UAA Faculty & Staff Association

1.    What critical roles do you see UAA playing in the state in the next two years?

A vibrant economy cannot live by cuts alone.  Nor can the people thrive by clinging to the coat tails of industry.  Yes, there is a wealth in Alaska’s resources:  We drill for oil, mine for minerals and on good days catch a run of fish and trap nets full of crabs.  

As dominant as the industries are who develop these resources – especially the oil and gas industries’ royalties and taxes accounting for 80% to 90% of the Alaska State budget -- we must not ignore the wealth that resides in the talents and skills possessed by our population:  Tradespeople construct our buildings, keep our lights on and transport food for our tables.  Professional employees advance sound, science-based management and conservation methods to ensure the future supply of our food and devise new ways to develop our resources.  We have attorneys that tend to the wheels of government and doctors and nurses that tend to our physical health and mental wellbeing.  But what makes all our wealth possible – what makes it possible for all those trades and professions to exist are our teachers, schools (whether K-12 or apprenticeships), professors, and universities. 

Without teachers to provide the lessons, we cannot learn what we need to know to keep the machinery of our community operating.  Without professors we cannot devise new ways to advance our knowledge of our environment or understand the direction we are headed with all our advances or explain how the interrelationships of all these diverse workers support and define our community.   The loss of our community, however, is threatened by the budget cuts the present Administration proposes and has enacted.

Cuts in the finances for any one of these trades or occupations risks a disruption of the coherence and stability of the whole community.  But cuts to our sources of knowledge and its applications increases the depth of the loss. 

Like any organism, our community develops by growing, not shrinking.  When we grow, we look beyond what we have so we can see where we want to be.  To see the future of our community means we reinvest in that future. The resulting achievements – the return on our investment -- can then be put toward further growth.  Cuts will preclude any such return.

Cuts to the finances for teachers and universities will only result in a loss of the talent and skills needed to keep our community vibrant and the loss of research facilities will only result in a lost attraction for new and diverse industries to locate here.  By cutting benefits and pensions, we lose teachers and others to the lower 48 and by losing the teachers, we lose the institutional knowledge and history needed to keep our community self-sufficient. When we lose our teachers and professors, we lose the students who would have been trained to eventually replace the current employment base.  Cutting finances to the body politic is like the loss of one’s personality to dementia. Like dementia, the loss of knowledge from our universities will leave our community deteriorated and if not stopped, eventually to the point where we will no longer recognize ourselves or it. 

Prosperity can only become a reality through sufficient funding of our teachers, professors and established research programs. 

The Purposes for the State’s funding should not be confused with that of corporations.  Although oil and gas industries have advanced to the point where their profits are made through the installation of automation that allows for the reduction of the number of jobs that that industry once offered, the contributions made by teachers and professors cannot be automated. Thus, unlike the oil and gas industries’ production with less jobs, we cannot reduce the number of teachers and professors without losing the fruits of their labor.  This means that we can no longer risk our own futures, let alone that of the community’s by clinging to the coat tails of the oil and gas industry through mimicry of its operations.  That industry can eliminate jobs and still make a profit.  We cannot eliminate personnel and continue to have a successful community.  We cannot afford to cut education.  

We must not forget that new industries will need workers which the universities can supply, while automation of the oil and gas industry devolves employment into a choice between buyouts or layoffs. 

My economic platform is based on a model of development through rational reinvestment in our community.  I reject the present administration’s economic plan to cuts cost to “balance the budget.” That economic model rests on a false analogy that equates government spending to a home checkbook.  If we insist on spending only what we have available rather than what we can have access to, (e.g., the Fed’s reserves made available to the State via a State Bank that provides loans for large and small businesses), the result is the austerity presently experienced by the general public while the communities’ wealth is transferred to the already wealthy residing in the private sector. 

 2.   How do you see UAA serving the constituents in your district?

A large portion of the constituents in my district are or have been employed by the oil and gas industry.  The university provides the means by which those individuals can transition to developing new talents and skills for the new jobs.  The university also offers courses for retirees so that they can continue to develop their talents and remain effective members of the community. 

 3.   This year, the University received a modest budget increase after more than five years of severe cuts to operating funds. What do you see as the appropriate path forward related to the University budget and processes?

Businesses use automation to improve their profits.  However, teachers and professors are in many ways not subject to being automated, neither are the state’s schools and universities in the business of make a profit.  Investing in the university may seem to require more spending, but in the long run, the return is reflected in the quality of its students as they enter the work force.  Although the expense will be higher, businesses are the recipients of the State’s investment made to our schools and universities.  As the relevant industries profit from State investment, they should provide their fair share of the expense through taxation to help defray the costs of education born by the community through the State legislature’s funding.

 4.   UAA has a growing need to properly maintain its facilities for housing and classrooms, and for its research, engineering, health, technical, and sports programs.   What is your position on capital funding for facilities maintenance at UAA?

Professors need workers to build the buildings they teach in, to heat those buildings, to print and write the books they use, to supply the chalk and every other item of use in teaching, including the maintenance of all that is produced for their use.  Cutting maintenance expenses breaks that cycle of production and will eventually lead to the deterioration of everything useful.  Maintenance cannot be separated from the teaching process.  Indeed, maintenance is essential to the teaching process.