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When Dr. Sheldon Jackson was appointed Alaska's first Commissioner of Education in 1885, he had already been on the job for a number of years. In 1877 - just a decade after the American purchase of the vast territory-the New York-born Presbyterian minister came to Alaska to survey missionary needs. Wherever he looked, Jackson saw the need for schools, especially to serve Alaska Natives. Traversing Alaska by steamship, canoe, oxcart and reindeer sled, Jackson set up new schools or made contact with the schools already established. Though diminutive in stature, Jackson became known for his energy and dogged vision. Writer James Michener recognized Jackson's embodiment of the unquenchable frontier spirit and made the missionary one of the central characters in his epic novel about Alaska.
Among Jackson's accomplishments was the establishment of a training school to educate local Tlingits. Then, the school building had burned to the ground and Jackson organized a nationwide fund-raising effort for a new building, christened the Sitka Industrial and Training School. The school prospered and was renamed Sheldon Jackson School after Jackson's death in 1910.
Now 125 years old, Sheldon Jackson College is a private, accredited educational institution granting four-year baccalaureate degrees in a variety of areas. The school has about 250 full- and parttime students, a number that has been increasing since SJ (as it is known locally) began a renewed focus on training Alaska students in the kinds of skills needed in Alaska.
Sheldon Jackson College President C. Carlyle Haaland notes that his institution was one of the first in Alaska to be established during the American period. As a kind of exercise for the school's 125th anniversary April 17, Haaland had posed an Alaska history challenge: "We're asking people to find something (among Alaska institutions) that's older than us."
MORE THAN A CENTURY OF CHANGE
At first the Sitka Industrial and Training School, like most early schools for Native Americans, concentrated on teaching practical skills-how to mill logs, for example, or how to operate a then-modem wood-fired cook stove. By 1917, a boarding high school was added. In 1944, a college program was organized. Sheldon Jackson College was accredited in 1966.
The school is Alaska's oldest continuously operated...