PROGRESS:Q&A with Talis Colberg, President, UAA-Mat-Su College

While the University of Alaska system, as a whole, has faced tremendous challenges in recent months and figures to for the foreseeable future, the UAA-Mat-Su College has enjoyed some degree of shade from the heat.

How the college stays the course and builds toward the future was the subject of a recent conversation with college president Talis Colberg.

What projects are you most excited about in 2018?

I think, basically, continuity.

This is our first full year since the Alaska Middle College came on board and now has one full cycle.

Alaska Middle College is about 160 students who do a semester basically of their junior and senior years when they were enrolled in college classes. A substantial number carry a full-load capacity of 12-15 credits. It is a high school within a college. There’s three portables on our campus with a principal, teacher, a couple staff people. But most of those students don’t spend much time there; they’re taking college classes mixed in with the student body. So if they’re performing at optimal levels, they can, theoretically finish their senior year with 60 credits, darn near an associate’s degree.

Do you see Mat-Su College as a community college?

That’s an interesting question. It was a community college until 1988 when UAA merged all of the community colleges into the university. It’s not a typical situation compared to other states. Other states will have significantly lower tuition, and one of the things (UAA President) Jim Johnsen is considering is at least having some vocational or occupational endorsement with lower tuition to make it comparable to the community college system.

The biggest difference is that most of our students will graduate with a bachelor’s degree but never get an associate’s degree, and the other thing, which is changing around the country is people taking distance classes in Fairbanks, distance classes in Anchorage, or go to Anchorage and take distance classes in Juneau. You’ll find on some remote campuses they’re taking entirely distance classes from multiple sites and they’re not actually physically anywhere.

That kind of calls into question the future of brick and mortar (colleges). That’s a national trend. Some people truly see value in being face-to-face with people and don’t want to miss out on that. Some people don’t want that.

But it’s a new world, and we benefit in that we have people who take classes physically there — we have cars in our parking lots. But you’ll see some remote campuses where two-thirds of the students who are not there. Universities are having to wrestle with that.

How has Mat-Su College weathered budget cuts?

We have fewer full-time (faculty) than two years ago. It’s had an impact, but we’re uniquely in a better position for a number of reasons. One is this is one of the cheapest places to live in Alaska in terms of cost of living… We are probably in the best location for our budget; we’re feeling it, but we will probably weather it better than most because of where we are.

How do you keep Alaska’s talented high school grads in the state?

Over the range of four decades, the college is keeping a much bigger bite of the population than it used to. People whose families have college educations have an in-built natural attraction to continue on where mom and dad did. In Alaska, where the non-Native population is pretty transient, and the people went to college in a different state, that was hard.

We took a big bite out of that when President (Mark) Hamilton put in an incentive to get high-performing students a benefit, tuition-wise. We definitely saw a surge in higher-performing students attending.

The Anchorage campus, in particular, has had a lot of success with its honors program and they had their first Rhodes Scholar this year, as well as Fullbright Scholars. That’s something you didn’t used to see here until the last 10 years where we get more high-performing students.

There’s a ‘what am I going to get out of this?’ inertia to it, and that can be hurt by budget cuts and the university is conscious of that.

Is there a course of study you’d like to see the college focus on to get students ready for the Alaska work force?

(Johnsen is) interested in seeing a discount for vocational programs, and that’s what he’s put out several times. The other thing is that a significant part of the Alaska population has a partial education; they haven’t finished their degree, so our focus has to be how do you get some of those people to come back and finish up?

Also, health care is burgeoning even in a shrinking economy. The College of Health has seen that push and expanded its program. On my campus, we’re implementing a certificate of nursing system.

Another focus is engineering. We’ve seen that as the focal point at the Universities in Anchorage and Fairbanks where they try to attract students. And then there’s the microfocus on Alaska Native students with ANSEP. That’s had a minor impact on my campus, but with those introductory courses, students continue on and might get a start on our campuses.