After 30 years of building RAHI legacy, Wartes eyes retirement

November 14, 2018

UAF photo by JR Ancheta. Denise Wartes welcomes students and their parents to the 2017 Rural Alaska Honors Institute graduation.

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When 19-year-old Denise Wartes moved to the edge of the Arctic Ocean in northern Alaska, she realized she had joined her husband, Mark Itqiliuraq Wartes, for the adventure of a lifetime. During the first month of their marriage, they lived in a skin tent and traveled along the ice as Mark hunted.

“She still wears clothes today that came from those seals I shot on our honeymoon,” said Mark, the oldest son of a missionary pastor pilot, who considers the Arctic to be home. “We built our first home out of scrap lumber left behind by oil companies. We built a house and insulated it. Then we built another home inside of that home.”

When she moved from her childhood home in DeTour Village, Michigan, to the Alaska tundra, Denise couldn’t foresee how living Arctic would shape her life's work, nor how the abrupt jolt of culture shock of moving from their secluded homestead to Fairbanks would help create a legacy of academic achievement in rural Alaska.

Next summer, Wartes will retire from the University of Alaska Fairbanks after 30 years with the Rural Alaska Honors Institute. She started with the program in 1989 as a temporary fill-in when the program’s administrative secretary was not available to work. Wartes has been with RAHI ever since, and has served as program manager for more than a decade.

Her experience living a subsistence lifestyle without running water or electricity helped Denise connect with the Alaska Native and rural students attending RAHI. The six-week summer program helps them adjust academically and socially to college life. University and Alaska Native leaders created RAHI in 1983. Since then, more than 1,800 Alaskans have graduated from the program, including more than 175 second-generation alums who were inspired to attend by their parents’ life-changing experience.

“I understand how overwhelmed RAHI students feel when they visit Fairbanks for the first time,” said Denise, whose Iñupiat name, Tagalukisaq, means butterfly. “RAHI gives students a safe place to stretch themselves and forge their own path of success. It’s a life-changing program.”

The Wartes family lived on Alaska’s North Slope prior to the development of oil fields during the 1970s. Their homestead was situated 40 miles west of Prudhoe Bay and 180 miles east of Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow. They lived a traditional nomadic, subsistence lifestyle that really doesn’t exist anymore.

They bought a year’s supply of groceries — hundreds of pounds of flour, sugar and other staples — and other supplies that were shipped from Fairbanks via a chartered C-46 airplane. Occasionally the family indulged in electricity from a small generator but usually relied on propane lanterns for light and a barrel stove for heat. Depending on the season, water came from snow, ice or a nearby lake. After almost a decade on their remote homestead, Mark and Denise moved their family to Fairbanks to enroll their children, Marwan and Marita, in school.

“It was a challenging and rewarding way to live,” said Denise. “Life always felt like a grand adventure.”

Her journey with RAHI and the program’s mission of creating a culture of learning inspired Denise to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Alaska Native and cross-cultural studies from UAF.

Throughout Alaska, Denise is known for her warm personality and tireless advocacy on behalf of Alaska Native and rural students. Her work spans everything from fundraising to helping build bridges that overcome cultural differences. She has raised more than $4 million so students can attend RAHI at no cost to their families. Longtime donors say Denise’s passion for RAHI and the difference it makes for Alaska students has inspired their contributions.

“It’s the things you don’t see that make Denise extraordinary,” said Debbie Mekiana, RAHI alumna and student success coordinator for UAF's Department of Alaska Native Studies and Rural Development.

“She is the first one to arrive and the last one to leave," Mekiana said. "She is the mom that homesick students cling to for support or help. Denise is the heart of the Rural Alaska Honors Institute program.”