Davin Holen is the Alaska Sea Grant Coastal Community Resilience Specialist based at the University of Alaska campus in Anchorage and coordinator for Community Engaged Fellows program. He explained that the students are part of a national cohort and that fellows work with Sea Grant programs across the nation. The fellows receive a $7,500 stipend and participate in a customized 10-week summer internship. Holen emphasized the one of the main goals for the program this year was “working with local and traditional knowledge and trying to get students from tribal groups or rural communities to work with the theme of marine coastal sciences but also to take students from “urban” Alaska out to more rural communities. He also noted that it’s a unique undergraduate opportunity.
“I think that’s really important, as somebody who grew up in urban Alaska,I had never been off the road system before. I had never been to a village and it wasn’t until I became an anthropologist and spent considerable time and, you know, Bristol Bay and other places, that I started to actually understand what life was like outside of the road system. I think it’s a great opportunity for students from urban Alaska to actually get out to rural Alaska.”
Degan Carey, originally from Anchorage and a recent graduate with a degree in environmental science from the University of Portland is working with Holen on a National Science Foundation project called Interface of Change. She is looking at how various coastal changes are impacting communities in Kachemak Bay, Prince William Sound and Haines and Klukwan. She explained why she was interested in the opportunity to try this program out for the summer…