The Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program has removed the phrase “Alaska Native” from its website. The award-winning University of Alaska program is now referred to only as its acronym, ANSEP.
It's among several changes the university system has made to its vast array of programs and services in order to comply with a series of federal directives aimed at getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
ANSEP’s founder, Herb Schroeder, said he’s not too worried about the wording change because he said it doesn’t affect all that the program accomplishes. But for others, deleting “Alaska Native” is very concerning.
“It's a shame, because the reason for ANSEP is because Alaska Natives face discrimination at every stage, from kindergarten through professorships,” said Napaaqtuk Kat Milligan-McClellan, a former ANSEP instructor.
The words “Alaska Native” were removed from various sections of ANSEP’s website sometime in late January, according to archives in the Wayback Machine. It happened after President Donald Trump issued an executive order, taking aim at what he described as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion’” or DEI.
Across the state, and the entire country, organizations that receive federal funding, like the University of Alaska, are scrambling to comply with Trump’s order.
An award-winning program
Schroeder founded the ANSEP program in 1995, drawing inspiration from his time studying sanitation in the state’s rural villages.
“In the whole time that I was there, I had never met a Native engineer,” Schroeder said.
He said the University of Alaska began the program as a way to foster Native engineering talent, and also to bridge what he described as a “chasm of misunderstanding.”
“When I went to the village schools, many of the people that were working there told me that Native students were not capable of going and doing engineering and science at the university,” Schroeder said. “And that's a horrible thing for an educator, and it's the promise that we've worked to overcome, very successfully, in the last 30 years.”
Over the years, ANSEP has helped thousands of Alaskans get their footing in science, technology, engineering and math fields. The program provides scholarships, hosts camps and allows middle and high school students to take college classes.
Milligan-McClellan, the former ANSEP instructor, is Inupiaq and currently teaches microbiology at the University of Connecticut. She said there are few Alaska Native people in STEM-related fields, and they often face problems ranging from implicit bias or overt racism to a lack of financial resources — and that’s, in part, why she’s so disappointed to learn of the removal of “Alaska Native” from ANSEP.
“When you take ‘Alaska Native’ out of ANSEP, what you're really saying to those Alaska Native students is we don't see the obstacles that you're facing,” Milligan-McClellan said. “We're not adjusting those obstacles.”
But, Schroeder said while ANSEP initially targeted Alaska Native students, more than half of students currently in the program are not Native. He said getting rid of the words “Alaska Native” on the website doesn't change the mission to align education with Native-based community values.
“The principle was to build it so that, based on basic Native principles, a community is more important than the individual,” Schroeder said. “And we went along like that for years, but in a very short amount of time, we discovered that all the students at the university wanted to participate.”
ANSEP officials echoed that sentiment in a statement. ANSEP spokespeople wrote that DEI did not impact marketing or selection of students
“No internal policies need to or have been updated,” ANSEP officials wrote. “Any changes to language on our website or marketing materials will be in an effort to share the openness of our program to all Alaskans regardless of background."
A broader effort to eliminate DEI
The wording change on ANSEP’s website occurred before last Friday, when the University of Alaska’s Board of Regents voted to no longer use terms like “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion.”
University officials are still working to figure out exactly how to comply with the regents' decision, said UA spokesman Jonathan Taylor.
“The board's motion passed on Friday and it's Tuesday afternoon, so we're still determining what that process is going to look like,” Taylor said.
He said ahead of the regents’ decision, the university was already working to update equal opportunity and nondiscrimination statements to comply with federal guidance.
“Those changes bring our nondiscrimination statements in line with the latest federal guidance, by essentially clarifying that our hiring admission and other practices have always been and remain consistent with federal nondiscrimination policies and laws,” Taylor said.
Taylor said a specific change was removing language describing affirmative action, language that’s been in place since Lyndon Johnson was president in the 1960s. He said the broad language changes the university is working through don’t change the institution’s commitment to educating a wide range of students from a variety of backgrounds.
