Outer Coast aspires to be a two-year liberal arts college in Sitka, Alaska.

On the path to the college, we currently run summer- and year-long programs for high-school and postsecondary students.

In July 2014, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (JKT; born-and-raised Sitkan and current Alaska State Representative) began exploring the idea of starting a college in Sitka. Specifically, a college that would anchor Sitka’s historic Sheldon Jackson Campus during the academic year, when it was not being used at full capacity. 

Sheldon Jackson College, Alaska’s oldest institution of higher education, was closed abruptly in 2007 and ownership transferred to Alaska Arts Southeast in 2011, with fifty million dollars in deferred maintenance from the campus sitting empty and shuttered for four years. In what some have called the largest volunteer effort in the state’s history, the campus was brought back to life and is now home to a number of organizations and programs, including the Sitka Fine Arts Camp, Sitka Music Festival, Sitka Sound Science Center, and Youth Advocates of Sitka. But until Outer Coast’s arrival, the campus had not been home to higher education during the academic year.

The legacy of the Sheldon Jackson campus is complex. Rooted in its history as a Presbyterian mission school (The Sitka Industrial Training School and later Sheldon Jackson High School), the campus was once home to one of the many boarding schools which contributed to the genocide and erasure of Native cultures across Alaska in the late 19th century and the 20th century. Even so, Sheldon Jackson College was also home to generations of Alaska Native scholars, scientists, and leaders. At the core of Outer Coast is the vision of creating a new college model that acknowledges and reconciles with this history to create a space where Indigenous histories and ways of knowing are centered. (For more on the history of the Sheldon Jackson Campus, explore the Voices of SJ project here.)

In fall 2015, a founding team — JKT, Will Hunt (a Deep Springs College alumnus), and Javier Botero (a Sitka Winter Fellow) — coalesced: a small but deeply committed group who all believed college could and should do more and were ready to figure out how to make that happen. They began their research into innovative college models with Deep Springs College and steadily expanded their scope to include a larger world of ideas and educators focused on the reinvention of higher education. 

Because there’s no ‘how-to’ book for starting a college, the group made its own: a college blueprint that envisioned every aspect of the future college and its operations, from financial aid and tuition structures to class times and accreditation. They established Outer Coast’s educational model on the three pillars of academics, service & labor, and self-governance.

As we work toward opening the doors of the college in fall 2024, we have run six intensive, college-level academic summer programs — or Summer Seminars — for high school and college students from across Alaska, the Lower 48, and the globe. We will run our seventh Summer Seminar in 2024.

In 2020, we launched our first ever post-secondary program, the Outer Coast Year: a nine-month intensive for 15 high school graduates. We have successfully operated four iterations of the Outer Coast Year.

November 2015: Ahead of the first major strategic convening in Sitka, the whole team works late into the night (and Will and Jonathan pull an all-nighter) to complete a first draft of the college blueprint. Sitka Sentinel publishes a photo from the convening on the front page.

September 2015: JKT, Will, and Javier commit to the project and begin work in earnest.

May 2015: JKT creates a “Scope of Work” document outlining every conceivable (at the time) question that would need to be addressed and answered in order to start a college.

September 2016: Bryden Sweeney-Taylor, a Deep Springs alumnus and CEO of a national college access organization, transitions into the project lead role. He has since become Outer Coast’s Executive Director. Cecilia Dumouchel joins the team through Sitka Winter Fellows. She has since become the Director of Programs and Operations.

March 2016: A partnership committee is formed between the team, Roger Schmidt, and community collaborators to explore an MOU between Sitka Fine Arts Camp/Alaska Arts Southeast, Inc. and Outer Coast College. Stephanie Gilardi also joins the Outer Coast team.

January 2016: The core team agrees on a mission statement.

December 2017: The team launches a fundraising campaign to raise $100,000 in the first half of 2018 and the first student recruitment email is sent for the Summer Seminar 2018.

October 2017: The Outer Coast team decides to “cross the Rubicon” by committing to launch the first Summer Seminar (a beta-test of the educational model geared toward Alaskan high schoolers) in 2018. They have just eight short months to create a program from the ground up. 

July 2017: Outer Coast officially incorporates as a nonprofit corporation.

September 2018: The team receives word that Outer Coast has been granted 501(c)3 status by the IRS.

July 2018: 16 students arrive in Sitka from all over the country, and Summer Seminar 2018 orientation commences with the community gathered at Totem Park: Louise Brady, Tlingit culture bearer and Sitka Tribe of Alaska representative, and X̱’unei welcome students to Lingít Aaní and relate stories of the first people of Shee (Baranof Island). 

February 2018: The team offers faculty positions for the Summer Seminar to Sharon Schuman and X̱’unei Lance Twitchell, who accept, completing a four-month-long faculty search.

October 2019: The team submits an application for initial authorization from the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education (ACPE), an essential requirement for postsecondary institutions in the state. The team continues making plans for a third Summer Seminar in 2020 and Outer Coast’s first postsecondary program, the Outer Coast Year, to begin in fall 2020.

June 2019: The New York Times publishes “The Anti College is on the Rise” by Molly Worthen featuring Outer Coast as the lede! Also, the 2019 Summer Seminar begins, featuring three course offerings: The Most Important Question taught by Jenell Paris, Imagining Otherwise: Utopia and Apocalypse in a Changing World taught by Sol Neely, and Tlingit Language and Indigenous Studies taught by returning OCSS 2018 faculty X̱’unei Lance Twitchell.

February 2019: The Outer Coast Board of Advisors officially matriculates. 

