Daily Sitka Sentinel

Outer Coast Set for First Summer Seminar

By ABIGAIL BLISS
Sentinel Staff Writer
    For organizers of the Outer Coast Summer Seminar, a key piece of the puzzle has fallen into place.
    The Outer Coast team has lined up an inaugural class of 16 students for its Summer Seminar program, a precursor to the two-year Outer Coast College slated to open in 2020.   
    A total of 45 high school students applied for the summer program, and, in late April, 16 were offered spots at the seminar. All 16 submitted letters of intent to enroll, but one has since backed out, leading organizers to pull a student off of the wait list.
    As it now stands, the first Outer Coast Summer Seminar class has students from hometowns throughout the U.S., including Brooklyn, New York; Phoenix, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; Omaha, Nebraska; and villages and cities throughout Alaska.
    The cost per student for the program has been estimated at $5,250, but financial aid packages have been offered to students based on financial need.
    Some families, Kreiss-Tomkins said, are paying the full estimated cost, and others received a financial aid package covering all expenses. Most students, he noted, fall somewhere in between.   
    The Outer Coast team has hired two residential teaching assistants, Elliot Setzer and Claire Helgeson, for this summer’s seminar.
    “The title speaks to hybrid responsibility,” said Kreiss-Tomkins, noting that both Setzer and Helgeson will assist in the classroom during the day and supervise the residential component of the program in the evenings.
    James Hart has been hired for one of two service coordinator positions. The second is still open, and it is the last post to be filled for the summer program, Kreiss-Tomkins said.
    The Summer Seminar is scheduled to run from July 6 through August 4, at locations split between Mt. Edgecumbe High School and Sheldon Jackson Campus.
    It will borrow the three-pillared structure of Deep Springs College in California, offering a test-drive opportunity for the envisioned two-year college, which will be based on the same model. As at Deep Springs, students’ experiences will be oriented around three core tenets: academics, labor/service, and self-governance.
    For the academic portion of the program, the high school students will take a course titled “Perspectives on Freedom, Authority, and Polarization,” taught by professors Sharon Schuman, Lance Twitchell and Ishmael Hope.
    The service component, Kreiss-Tomkins said, will be “multi-faceted,” and include a trail work project with the U.S. Forest Service, rehabilitation work on the Sheldon Jackson campus, and possibly two other collaborations with local nonprofits that would be “shorter in duration.”
    Self-governance, he noted, will be different for a four-week summer program for high schoolers than at Deep Springs. The details of this third pillar will, in large part, be driven by the program participants themselves.
    “To some extent, it’ll be determined by them,” Kreiss-Tomkins said. “I think, to some extent, we’ll sort of take it as it comes.”
    He predicted that their self-governance will include “establishing norms and rules for how they spend their unstructured time, taking care of their shared spaces... and cell phone use and internet use.”
    While the Outer Coast team has filled the seats for the Summer Seminar program, they still have their work cut out for them on the financial front; the total budget for the Summer Seminar is $85,000, part of which has yet to be raised.
    “There’s always going to be work to do,” Kreiss-Tomkins said. “But we’ve had some large commitments from major donors, and a few checks in the door, and we’re really excited about the response and support.”