During the 2012 Alaska Legislative Budget Session, Representative Anna Fairclough was a strong proponent of the University of Alaska's FY13 operating budget. That budget included additional funding for advising throughout the University of Alaska Statewide system. The Universities of Alaska Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Southeast all received additional dollars dedicated specifically to enhancing advising efforts.

Recently, SDI caught up with Representative Fairclough to talk about her reasons for championing UA funding for advising, and find out more about her overall perspective of the current state of education in Alaska as well as the University of Alaska Strategic Direction Initiative.� MORE...

The University of Alaska Strategic Direction Initiative (SDI) is now in its second year. After gathering thousands of responses from listening sessions conducted throughout UA's campuses, the direction of SDI is now shifting toward engaging faculty, staff, students, alumni and the people of Alaska in asking two hard questions: "Based on the feedback gathered, what are the issues and problems that need to be addressed within our university system; and how do we solve them?"

While SDI was working on its information gathering, the American Council on Education (ACE) was gathering information through their National Task Force on Institutional Accreditation.

The purpose of the ACE Task Force was to "identify issues and suggest potential answers to the most serious challenges facing accreditation. The deliberations of the Task Force were built upon the wide-spread recognition that voluntary, nongovernmental self regulation remains the best way to assure academic quality and demonstrate accountability." MORE...