Advisory Board
Advisory Board members
Joe Alloway is the academic advisor for the UAF College of Engineering and Mines. His research interests include student identity development in higher education, mediation, and relational communication. He received an MA in Professional Communication from UAF and has since worked as research staff, academic staff, and as faculty overseas. His current project is a grammar textbook with colleagues from his previous university.
David Barnes is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is presently the Associate Dean for Research of the UAF College of Engineering and Mines, the Interim Director of the Institute of Northern Engineering, and is affiliated with the Water and Environmental Research Center.
Dayna DeFeo is an education policy faculty member and the director of the Center for Alaska Education Policy Research at UAA’s Institute for Social and Economic Research. Her research interests include college and postsecondary transitions, particularly in the career and technical fields and for underrepresented populations; teacher turnover, supply, and demand; and representation and hegemony in the curriculum and institutional systems. She holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from New Mexico State University and currently serves as Principal Investigator or co-Principal Investigator on several National Science Foundation DUE grants, including two I-TEST projects.
Bill Howard, an associate professor of chemistry, holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University and is interested in classical coordination theory of the transition metals and in learning more about how transition metal compounds can be used as medicines for various diseases such as cancer and diabetes. He regularly teaches introductory chemistry courses and is committed to improving STEM education at the University of Alaska.
Gabrielle Russell is the Indigenous Student Services Manager in the College of Rural and Community Development at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She provides direction and oversite for Rural Student Services, the Rural Alaska Honors Institute and the Eileen Panigeo MacLeah House. Russell holds an M. Ed. in guidance and counseling with a community counseling license and a B.A. in history, both from UAF.
Victoria Smith is the Director of TRIO Student Support Services at UAF, and PI on two federally funded TRIO SSS grants (STEM & Classic) through the US Department of Education. These grants serve baccalaureate degree-seeking students who are first-generation, have limited income, and/or experience a documented disability--more than half of the undergraduate student population at UAF fits into one or more of these demographics. Victoria studied history, as well as cultural identity in higher education through the Arctic and Northern Studies MA program at UAF, and has committed her time and energy to ensuring that traditionally underrepresented and under-resourced students at UAF get the holistic support they need to successfully graduate and access gainful employment.
Advisory Report to PI's
Year 2 (to appear Fall 2023)
Reports to Advisory Board