University of Alaska Southeast Chancellor Rick Caulfield retired on Tuesday.
Over the course of his five years leading the campus, he dealt with declining enrollment and repeated state budget cuts that left the entire university system struggling. His departure comes at a time when the campus is facing more uncertainty than ever.
Last week, someone at a Juneau Chamber of Commerce luncheon asked Rick Caulfield to reconsider.
“I know it’s not a great time,” Caulfield said. “I have thought about this a lot, and yet I’m very confident that our interim Chancellor Dr. Karen Carey will do a great job.”
When he announced his retirement last fall, Caulfield never could have imagined how his final semester would go.
COVID-19 caused most classes to move online this spring as students were sent home. The university system was already reckoning with millions of dollars in cuts from last year’s budget vetoes.
And then, just a week before his retirement, university President Jim Johnsen announced his resignation.
“But this is just one more element of uncertainty amid budget cuts and the need to respond to a global pandemic,” Caulfield said.
Caulfield’s University of Alaska career started in 1977. He studied Alaska Native subsistence practices in Fairbanks.
After getting his Master’s in Education from UAF, he taught at the Bristol Bay Campus in Dillingham before leaving to pursue his Ph.D. in England and studying subsistence whaling in Greenland. He returned to become a professor at UAF, where he taught for 20 years before moving to Juneau to be the chief academic officer for UAS.
Looking back on his time on campus, Caulfield said he’s especially proud of the partnerships UAS has built with employers in the region.
He was also critical of the proposal to the UA board of regents that would merge UAS with one of the other two main campuses to cut costs.
“I’m not at all convinced that eliminating the separately accredited university that has served Southeast Alaska very well for over 33 years is the right way to solve the university system’s fiscal crisis,” Caulfield said.
Alternative cuts could be made by looking at redundant degree programs at UAA and UAF, he said, or by taking a hard look at the cost of university athletic programs.
Caulfield feels that it’s vital for decisions about education in Southeast Alaska to be made by the people who live there, not by administrators in Anchorage or Fairbanks.
An in-depth study into the merger proposal is slated to be done by October before regents make a final decision.
Caulfield and his wife Annie plan to stay in Juneau, and he’s not done with campus life yet.
“I intend to be an advocate for UAS in my retirement. In some respects, maybe I can be even more of an advocate,” he said.
UAS Provost Karen Carey will serve as interim chancellor until the university is able to resume the search for Caulfield’s permanent replacement.
