Nome student inters with ANSEP Summer Bridge program

ANCHORAGE, Alaska—This summer 25 of Alaska’s best and brightest are participating in the Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program’s Summer Bridge opportunity, which develops recent high school graduates socially and professionally for college and future STEM careers by placing them in summer internships with ANSEP strategic partners.

Nome’s very own David “Reese” Bahnke is spending the summer in Anchorage interning with Oil Search Alaska.

Over the course of nine weeks, students are participating in paid summer internships in engineering, science or business. Students enrolled in this year’s Summer Bridge component represent 12 Alaska communities including Anchorage, Denali Park, Kongiganak, Kotzebue, Glennallen, Homer, Nome, Palmer, Soldotna, Wasilla and Utqiagvik.

In the northern part of the state, an internship with the National Park Service is giving Cassandra Brown of Kongiganak and Chelonia Jones of Bethel a chance to participate in scientific surveys of small mammals in Denali National Park and snowshoe hares in the Gates of the Arctic National Park. These students will also complete a video project on peregrine falcon recovery and the invasive species sweet clover. Farther north, Austin Bergerson of Anchorage, an intern with the United States Geological Survey, is spending time on the North Slope deploying GPS tags on loons and installing nest cameras.

In Southcentral Alaska, Alexandria Burks-Dakutak of Wasilla and Kaitlyn Hanson of Anchorage are interning with the United States Fish & Wildlife Service. They are in Kodiak studying the relationship between berries and brown bears as well as a highly invasive plant species as well as banding birds. At ConocoPhillips Alaska and Oil Search’s offices in Anchorage, four students are getting hands-on experience with engineering and business projects. Ethan Sundown of Bethel and Anna Chanar of Anchorage are interning at ConocoPhillips Alaska’s headquarters, where they are gaining engineering and business experience with exploration, production, integrated analytics, sustainability and planning as well as visiting the North Slope to explore various divisions of ConocoPhillips.

In Southwest Alaska, an internship with Bristol Bay Native Association will take Ashlyn Christensen of Anchorage to Round Island to count walrus haulouts and research sockeye salmon ecosystems.

In western Alaska, Ayiana Browning of Kotzebue is interning with the National Park Service at the Western Arctic National Parklands Bering Land Bridge conducting community interviews. In Emmonak, Sam Larson, from Homer is working with the Yukon Delta Fisheries Development Association focusing on juvenile salmon escapements in the Yukon River.