News and Announcements
Adapting to Environment Hazards
Dr. Jennifer Schmidt recently gave two presentations on environmental hazards. The first was with the Alaska Fire Science Consortium’s spring workshop where she presented on “Arctic Urban Adaptations (AURA): a co-production framework for addressing multiple changing environmental hazards.” The slides for the presentation are available for download and the video recording of the presentation is above. Dr. Schmidt’s second presentation was with the “Community Forum on Wildfire Prevention in Anchorage” put on by the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her presentation was on “Wildfire Risk in Anchorage” and begins at 36:09 in this video recording.
Talk of Alaska: Can Alaska’s economy bounce back from COVID-19?
Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi and Jon Bittner join host Lori Townsend on a recent episode of Alaska Public Media's Talk of Alaska to discuss the effects of COVID-19 on Alaska's economy. The recording and transcript are available from their website.
Commonwealth North debate: “How Permanent is Permanent?”
On April 1, 2020, Commonwealth North hosted a debate “How Permanent is Permanent?” between Ralph Townsend (ISER Director) and Craig Richards (chair of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation Board of Trustees and former Alaska Attorney General.) Because of the COVID-19 restrictions on meetings, the debate was conducted via Zoom. […]
COVID-19’s impact on the Alaska economy
Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi has completed an initial estimate of the possible impact of the COVID-19 business closures on the Alaska economy. To develop those estimates, he focused upon the impacts on the three most directly affected industries: leisure and hospitality, retail, and transportation. He estimated that the direct and indirect effects from reduced activity in those three sectors would be about 48,000 jobs and would reduce state GDP by almost $2 billion in the second quarter of 2020, If the closures are sustained, an additional $2 billion could be lost. Professor Guettabi’s estimates may not capture the impacts of many smaller [...]
Ask a UAA Expert: COVID-19
Faculty members Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi and Dr. Kevin Berry answer questions about the COVID-19 pandemic in the latest releases of Ask a UAA Expert. Dr. Guettabi answers questions related to the State economic consequences while Dr. Berry addresses pandemic economics. Check out the videos! […]
CAEPR researchers testify about teacher turnover to the Alaska Legislature
On Wednesday, March 18, Dr. Dayna DeFeo, Director of the Center for Alaska Education Policy Research, and Dr. Diane Hirshberg, Professor of Education Policy, testified to the Alaska Legislature’s House Education Committee. Their testimony wove together major findings from seven CAEPR research studies to explore teacher supply, demand, retention, turnover, and competition in Alaska and relative to the lower 48. They shared some of Alaska’s areas of opportunity in meeting the need to staff its classrooms with high-quality educators, including expanding efforts to grow our “homegrown” teacher pipeline, improving working conditions that drive turnover, particularly in rural Alaska, and ensuring that [...]