August 2020: The Fall Semester of the inaugural Outer Coast Year program begins, featuring two seven-week courses: Writing about Place, What is Home taught by Sanjena Sathian and Humans and Other Animals taught by David Egan. The Murdock Charitable Trust awards Outer Coast a $212,000 program expansion grant, marking Outer Coast’s largest institutional grant to date.

Outer Coast offers a Tlingit Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in August and launches with over 600 sign-ups and 100 learners in attendance at the first lesson.

June 2020: The 2020 Summer Seminar begins virtually, featuring five course offerings: Intro to Applied Economics – The Economics of Rural Alaskan Water Utilities taught by Barbara Johnson, Indigenizing Futures: Healing Within and Against the Anthropocene taught by returning faculty member Sol Neely, Living a Democratic Life taught by Joel Schlosser, and Tlingit Language and Indigenous Studies taught by X̱’unei Lance Twitchell.

March 2020: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the team begins to work from home for the foreseeable future. A COVID-19 Action Committee, composed of staff and Summer Seminar alumni, meet to discuss the merits of a virtual Summer Seminar and to make plans for the Outer Coast Year in the fall.

January 2020: By a unanimous vote of the ACPE, Outer Coast becomes authorized to run programs for high school graduates through July 2021. Outer Coast also inaugurates a Board of Trustees.

Fall 2021: The team begins exploring concrete pathways to the college in earnest, including a potential branch-campus accreditation incubation and a three-year strategic plan.

August 2021: The Outer Coast Year 2021-22 begins with the two concurrent class offerings: Relationship with Place 1 & 2, taught by Ilgavak Peter Williams; and Philosophy as a Way of Life and Games, Play, and Philosophy, taught by returning faculty member David Egan.

July 2021: The ACPE approves a second one-year authorization for the Outer Coast Year program. The Summer Seminar 2021 — Outer Coast’s first fully in-person, unmasked program since the start of the pandemic — begins with an orientation at Sam Sing Cove Cabin and features one course: Wealth & Commonwealth, taught by Lizzie Krontiris.

April 2021: The fully vaccinated staffulty team gathers for an unmasked, indoor dinner in Sitka — the first such gathering of the 2020-2021 Year program. 

September 2022: Outer Coast serves as a volunteer institution for the biannual Sharing Our Knowledge Conference. Students and staffulty travel to Wrangell to support the successful running of the conference.

Summer 2022: Political theorists Joel Schlosser (Bryn Mawr) and Lizzie Krontiris (Wellesley) co-teach their course How To Do Nothing: Work, Refusal, and Politics for the 2022 Summer Seminar.

May 2022: Matthew Spellberg is hired as the Academic Dean of Outer Coast.

April 2022: The inaugural Learners Teaching Learners Tlingit Language Conference is hosted on the historic Sheldon Jackson/SFAC campus with the support of Outer Coast students and staffulty. It is an extended weekend of language learning and celebration with teachers and elders across Southeast.

February 2022: With the help of collaborator Alyssa Russell, the Outer Coast team launches a new brand identity and website.

February 2022: Outer Coast promotional video is produced with Cedar Group.

Fall 2023: Work begins in earnest to spread the word about the two-year undergraduate program to students and educators across Alaska as well as around the country, timed with the opening of the application in November.

September 2023: A visiting class of architecture graduate students from Yale, led by Azadeh Rashidi, Billie Tsien, and Andrew Benner, spend a week with Outer Coast students and staffulty exchanging knowledge for a possible campus design project.

August 2023: The fourth (and final) iteration of the Outer Coast Year begins with Academic Dean Matthew Spellberg co-teaching Indigenous Studies with Yeidikook’áa, who also transitions into a full-time role as Indigenous Studies Chair. Returning faculty member Caroline Daws teaches two ecology courses: Fungi of the Forest and Community Ecology and Ecosystems of Sitka.

Summer 2023: The largest-ever cohort — 32 students — attend the monthlong 2023 Summer Seminar. They take Indigenous Studies and elect to enroll in either How to Have a Life, taught by returning faculty members Lizzie Krontiris and Joel Schlosser, or Negative Capability in Art and Culture, taught by visiting faculty member Justin Kim. 

April 2023: Second annual Learners Teaching Learners Tlingit Language Conference is hosted by Outer Coast on the Sheldon Jackson/SFAC campus. Tlingit language learners, educators and elders from across Southeast Alaska and the Yukon stay for an extended weekend of workshops and celebration of language and community in advance of the Yaaw ḵoo.éex’.

March 2023: A visiting class of Princeton students and faculty join the Outer Coast community for a week of shared knowledge exchange.

Looking Ahead

Our vision is to create a new pathway for students to unlock the promise of higher education: bridging the gap between high school and four-year institutions that match students’ potential, serving as a launchpad for their educational and career aspirations, and giving them the tools and purpose to transform their communities and their own lives.

The Outer Coast Year and Summer Seminar allow us to refine our model with an eye to the duration, size, and scope of the eventual two-year college. With this experience, we are ready to seek institutional accreditation in pursuit of opening the college proper.

Ultimately, Outer Coast has the potential to serve as a template for the sort of postsecondary institution that could be established in any community across the country to ensure that high-potential students of all backgrounds can unlock the promise of higher education.


Yeey aaní káx̱ g̱unéi x̱too.aat (May we walk on your land). Outer Coast is situated on Lingít Aaní, the ancestral home of the Tlingit peoples. We strive to build a community of safe, inclusive, and integrative learning for all. Learn more.