SNRE bachelor's degree to get new name

Beginning this fall, the natural resources management bachelor’s degree will have a new name: natural resources and environment.

UAF Provost Susan Henrichs recently approved the name change sought by the academic faculty of the School of Natural Resources and Extension. Academic Director Dave Valentine said the faculty felt that the new name better reflects what the degree is about. Many of the school’s classes relate to the environment, such as air and water quality, forests, wilderness and park management, and environmental decision making and ethics.

Valentine also feels the name change will help recruit students. UAF Admissions says it gets a number of students who want to study the environment and don’t necessarily think of natural resources management as environmental studies. “More student who are looking for us will find us,” he said.

The name change will not bring any changes to the curriculum. Students currently earning a bachelor’s degree and graduating in 2019 or later will have the option of graduating with a degree in natural resources management or in natural resources and environment. The name change will be reflected in the academic catalog posted this summer. SNRE is still waiting for approval for the same name change for its master’s degrees.

Former Extension director, longtime agent retires

Extension Economist Tony Nakazawa, who was affiliated with Alaska Extension over a 37-year period, retired at the end of December.

Tony Nakazawa

Nakazawa served many roles with Extension in Alaska, including as its interim director and director from 1997 to 2007.

His first job with Extension, in 1980, was as a "local government coordinator" in Anchorage. His job was to help communities that wanted to incorporate as second-class cities. From there, his interest in rural and community development and Alaska’s political process grew.

Nakazawa taught numerous noncredit community development classes to communities and tribal groups. Subjects included the use of computers, business planning, grants writing and government process. He also taught graduate and undergraduate classes in rural development management strategies at UAF, most recently with the College of Rural and Community Development.

He credits a two-year stint as a patrol officer in Santa Barbara, California, for helping him continue with his graduate studies in the early 1970s. He says working the evening or night shifts allowed him to earn a master’s degree in urban economics during the day. He would go on to earn a master’s and doctorate in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California Berkeley.

Tony gives a presentation in a library.

Nakazawa worked as an economic development specialist for the Ketchikan Gateway Borough and as an Extension specialist for the University of Hawaii before coming to work for Cooperate Extension in Alaska in 1980. He served as the community development program coordinator and as the acting program leader for Extension programs in home economics, energy and community development.

During a 1988 sabbatical, Nakazawa reviewed Japan’s Extension system and taught in the University of Petroleum’s MBA program in Shandong, China. He took a leave of absence from 1992-1995 to serve as director of the Alaska Division of Community and Rural Development under Governor Wally Hickel.

When he returned to Extension, he measured community impacts and worked on regional tourism and community and rural economic development. In recent years, he became more interested in government workings and co-authored several chapters in “Alaska Politics and Public Policy,” a textbook published by the University of Alaska Press in 2016. He also served as the Alaska faculty coordinator for the States’ 4-H International Exchange Programs exchange with Japan.

Former Extension directors, from left, Jim Matthews, Hollis Hall and Art
Buswell pose with Tony Nakazawa.

Nakazawa and his wife, Lynette, plan to stay in Alaska. He expects to continue his interests with economic and community development and his work with the state’s AlaskaHost customer service program training for employees of the hospitality and tourism industry and with a group that focuses on the emerging topic of “geotourism,” which is place-based community development.

“I’ll continue to be a resource for the communities I work with,” he said.

Nakazawa is a sansei, or third-generation, Japanese-American. His parents’ families came from Japan, and he grew up working on his family’s farm in Tolleson, Arizona.  Nakazawa, who is a seventh-degree blackbelt in karate, will also continue to instruct karate classes as he can and will remain involved with Alaska’s Asian community.

Nakazawa has seen many ups and downs with the university budgets, and he believes in the long-term mission of Extension and its work with the public.

“Extension’s presence in communities across the state is so vital,” he said.
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Two SNRE students receive URSA Project Awards

Natural resources management students Kimberly Diamond and Trevor Schoening will receive 2018 Spring Project Awards from URSA, the Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Activity program.

The program awards up to $2,500 to students planning to conduct research or pursue creative projects during the spring semester. Twenty UAF students will receive awards this spring.

According to URSA, Diamond will recruit volunteers who drive and bicycle to campus. The volunteers will be asked to monitor environmental, economic and social costs of their daily commute. This data will be used to compare the commuting methods and inform community decision-making.

Schoening said he hopes to get a better understanding of where food production is taking place around Alaska. He plans to use the directory provided on the Alaska Grown website to find farmers markets and will ask for a list of vendors to contact for production information. Schoening said he hopes to get data regarding where produce is grown, the types of produce grown and roughly how much (in pounds) is being produced annually by each grower. He will use GIS to create regional spatial maps for different regions of Alaska. Schoening said his project is admittedly pretty ambitious but he hopes to hire other undergraduates to contact farmers markets and producers.

Diamond is a senior and Schoening a junior with the School of Natural Resources and Extension.