RSS 1.0Evening at Egan Presentations
Recent Submissions
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WinterFire: Creative ShowcaseJoin us for our annual WinterFire Creative Showcase! This night is a chance for faculty (and friends of UAS) to share their rich and diverse creative expressions. Brian Palmer will read excerpts of his poetry; Geoff Kirsch will showcase his comedic writing; Davina Cole will display her art; and Carin Silkaitis will wow us with their dramatic performances.
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Pleistocene Raven: Old Stories, New WritingHayes describes her new work with the Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellowship project, which centers on three ancient Raven stories of fire, water, and daylight. Sharing her work with First Nations Development Institute, Hayes proposes that oral history and Western science tell stories of the same events, each complementing the other and both filling essential human needs.
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Uncharted: Navigating Disabilities, Chronic Conditions, and Potential Bias in STEM CareersWhile cultivating her career as a scientist, Dr. Skylar Bayer has developed a career in science communication, dabbling in a diversity of activities including an appearance on The Colbert Report in 2013 about a case of missing scallop gonads. Since 2014, she has worked as a producer for The Story Collider, a non-profit dedicated to storytelling in STEAM by giving researchers, doctors, engineers, poets, comedians, and more, an opportunity to share their personal experiences. She has co-authored several papers on the importance of storytelling as a science communication tool, taught science storytelling both in Story Collider workshops and as a professor at Roger Williams University. She has also performed stories at Moth story slams, Story District, Perfect Liars Club, Risk!, Soundbites, Mudrooms, and The Story Collider. She is currently on Juneau’s local Mudrooms storyboard, leading storytelling workshops for the organization. In her dedication to storytelling in science, Skylar is a co-editor of the recently published book “Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias.” This book is a collection of first-person stories by current and former scientists with disabilities or chronic conditions that have impacted their careers, highlights the experiences of people representing different demographics as well as a diversity of medical conditions and the challenges, ideas, and some solutions to how they have addressed the accessibility problem. She started this project with her co-editor Gabi Serrato Marks because they both told stories for The Story Collider about being limited in their respective fieldwork after being diagnosed with medical conditions. Each share their own unique stories within Uncharted. Using their background in marine science and oceanography, they arranged the book with a nautical journey in mind, making parallels between the uncharted journey on a ship, as they both experienced in graduate school, with the uncharted journey of science and medical diagnosis. Dr. Bayer started this project with Gabi because sharing stories from the perspective of scientists with medical issues and disabilities are important for everyone to hear, especially younger audiences, like students, who may be really interested in a career in STEM and are likely looking for examples or models to whom they can relate and understand. Sharing stories is also important to community building to show each other that we are not alone in our experiences in STEM and by opening up, we can work together to make STEM a more accessible, inclusive and welcoming space for all. With her extensive experience and rigorous training as a scientist as well as sharing stories with a variety of audiences, Skylar is adept at engaging diverse audiences, drawing them in using narratives that speak to common experiences.
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UAS Creative ShowcaseUAS Art, Theatre, and Writing faculty will showcase our current work and encourage a conversation about the rich and diverse artistry happening in our community.
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Impacts and Responses: Cruise Ships and Northern CommunitiesThe burgeoning cruise ship tourism industry has impacted coastal communities. How do communities benefit and what are the impacts from cruise tourism? A multidisciplinary research team, funded by the National Science Foundation, will present their findings about Juneau’s cruise industry. A new documentary film “Cruise Boom”, set in Sitka (created by Ellen Frankenstein and Atman Mehta) will follow and raise questions relevant to Southeast communities and beyond. How can communities shape tourism? How can mass tourism become regenerative?
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The Suicide Basin glacier outburst flood: 2023 and beyondThis talk will provide an overview of the 2023 outburst flood from Suicide Basin including why it was larger than in previous years. We will summarize efforts to improve monitoring and forecasting of future outburst floods and discuss our research aimed at understanding how the ongoing evolution of Suicide Basin may impact future flood events.
