UAF NW Campus Director Barbara Amarok Retires

June 21, 2024

Barb QasuGlana Amarok retired from her position as director of UAF's Northwest Campus, in Nome. Her last day was May 31, 2024. Interim Dean of the UAF College of Indigenous Studies, Veronica Plumb, will oversee the search for a replacement. 

For more than thirty years, Amarok has worked in the fields of adult education, cultural education, elementary education, secondary education administration and university education in Nome. While employed, she earned her master’s degree in educational leadership through UAA and a doctoral degree in Indigenous education through UAF.

Amarok received the Alaska Federation of Natives Educator of the Year Award in 2015. She has served on the Nome Public Schools Board of Education since 2010, where she has been president for three years and vice president for one, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Association of Alaska School Boards and on the advisory committees of five UAF graduate students. She is also a member of the UA College of Education Advisory Council, the Alaska Native Collaborative Hub for Research on Resilience, and the Nome Public Schools Equity Committee. In 2018, Amarok traveled to Nuuk, Greenland, and contributed to the Inuit Circumpolar Conference Inuit Education Summit Outcomes document. She has taught ED 420 (Alaska Native Education) to Bering Strait educators since 2011 and now also teaches ED 193 (Introduction to Teaching) for high school students in the Bering Strait region.

She is the daughter of Mary Ann Amarok Tiffany (born and raised in Nome) and Warren I. Tiffany (stepfather). She attended her first year of school in Nome before her family moved for her stepfather’s career. She returned to Nome after earning her bachelor’s degree in elementary education.