OVERVIEW

Drum Beats: We Will Live Well funds a consortium of programs from five rural, Alaska Native-serving extended campuses of the College of Rural and Community Development (CRCD) and the Cooperative Extension Service of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The project grew out of a prior USDA grant that supported regional assessments and mini-grants to secondary schools.  

The following Drumbeats goals have been geared to help Alaska Natives earn degrees in the USDA disciplines of plant sciences, animal sciences, veterinary medicine and environmental studies: 

Goal 1:   To continue to build ANSI capacity to assess and respond to community-identified training, educational and research needs as they relate to the subsistence sciences.

Goal 2:   To offer career pathways into the subsistence sciences for Alaska Natives through the delivery of post-secondary certificates and the Associate of Science degree.

Goal 3:   To increase the number of Alaska Natives obtaining a certificate or degree in the subsistence sciences.

The Drumbeats Consortium is comprised of four (4) certificate programs that have been developed with the generous support of USDA:

• High Latitude Range Management (HLRM) out of the Northwest Campus in Nome,
• Veterinary Science (VTS) out of the Interior-Aleutians Campus in Fairbanks and the Chukchi Campus in Kotzebue,
• Environmental Studies (ENVI) out of the Bristol Bay Campus in Dillingham, and
• Ethnobotany (EBOT) out of the Kuskokwim Campus in Bethel.

STATUS OF THE CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS

HLRM and VTS were approved with final Board of Regent (BOR) and Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) approval in 2007. ENVI and EBOT received BOR and NWCCU approval in September 2009.