The Northern Susitna Institute and the Denali Education Center recently announced that they have merged their organizations.
The Northern Susitna Institute has provided opportunities for “real learning in the real world” in the Talkeetna area for a number of years. The Denali Education Center is an educational partner with the National Park Service and is located at the fringe of Denali National Park. The Executive Director of the Denali Education Center and part-time Talkeetna resident, Jodi Rodwell, explains how the merger came about.
“We’re very similar organizations. We have community programs, we do programs for youth, and I just really liked the mission of the Northern Susitna Institute, and I became friends with Betsy (Smith). They approached us and said, “Hey, why don’t we combine forces?” As an organization, we had thought about doing programming in the Talkeetna area as a park partner and doing park education programming. I talked to Betsy about that, like “How could that work?” And “How could we work together without overlap and trying to find some synergy together?” And she said, “Well, maybe we can just combine forces.”
Covid-19 has made it difficult for either organization to provide programming this summer, but Jodi explains that they are hoping to provide a rich array of opportunities at both locations next summer.
“So, we’d like to get some youth programming going. I think that initially our current thought is doing some summer programs like NSI had provided in the past. We do different kinds of youth programs up here with Denali with Denali Discovery Camp and a backpacking program called Denali Backcountry Adventures. And I don’t know exactly what it will look like in our first year. It’ll probably be fairly minimal and maybe similar to what NSI ran last year with day programs and partnership with local businesses, but we’ll see. We’re going to take the time now and through this fall to do some planning for next year and see how we can staff and fund the program. And I’d like to also get some community programs going as well and just start to get to know the community and have some evening presentations or things like that.”
Planning for the Talkeetna campus will begin this fall with the Denali Education Center’s Board, followed by the collection of Talkeetna residents’ input. Once programming decisions have been made, plans for developing the property itself will be discussed.
The Denali Education Center currently has one Talkeetna resident serving on its board, and it hopes to attract more local voices to help develop the organization.
