Alumni of Distinction Return to Campus

The UAA Office of Alumni Relations and UAA Alumni Association were pleased to welcome spring by announcing the latest Alumni of Distinction awards recipients. The three distinguished alumni were honored for their contributions in their fields and communities at the UAA Alumni of Distinction celebration banquet on April 23.

Returning to the traditional in-person event was possible through a partnership with UAA’s Culinary Arts program, providing students with real-world experience by allowing them to develop the event menu, prepare the meals and serve their delicious creations.

(Photo courtesy of Kira Apaachuaq Eckenweiler)

Alumni Emerging Leader:
Kira Apaachuaq Eckenweiler, B.M. ‘16

On the surface, music performance and civil service don’t appear to have much overlap. But for music performance alumna and Unalakleet mayor Kira Apaachuaq Eckenweiler, both roles are rooted firmly in a desire to support her community.

“Our voices haven’t been really heard, in media and in general,” said Eckenweiler. “Everything I do is to empower our communities and our people. It always comes down to that.”

Born in Anchorage and raised in Unalakleet, Eckenweiler describes having always been immersed in music thanks to her mother and 11 aunts and uncles all being involved in choir since boarding school. Joining the family tradition felt natural for Eckenweiler, so she spent her childhood and teenage years performing in various regional and state music festivals.

Eckenweiler’s voice would carry further after earning her Bachelor of Music from UAA and her Master of Music from the Berklee College of Music, leading to performances with the Anchorage Opera, the Boston Conservatory and Intermountain Opera Bozeman. The performance industry would quiet down considerably, however, thanks to COVID-19 shutting down live events worldwide.

Stuck in her Boston apartment, Eckenweiler decided to ride out the pandemic back home in Unalakleet with a new pursuit to stay productive: a seat on the city council. Once elected into office, her career in local politics quickly accelerated thanks to the mostly-freshmen city council electing her to the position of mayor.

Once the shock of becoming mayor wore off, Eckenweiler knew exactly what she wanted to do: fix the city’s aging water system, which had grown significantly worse due to a particularly brutal winter resulting in the community declaring a state of emergency.

“There are so many communities around here that don’t have adequate water supply,” said Eckenweiler. “I think over the years everybody just got used to it. But it doesn’t have to be this way, it can be different.”

Following Eckenweiler’s state of emergency declaration, the State of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation announced it would be allocating $30 million to finally overhaul Unalakleet’s water system in summer 2022.

Eckenweiler plans to follow up the monumental victory by focusing on the wellness of her community, through the remainder of her mayoral tenure, her anticipated return to live music performance and through her most recent position at the Norton Sound Health Corporation where she heads the IÑUA department, which provides culturally relevant suicide prevention and wellness across the Bering Strait Region.

“Being mayor has really brought out my leadership skills and made me so much more confident in my decision making,” said Eckenweiler. “You’ve got to not be afraid to get going.”

Alumni Humanitarian:
Amanda Metivier, B.S.W. ‘08, M.S.W. ‘12

Social work alumna Amanda Metivier has dedicated her career and personal life to child welfare reform, culminating in her recent appointment as director of the Child Welfare Academy (CWA) at UAA. A former foster youth herself, she, along with a group of current and former foster youth, co-founded the nonprofit Facing Foster Care in Alaska (FFCA) in 2003.

Through her advocacy with FFCA, Amanda has led efforts to expand services and support for foster youth across Alaska, including freedom of speech for foster youth; extended foster care; foster care re-entry; higher education funding; access to mentorship, technology and clothing; foster parent recruitment; transitional living; medically necessary orthodontia; sibling contact and relative search; increased training and staffing for child protection; school stability; and youth engagement in case planning, all while paving the way for foster youth to share lived-expertise to raise awareness and make change.

Having spent time in the foster care system as a teenager, Metivier understands how valuable an education can be and the difference being around peers can have. When she first joined CWA in 2012, it was to develop the Education and Training Voucher Program to help foster youth pursue higher education throughout the state.

“Meeting other foster youth who had similar worries, similar stressors and similar experiences helped me realize that something bigger needed to happen with the system,” said Metivier. “The university also gave me an opportunity to think about who I really wanted to be and what my place was in the world beyond even my pursuit of social work.”

