ANSEP is driving education forward: 2016 inaugural year of ANSEP's Acceleration High School.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Engineering & Architecture

NSEP stands for the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, and it was initially a program for university students envisioned by Dr. Herb Schroeder to encourage Alaska Native students to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education and professions. That may have been the goal in 1995, but since then ANSEP has grown in the number of students, the programs offered, and the scope of their goal.

Acceleration High School

ANSEP's most recent step forward is the ANSEP Acceleration High School, located at the Valley Pathways School in Palmer. In August of 2016, twenty-three students formed the high school's first cohort.

On a snowy Friday afternoon in December, the ANSEP classroom is full of energy and controlled commotion as students are tasked with creating functional helicopters. Matthew Gho, an assistant professor of mathematics for ANSEP and an adjunct for the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), says that every Friday afternoon students are given a project to work on, ranging from egg drops and catapults to towers made of marshmallows and toothpicks. "They're not given any diagrams or instruction," Gho says. "They have to problem solve and work together as teams and figure it out." In this case, students in small teams of two or three were provided rubber bands, balsa wood, and other similar materials and instructed to make helicopters.

ANSEP Regional Director Michael Ulroan, who directs the Acceleration High School, says, "We want these hands-on projects to give students an opportunity to solve problems as a team." Students are then required to present on their project: "Even if they might not succeed with their project, then they at least know what works and what doesn't work, and they have to present that," he says. This combination of exploration and explanation allows students to apply information learned during the week in various courses. Ulroan continues, "Not only are they applying, let's say, math to their hands-on project, in English they learn how to do presentations, and they put that into use on these hands-on projects."

College Credit Opportunities

ANSEP's Acceleration High School is a partnership between the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, ANSEP, and UAA. Students attend the high school in Palmer every day just like any other high school, but their coursework is a combination of high school and college curricula. "Students are registered for...