"Make it Monday" forum - UAA 2020: A Strategic Plan to Achieve Student Success

UAA's Interim Chancellor Sam Gingerich will share the details of UAA's new Strategic Plan, titled UAA 2020. This plan, which is short-term but includes ambitious goals, seeks to remove barriers to student success and to achieve increases in student retention and degree completion sustainably. An educated citizenry is important for the Anchorage economy for these UAA graduates are the employees and leaders for Anchorage's future.


Interim Chancellor Samuel B. Gingerich
As chancellor, Dr. Sam Gingerich is continuing to lead initiatives that focus on the University of Alaska Anchorage’s core missions of excellence, student success and workforce development to benefit UAA’s nearly 18,000 students.

Dr. Gingerich was appointed interim chancellor of UAA, effective July 1, 2017, upon the retirement of Chancellor Tom Case. Since 2015, Dr. Gingerich had served as provost and executive vice chancellor for UAA, launching UAA 2020, the Diversity Action and Inclusion Plan and institutional reaccreditation. 

With campuses in Anchorage, Homer, Kodiak, Palmer, Soldotna and Valdez, as well as Middle Colleges for high school students in Palmer and Eagle River, UAA is Alaska’s largest postsecondary institution.

Dr. Gingerich previously served as system vice president for academic affairs for the South Dakota Board of Regents from 2006-2014, working to develop, implement and oversee academic programming for that state's public university system. In this role, he collaborated with faculty and administration, as well as with K-12 educators, to support an education enterprise to meet South Dakota’s needs and expectations.

He also served as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Mississippi University for Women from 2004 through 2006. He previously served as vice president for academic affairs and interim president at Mesa State College (now Colorado Mesa University) in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Dr. Gingerich joined the faculty at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota in 1985, where he served as a tenured professor of chemistry, chair of the Department of Math and Sciences, associate vice president for research and planning, and vice president for academic affairs. 

Dr. Gingerich earned three degrees in chemistry: a Ph.D. from Montana State University, an M.S. from Cornell University and a B.A. from Goshen College. He has published more than 25 chapters, articles and abstracts about this work and made dozens of presentations at international and national meetings. 
He has worked with a number of programs sponsored by chambers of commerce and United Ways in South Dakota and Colorado. He has also held a range of leadership positions with the United Way.

Dr. Gingerich is most proud of the students with whom he's worked over the years who are now leading rewarding professional careers of their own, as well as the friends and colleagues he has mentored and who have mentored him. 

 

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