or Alaska Pacific University (APU), being called an Alaska Native university is not a marketing label. It is the organizing principle behind a governance overhaul that is reshaping how the small Anchorage school defines itself, who has a seat at its table, and where its next generation of students will come from.

The founder of Alaska Methodist University, as it was originally called in 1957, was Unangax̂ from the village of Unga in the Aleutian Islands. Peter Gordon Gould envisioned a high-quality university, accessible to all, that would cultivate Indigenous leadership rooted in Alaska. That founding vision resurfaced in 2016, when APU became tribally governed through a partnership with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. It deepened further in 2017, when the university restructured and renewed its focus on Alaska Native students.

Now, with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium stepping back from higher education to focus its resources on statewide health services, APU is charting its own path forward—not by walking away from tribal governance but by leaning into it. The timing matters: Federal Tribal College designation requires a student body more than 50 percent American Indian or Alaska Native, and APU currently runs between 30 and 38 percent. Rather than wait years to cross that threshold before making any structural change, the university has rolled out a new three-tier membership model, inviting tribes, tribal organizations, and supporting partners to help govern and sustain the institution long after any single partnership ends.

Native governance isn’t new territory for APU. In 2019, the university crossed a smaller but related threshold—20 percent Alaska Native enrollment—earning federal recognition as an Alaska Native-serving institution, a category nested inside the broader minority-serving institution designation.

At the time, then-APU President Robert Onders described the enrollment number as the easy part. The harder, longer transformation, he said, was incorporating Indigenous knowledge and governance into the university’s actual structure, a process APU was still only beginning.

Seven years later, that transformation is still underway, led by Onders’ successor. “This new membership model represents an important next step in APU’s journey as a self-defined Alaska Native University,” says APU President Janelle Vanasse. “It deepens our partnerships with Alaska’s tribes and supporting organizations, ensuring that Alaska Native leadership and knowledge continue to guide our governance and vision.”

The new structure sorts partners into three tiers: stewardship, associate, and allied. Stewardship membership, reserved for tribes and tribal organizations, carries a $100,000 annual commitment and the right to appoint a trustee directly to APU’s board. Associate membership is also limited to tribes and tribal organizations, but it carries no financial minimum; it’s meant as a way for a tribe to formally sanction APU as its Alaska Native university without a dollar figure attached. Allied membership, open to non-tribal entities and individual donors, asks for a $50,000 annual commitment. Associate and allied members can nominate a trustee for an at-large board seat, while a one-time unrestricted gift of $2 million or more secures twenty years of membership outright.

“It deepens our partnerships with Alaska’s tribes and supporting organizations,” Susan Anderson, APU’s senior liaison for membership and external relationships, says of the model, “ensuring that Alaska’s Native leadership and knowledge continue to guide our governance and vision. These members are core to our Alaska Native university vision.”

“Community engagement and impact are at the heart of our mission,” Vanasse says. “The new governance model maintains and enhances the mission. By helping students reach their fullest potential and collaborating with partners, we aim to address real-world challenges and create meaningful change for the benefit of all.”

Tyler Young’s path through APU is a case study in what that engagement looks like. Young, who is Sugpiaq on his father’s side and Tsimshian on his mother’s side, enrolled at APU in 2019 while working in trauma-informed care at Southcentral Foundation. He started in the Alaska Native governance program before realizing his calling was elsewhere, eventually shifting into counseling psychology, a field he says lets him extend the healing work already central to his own life and to his Indigenous values around being a good relative.

Young began his coursework online during the COVID-19 pandemic and didn’t move to in-person classes until fall 2025, a shift he describes as meaningful. “Being around other students and engaging with the APU community more deeply has been really positive,” Young told APU for a profile the university shared on his experience, crediting instructors and advisors whom he feels are setting him up well for the work ahead.

The governance model is also built to serve workforce needs directly. Stewardship members, in particular, use their relationships with APU to train their own employees for specific gaps. The Alaska Native Executive Leadership program is the longest-running example. It’s more than twelve years old, and Alaska Native corporations and tribes regularly sponsor rising employees through it.

APU’s nursing program grew out of a similar need, identified directly by tribal health providers. In Bethel, APU partners with the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation and Yuut Elitnaurviat to deliver licensed practical nurse training. A parallel partnership trains registered nurses in Utqiaġvik alongside Samuel Simmonds Memorial Hospital and Iḷisaġvik College.

“APU works directly with our partners to identify needs and explore opportunities to fill those needs collectively,” Anderson says. “It all starts with a conversation with the tribes and tribal organizations to identify needs.”

APU has also built teacher-certification pathways tailored to rural school districts facing shortages, along with an environmental public health program designed around the changing needs of rural communities. The university is now working with partners on entry-level business roles and cultural tourism, an area where APU has already run ethical guide training aimed at preparing guides, Native and non-Native alike, to represent Indigenous land and culture responsibly to visitors.

The university describes itself as a gathering place where Alaska Native knowledge leads, all students belong, and Indigenous and Western approaches come together to grow leaders for the next seven generations.

“This model helps all students who are seeking a quality, highly interactive education opportunity that feels like a family,” Vanasse says. Students consistently report feeling connected at APU, she notes, and professors and staff who genuinely care about them, something she says resonates especially with students from rural Alaska seeking a small, personalized, hands-on environment.

Looking ahead, Anderson describes APU’s goal less as a single metric than sustained partnership. “Alaska Pacific University is committed to being a purpose-driven institution, focused on creating positive impacts in the community,” she says. “Through partnerships with member organizations, APU will align its efforts with the needs and well-being of local communities.” That means continued research and projects benefiting Alaska’s environment, health, and economy, work she says keeps the university tied directly to the regions it serves.

For Vanasse, success comes down to reach: more students moving through APU’s programs, and a bigger, more lasting footprint across the Alaska communities the university exists to serve—a view Anderson shares.

That growth is already showing up outside the humanities and health fields where APU has traditionally built its reputation. Last year, NASA awarded the university nearly $5 million to establish a Microplastics Research and Education Center on its Anchorage campus, funded through a federal program aimed at strengthening science capacity and workforce diversity at minority-serving institutions. The grant is building out APU’s existing Alaska and Arctic Waterways Analytics Lab, working toward accreditation to test the state’s waterways—including traditional drinking water sources—for microplastics and, eventually, PFAS contamination. Alaska Native and rural communities are central to the project’s design, and the students involved get funded research roles and internships alongside NASA scientists, the same workforce-pipeline model already at work in APU’s nursing and teacher-certification programs.

Microplastics research is a small example of what “widening the mission” can look like beyond the governance chart: research money and expertise that might otherwise have gone to an out-of-state university land in Alaska instead, run by and for the state it studies. Anderson and Vanasse describe that same principle as driving the membership model.

Time is still ticking toward the 50 percent Native enrollment threshold. APU’s board can apply for federal tribal college status the moment enrollment crosses it, and Vanasse estimates it’s roughly eight years out, given APU’s current growth rate.

Until then, though, a tribe doesn’t need to wait on a number to help run the university, appoint a trustee, or send its own workforce through APU’s classrooms.