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The Vicissitudes of Aging & Brain Health: What Parents' May Never Have Told You!Aging is a biological, psychological, and sociological process and is a universal truth that everyone must contend with. As a process it is made up of gains and losses as we grow and develop across the lifespan. The brain, being the seat of thought, reasoning, problem solving, emotional regulation, sensory motor operation, and other important biological functions, plays a major role in developmental advances as well decline. Research in this area has come a long way over the years in uncovering modifiable lifestyle behaviors one may utilize in keeping a healthy brain and how to contend with situations where brain changes may be non-modifiable. This presentation covers a brief overview of typical brain functioning, pathology, newer research on how to keep the brain healthy, and ends with a discussion of how views of the lifespan may impact beliefs regarding brain pathology and approaches to caregiving of individuals with dementia.
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Eating the Herring: Rifts and Responses in the North PacificThe herring is one of the world’s most culturally and ecologically important species. However, we have witnessed the depletion of herring stocks in both the western (Japan) and eastern (North America) sides of the North Pacific, as a result of mismanaging fisheries, habitat modification, and climate change. Shingo Hamada will provide an overview of the environmental and food history of herring in Japan, and discuss some "rifts" in our relationship with the herring and possible responses for sustainable seafood cultures in the North Pacific.
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UAS Creative ShowcaseUAS Art, Theatre, and Writing faculty will showcase their current work and encourage a conversation about the rich and diverse artistry happening in our community.
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Lessons from Indigenous Tourism for a Regenerative FutureThe tourism industry is often criticized for its rampant overdevelopment of destinations, and the exploitation of vulnerable populations. While this is true, the industry is also capable of providing economic diversification while protecting ecosystems and perpetuating local cultures. These “new” models for tourism are being led, in a large part, by Indigenous communities whose business models are based in traditional values for community and stewarding the environment. These businesses provide jobs that allow tribal members to “stay home” and steward natural resources, while being compensated to perpetuate and share their cultures. Increasingly, non-Native peoples are coming to understand the value of aligning business models with deep connections to place, and respect for all living things. These leaders understand that humans need to mitigate the capitalist practices that have led to the climate change crisis and global ecocide. Join Alexis Bunten, author of “‘So, how long have you been Native?’ Life as an Alaska Native Tour Guide,” (University of Nebraska Press) and “Indigenous Tourism Movements” (University of Toronto Press) for an in-depth exploration of Indigenous leadership in the regenerative tourism space to learn best practices for increasing the quadruple bottom line (people, planet, profit and purpose) via tourism in Southeast Alaska and beyond. Alexis, a shareholder of Bristol Bay Native Corporation and Paug-Vik Village Corporation, has researched and worked in the Native-led tourism industry since 1997. She currently lives in Monterey California, and owns WAQAA LLC, which is dedicated to forwarding transformational travel through cross cultural experiences. She has taught at UCLA, Humboldt State University, University of Victoria, Wellington, and Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University, as well as held postdoctoral positions at University of California Berkeley and Santa Cruz.
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Watching a warming Arctic from spaceIn recent decades, the Arctic warmed three to four times faster than the rest of the planet. To understand the impacts of rapid climate change on Arctic ecosystems, it is necessary to draw on many types of observations including long-term satellite records. This presentation will focus on satellite observations that show widespread greening of Arctic ecosystems over the past four decades. Arctic greening is related to higher temperatures increasing plant growth and enabling shrubs and trees to expand their footprint across these northern landscapes. Arctic greening is not only a signal of global environmental change, but also has important implications for climate feedbacks, wildlife, and northern communities. Dr. Logan Berner was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the UAS Environmental Science program in 2007. Dr. Berner went on to earn a PhD from the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University. He was previously a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow and is a co-author of the Arctic Report Card released each year by NOAA. He is currently an Assistant Research Professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems at Northern Arizona University, though recently moved back to Juneau after his wife was hired as a whale biologist with NOAA.
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Ranked Choice Voting in 2022The Division of Elections will discuss how ranked choice voting is administered and what voters can expect ahead of the November 8, 2022 general election. Gail Fenumiai, Director of the State of Alaska Division of Elections, and Jason Grenn, Alaskans for Better Elections
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The Art of Comparison: Exploring Comparative LiteratureWe humans are fond of comparing. Making comparison is both an everyday act (e.g. good/bad, day/night) and a form of art (e.g. literary criticism). Often, however, is it infested with paradoxes and problems: comparison tends to rely on some ‘standard’ and make value judgment. It becomes crucial when we compare cultures and literatures of two or more communities or countries. The question that the present lecture addresses is: how Comparative Literature broaches the dangers of comparison. The Talk analyzes the art of making comparison with a view to exploring how comparison, when informed and accommodative, enables us to discover relations and differences. Such understanding not only helps us gain new ideas but also facilitates inter-animation (e.g. influence, reception) and reciprocal illumination (e.g. counter-hegemony). Comparative Literature tells us that there are worlds outside the world we live in and that there are the ‘others’ that complement each ‘self’. Our understanding that there is a world outside us makes Comparative Literature a necessary venture.