In 2018, FFCA and CWA partnered to launch the Office of Youth Empowerment (OYE), serving more than 300 current and former foster youth annually across the state to streamline access to higher education and training, develop life skills critical for adulthood and engage in systems reform. Today, OYE is staffed by those with lived expertise supporting the next generation of foster youth.

“Alaska has some of the highest rates of child abuse and neglect in the country — it’s an epidemic on top of a pandemic,” said Metivier. “But when Alaskans know there’s a need, they step up. That’s the greatest mission, pursuing better outcomes for children and families.”

According to Metivier, she never envisioned that she would pursue higher education. But thanks to a social worker who kept encouraging her to think about her future, Metivier enrolled at UAA knowing exactly what field she wanted to pursue, paving the way for her career in advocacy, as well as her paying it forward by being an adoptive parent and foster parent to more than 20 teenagers over the years with her husband.

“This path found me,” said Metivier. “I didn’t initially see advocacy as my path, or even imagine myself as someone who would go to college. But I had this caseworker who just kept showing up and encouraged me to finish school. So it was natural for me to want to help others in the same way that I had been helped.”

(Photo courtesy of Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson)

Alumni of Achievement:
Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson, M.B.A. ‘98

Business administration alumna Cynthia Teniente-Matson, Ed.D., likes to humorously sum up her life’s trajectory by saying she’s only ever lived, studied and worked in the three biggest states in America.

“Working in three different states for three different systems has been really helpful to me as a leader in higher ed,” said Dr. Teniente-Matson. “When you think about a corporate enterprise, employees are transferred from divisions, sometimes to other states, sometimes to other countries, sometimes to completely different experiences, all to advance the company.”

Born in San Antonio, Texas, Dr. Teniente-Matson moved to Alaska as a teenager after her father was stationed at Naval Air Station Adak. When it came time to pursue higher education, Dr. Teniente-Matson wanted to remain close to her family, which in the Aleutian Islands meant a not-so-short 1,400-mile, 7-hour flight to the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Originally enrolled as a petroleum engineering major, Dr. Teniente-Matson switched majors when she found more fulfillment in her business and management courses. After earning her B.B.A. from UAF in 1989, she relocated to Anchorage to accept a position at UAA in Procurement Services while working toward her M.B.A.

Serving under then-Chancellor Edward Lee Gorsuch, Dr. Teniente-Matson spent 15 years at UA System, culminating in her role as vice chancellor for administrative services until Gorsuch’s retirement provided her with an opportune time to reevaluate her career options. Dr. Teniente-Matson started to gradually work her way back home, first accepting a position at California State University, Fresno, as vice president while working toward her Ed.D.

After 11 years working in the Cal State system, Dr. Teniente-Matson’s cross-country journey came full circle thanks to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lead Texas A&M University’s newest campus in San Antonio as president. Best of all, the job was located a short five miles from her childhood home.

Throughout her career, Dr. Teniente-Matson, who is of Latinx heritage, has made a point to focus on issues of equity and inclusion, working to enact policies at every institution she leads while also delivering keynote addresses nationally on the topics of women’s leadership and Latinx leadership.

“People like myself who rise to a leadership position have a responsibility to create pathways and opportunities for women and people of color to see themselves progressing in their careers and moving the needle forward,” said Dr. Teniente-Matson. “The pandemic has shown us that we were not as far along as we thought we were as a society when it came to equity, and a lot of that inequities within health and digital access is more apparent.”

Despite the distance from Alaska, Dr. Teniente-Matson hasn’t strayed far from her initial studies in business administration from UAA and UAF, as she believes every field allows — and even requires — entrepreneurship.

“There are opportunities for leaders at every level of an organization to be innovative,” said Dr. Teniente-Matson. “We learned a lot during the pandemic and it’s important that we continue to adapt to new workforce needs and the new expectations in the educational space. As an industry, we’re not going back to how it was, and as an educational leader I have a responsibility to shape our trajectory with an equity-minded innovative approach to degree attainment and workforce needs.”