY

Over winter break, I traveled for many long hours with my family across the continent and through 3 different airports in order to visit relatives in Harrisonburg, Virginia. There, I noticed a surprising amount of criticism and dissent regarding James Madison University – the college that takes up half of Harrisonburg. The college kids were “rabble-rousers”. My uncle was angry that the school had bought and remodeled part of the hospital he’d gotten his life saved at, and as my aunt drove my mother and I around to look at real estate, she remarked on what a shame it was that some of the older houses owned by the college were getting “wrecked” by the parties being held in them. Even I found myself criticizing JMU, if only because when we went to the local equivalent of Fred Meyer, there was a separate credit card machine that JMU students could use to get a student discount on their groceries.

Continue reading “Can Susan B. Anthony Save our School?”