At ANSEP, Key New Leadership at a Time of Federal Uncertainty
By Lizzy Hahn/ADN
Story previously published in Anchorage Daily News.
Photo by Loren Holmes / ADN
Dr. Michele Yatchmeneff, COO of the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, photographed at the University of Alaska Anchorage on Friday, May 16, 2025.
The Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program at the University of Alaska has brought on a trailblazing engineering educator in a key leadership role at a time when the program is navigating significant changes prompted by federal policy shifts.
Michele Yatchmeneff became the chief operating officer of ANSEP on May 13. Just days earlier on May 2, the National Science Foundation, under the Trump administration, terminated the Louis Stokes for Minorities grant, which ANSEP has been receiving since 2001.
The loss of the grant for $2.5 million over five years compelled ANSEP to cancel its Summer Acceleration Academy, which was scheduled to start within weeks of the grant termination notice.
Yatchmeneff said that the National Science Foundation as a whole has cut massive areas of research and programming, including the area that ANSEP fell under, which was “cut completely without notice, without any warning and immediately stopped funding that day.”
The National Science Foundation said in its notice to ANSEP that “the agency has determined that termination of certain awards is necessary because they are not in alignment with current NSF priorities.” The foundation said on its website that it is terminating awards including “but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and misinformation/disinformation.”
“There was no way to prepare for that. It was automatically gone,” Yatchmeneff said about the funding loss.
ANSEP Executive Director Matthew Calhoun said in a statement that the Summer Acceleration Academy, which hosts around 50 to 70 students yearly, is the only ANSEP program that will be affected by the grant termination.
As part of the Summer Acceleration Academy, students live on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus and take college science and math courses, earning college credit while still attending high school. Separately from the summer acceleration program, students in Anchorage, the Mat-Su, Bethel, Kotzebue and Nome can participate in a year-round Acceleration Academy, which serves over 170 students total each year.
The upcoming year-round Acceleration Academy is expected to continue as planned, Yatchmeneff said.
She said she’s hopeful that the summer acceleration program will continue next year.
“A lot of the students in rural Alaska don’t even have chemistry or biology or high-level math courses available,” said Yatchmeneff.
The University of Alaska has taken steps that it said is necessary to protect its federal funding after the Trump administration called on educational institutions to eliminate race-based policies.
On Feb. 21, the University of Alaska Board of Regents voted to remove the words “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” “DEI” and “affirmative action” from university websites, job titles, office names and publications.
Photo by Bill Roth/ ADN
The Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP) building located on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus.
Weeks before that, language on the ANSEP website was changed, specifically removing the words “Alaska Native.” Some references including the words “Alaska Native” were added back at the end of February, though presented in a different context. ANSEP said at the time that language changes were intended to make clear that the program was open to Alaskans of all backgrounds.
When asked for her thoughts on this language being removed, Yatchmeneff said, “if it protects funding and it protects the work that people are doing and allows them to continue to work, I’m OK with it, but I hope it doesn’t last forever.”
“My career is about helping Alaska Native students succeed,” she said. ”To have a lot of that be considered not worthy … the hard part for me is that I’m Alaska Native and wouldn’t be here without the help of programs like ANSEP.”
A personal connection to ANSEP
In her decade working at ANSEP, Yatchmeneff has seen the program as a whole grow. When she was first hired, ANSEP was only offering its university success and summer bridge programs. Now, the organization offers programs for students from kindergarten through the Ph.D. level.
Originally from King Cove and False Pass in the Aleutians, Yatchmeneff mostly grew up in Anchorage. In a recent interview, she reflected on her childhood, saying she would often “go back to the village for all the fun stuff, fishing, commercial fishing.”
She first entered the ANSEP program as a college student.
“I felt like I found a family on the campus,” Yatchmeneff said, reflecting on her time at UAA. “Here, I found people that look like me and also have the same goal as me.”
At UAA, she received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and master’s degree in engineering management.
When Yatchmeneff and Calhoun, the executive director, started as faculty at UAA, “we were the first and only Alaska Native people working in the College of Engineering at the time,” Yatchmeneff said. She has been teaching engineering courses at UAA since 2008.
At the time when Yatchmeneff was a student at ANSEP, “it wasn’t even a thought process to consider going to get my Ph.D.,” she said. Now, Yatchmeneff is the only Alaska Native in the world with a Ph.D. in engineering education, earning her doctorate from Purdue University in 2015.
Photo by Loren Holmes / ADN
Dr. Michele Yatchmeneff, COO of the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, photographed at the University of Alaska Anchorage on Friday, May 16, 2025.
Her Ph.D. research focused on the motivation and success of Alaska Native pre-college STEM students. She was interested in figuring out why students who attended ANSEP were completing high levels of math and science.
Yatchmeneff said she found that it’s about belonging: Students needed to feel like they belonged in these math and science courses before they could be successful.
Every University of Alaska campus and college has seen an increase in Indigenous enrollment, according to Yatchmeneff. She mentioned the Alaska Native Success Initiative — a program within the University of Alaska — that aims to grow Indigenous enrollment in Alaska.
Those takeaways inform her work as ANSEP’s chief operating officer today.
“I don’t want to be the last and only,” Yatchmeneff said, “so we’re working to help students today get to that level.”