It’s not too late to register for classes at Northwest Campus, and this semester, many one-credit courses will come a little cheaper, thanks to a $14,000 grant from the Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation.
The grant goes to NSEDC member communities throughout the region to fund community-based training courses. This fall, Northwest Campus is applying Nome’s funds to the discounted courses.
Carol Gales—the program development manager at Nome’s Northwest Campus—says the NSEDC award comes during a period of financial belt-tightening across the University of Alaska. She says the help comes at just the right time.
“One-credit tuition rose this semester to $193, so it was a good time to seek this funding from NSEDC,” Gales said. “With the number of classes we’re anticipating and the number of students we’re anticipating taking the classes, we could get tuition reduced to $115 dollars for those Nome classes.”
That’s a savings of nearly $80 for a one-credit course, and for two-credit courses, that’s a savings of nearly $160 dollars, bringing the price of those classes down from $386 to $230.
That means more than a dozen courses at NWC are nearly 40 percent cheaper.
“Two ceramics classes, there’s one early in this semester and then one later in the semester,” Gales listed. “The modern-day kuspuk sewing class is going to be back with Michelle Koenig. The ATV maintenance and repair class. Jackie Hrabok-Leppäjärvi is going to be teaching beading on a loom workshop … those are all discounted with this NSEDC funding.”
They’re all discounted, but that’s not all of the classes on offer. Some are still accepting students, including courses like making leather mittens with beaded tops, fish skin tanning, and introduction to drawing. Some courses are still setting dates for October or November. Others have yet to be announced.
While many of the classes relate to local crafts, Gales says the courses on offer include job skills, too.
“The courses being funded through this project aren’t just for fun or even just for personal fulfillment. In a lot of cases these are skills you can learn to help you get a job, or they are skills you can use to make a crafted items and sell. And there’s a lot of selling and buying of crafted items in this region. So you can learn skills that can help you supplement your income.”
A full list of Northwest Campus’s fall courses is available online.
Matthew Smith is a reporter at KNOM in Nome.