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Woosh Jín Tulshát Yeisú: Weʼre Still Holding Each Others’ Hands - Lingít Language RevitalizationOver the past year, the presenters have been working with a team of Lingít speakers, language teachers, and music teachers to develop methods for teaching violin through Lingít. Even though this is a new area for the language, the team has focused on bringing Lingít tundatáani—the Lingít thought world—into the pedagogy, which is transforming the way music is being taught at Sítʼ Eetí Shaanáx̱ (Glacier Valley Elementary). By taking the language to new places, they have collaborated to increase access to language learning and to incorporate the use of Lingít in a new subject area. In this reflection on the work, the presenters will cover current initiatives in Lingít language revitalization, an overview of teaching violin using Lingít, and the process of language modernization.
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The partnership to strengthen Northwest Coast Arts programming and degree tracks in higher educationThe partnership between the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) and UAS to strengthen Northwest Coast Arts programming and degree tracks in higher education. The presenters will speak about the vision behind the partnership, and opportunities that are currently available and in the works for people who wish to pursue a degree with Northwest Coast (NWC) Arts as their emphasis. To give the audience a small taste of what is at the heart of the NWC Arts programming at SHI, UAS, and IAIA, a portion of the session will include a condensed sample introduction to formline-design presented by award winning artist and IAIA/UAS Adjunct instructor Robert Mills.
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I too yei yatee - It is within you: Generational Trauma & ResiliencyGenerational trauma is a well-known concept within trauma-informed care, a lesser-known concept, generational resilience is an important topic to add to the discussion. It must be, that for me to survive, even thrive beyond these traumas, I must also hold generational resilience deep within me. We will explore building, honoring, and uplifting resilience in students, while considering how generational resilience may be experienced within youth and their families.
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Alaska Native Success InitiativeDr. Brower and Ms. Cadiente Brown will discuss their work with Southeast Alaskan leaders on the Alaska Native Success Initiative for UA. This project seeks to improve the participation and success of Alaska Natives through educational achievement statewide, as well as Alaska Native representation and success throughout the University of Alaska system. Pearl and Ronalda have led the UAS committee comprised of leaders from Alaska Native corporations, tribal entities, and other southeast organizations. Dr. Pearl Brower is the UA Senior Advisor for Alaska Native Success, Institutional Diversity, and Student Engagement. Ronalda Cadiente Brown is the UAS Associate Vice Chancellor for Alaska Native Programs, as well as the Director of the PITAAS Program (Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska's Schools).
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Health Insurance in AlaskaJason Gootee will provide a look at the 2022 environment for health insurance in Alaska. Gootee has worked for more than 15 years in the health insurance industry and is widely recognized as a thought leader and civic influencer, deeply committed to helping communities transform the way they provide and pay for healthcare. He currently serves as Vice President of Strategic Market Development at Moda Partners, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and serves on the UA Foundation Board of Directors.
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The 'Real' World, from One Mathematician's Point of ViewWhat does a mathematics professor do on sabbatical? This one co-wrote an open-access textbook for mathematical modeling. Mathematical modeling is the process of describing phenomena found in the real world using mathematics. The more mathematical tools you have under your belt and the more you learn about the world around you, the more possibilities you have for describing and analyzing a changing system from this quantitative perspective. One could and should ask what may be learned from a quantitative approach, and what details are inherently lost or camouflaged. In this talk, I will give you some insight into one professor's sabbatical, provide examples of some useful mathematical models with mostly biological applications, discuss the inherent assumptions that go into developing these models, and the interesting outcomes that follow.
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Fisheries, Aquaculture and Mariculture in Southeast AlaskaMarkis will discuss why fisheries are important, especially in Alaska. He will provide a history of Alaskan fishery enhancement and aquaculture in Alaska. An overview of mariculture will include information about species that are cultivated in Alaska, production numbers in Alaska and nationwide.