Wartes fund benefits Rural Alaska Honors Institute

Denise Wartes was covering for a sick employee at UAF’s Rural Alaska Honors Institute one day more than three decades ago when the phone rang.

“It was a young girl in a village who couldn’t fly out because their runway was flooded,” she recalled. “I helped her figure out how to get out of there, and she made it just a day late to classes. After that, I was hooked. I knew where I needed to be.”

Denise is still right where she needs to be — helping students.

In 2017, she and her late husband, Mark, worked with UAF gift officers to establish the Denise and Mark Wartes Scholarship Fund for RAHI students. By 2021, after years of $25 recurring gifts and withdrawals from Mark’s IRA, the fund was almost to the $25,000 needed. They decided to create a challenge for the 2021 UAF Giving Day and made a push to get their fund to the endowment level.

Denise and Mark committed to donating $10,000 if the RAHI program received at least 30 gifts during the event.

Thirty-eight donors gave over $3,000 , unlocking the challenge and fully funding the endowment to provide support for RAHI students far into the future.

Mark sadly passed away on Jan. 26, 2023.  His generous donations to help Alaska's rural students created a remarkable legacy.

As an endowed scholarship, the funds from Denise and Mark will be invested to provide income to the RAHI program indefinitely.

“I wanted to know what I could do to make this program better,” Denise said. “We were intentional about leaving it as open as possible to support whatever the program most needed.”

UAF created RAHI to help rural high school students transition academically, socially and culturally to the university, Denise explained.

She watched it go from a small program of 20 selected rural students to a much larger program that just celebrated its 40th anniversary and has helped thousands of students acclimate to university life.

“(RAHI) helped those who attended immensely, wherever they ended up,” Denise said. “It helped them be prepared socially to live with others. It helped them be aware of other cultures that exist in Alaska.”

Students have become doctors, politicians, superintendents, parents and teachers, and Denise said she loves seeing this kind of success.

Denise and Mark’s support for RAHI grew from their time living in remote areas of Alaska. Mark was raised in Utqiaġvik before joining the Air Force and meeting Denise, who was living with her large family in northern Michigan. After a few visits and correspondence between the two via letters, they married.

Denise moved with Mark to the remote Colville River Delta on Alaska’s North Slope to start their new life together. Denise had never been away from her family, and she talked about how she and Mark would record cassette tapes and mail them back to family members to correspond with them.

After they moved to Fairbanks, Denise went to work at UAF as the assistant to the College of Liberal Arts dean.

After that first day filling at RAHI, Denise ended up working there, first as an assistant and then as coordinator of the program, for 33 years before retiring.

She said raising money to help students was one goal in creating the endowment, but she also wants to raise more awareness of RAHI.

“I would encourage others to give to help students find their passion and explore who they are,” she said.