Published Mar 12, 2024 by Josh Reed

On the college hoops scene, both of the UAA programs made some noise at the Great Northwest Athletic Conference championship tournament this past week but only one will be advancing to the NCAA Division II tournament. The men’s team upset defending champion Saint Martin’s in the quarterfinals and rallied to beat No. 2 seed Northwest Nazarene in the semifinals. Despite coming up just short of pulling off another comeback in the finals to Central Washington, the Seawolves were able to punch their ticket to the Western Regional championship tournament later this week.

The UAA women’s team flexed its muscles in the quarterfinals with a 22-point win over Seattle Pacific in the quarterfinals but unfortunately came up short in the semifinals to Western Washington, a team it had swept in the regular season. Even though the Seawolves had a strong finish to the season and ranked No. 8 in the region ahead of conference-tournament weekend, they were denied a bid to this week’s regional championship tournament despite having a 19-8 record against NCAA Division II competition. The team they were passed over for was Cal State Los Angeles, which went 17-12 but was given the No. 8 seed.

The UAA men’s hockey squad closed out the regular season with a two-game home series with Arizona State University over the weekend, winning the first and dropping the second. On Friday night, senior forward Adam Tisdale found the back of the next with 32 seconds left in the third period to lift the Seawolves past the Sun Devils in a dramatic 4-3 victory.

The UAA ski team had a trio of skiers receive All-American honors this past week with sophomore Ainsley Proffit earning her first and senior Leon Nikic earning his third in the giant slalom races at the NCAA Skiing National Championships on Thursday. Proffit finished eighth in he women’s division with a time of 1:56.68 while Nikic still managed to come in ninth despite having to overcome an error in his second run.

A perfect score from freshman Elli Spencer helped propel the University of Alaska Fairbanks air rifle team to a top-three finish at the NCAA Rifle Championships for the third year in a row this past Saturday. Even though they came up short of a successful title defense, Spencer’s score of 600 in the preliminaries made her just the second shooter to ever reach that mark at the NCAA championships, joining Nanooks alum Rylan Kissell who accomplished the feat last year.

Published Mar 12, 2024

The University of Alaska Board of Regents recently approved an updated strategic plan for the UA System.

According to a press release, the strategic plan, referred to as the “Roadmap to Empower Alaska," includes previous endeavors that are integrated into a new framework that emphasizes the advancement of the state's economy through education, workforce development, research, and strong partnerships.

UA officials indicated that the board's approval of the strategic plan was made following three semesters of enrollment growth.

“UA has a bright future before it, and I’m pleased to see that demonstrated in the enrollment growth and other progress we’ve seen over the last few semesters,” UA Board Chair Ralph Seekins stated in the press release. “The Roadmap to Empower Alaska and its pillars of financial responsibility and future focus, state and Arctic leadership, and quality education and reputation reflect the Board’s vision for the future of the system. I appreciate the engagement across the system as we’ve finalized the Roadmap, and look forward to seeing its continued implementation.”

According to the press release, some examples of priorities in the strategic plan include: increasing student recruitment, graduation and retention, sustaining Facilities Maintenance and Modernization Plan, achieving cost-efficient operations, and having UAF reaching R1 research status in 2027.

“Approval of the Roadmap to Empower Alaska is a meaningful milestone for UA, and I’m grateful to the Board for their attention and commitment to building a strong future for our University system,” UA President Pat Pitney stated in the press release. “We’ll continue to refine our updates to the Board as we keep moving forward on these goals to Empower Alaska.”

Published Mar 12, 2024 by Annie Berman

Lang and others have linked the district’s hiring challenges to a national teacher shortage. School board members and education advocates also have said other issues are helping drive the shortage, including a lack of competitive retirement benefits and lower salaries compared to other states.

Additionally, they have said there are not enough new teachers graduating from the University of Alaska each year to balance out the large numbers of teachers retiring, moving away or switching careers in the years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lang said that the district decided this fall to focus some of its hiring efforts on retired teachers because of persistent, districtwide hiring challenges across multiple departments and specialties.

Under state law, school districts that want to hire back retired teachers full time are required to pass a resolution that’s approved by the school board — and to prove that they are otherwise unable to find qualified applicants.

Published Mar 12, 2024 by Yereth Rosen

After years of uncertainty, budget woes and contraction, the University of Alaska system is now growing again, the system’s president said on Monday.

Student enrollment is up this year, marking the first time since 2011 that enrollment increased in consecutive years, University of Alaska President Pat Pitney said in a speech to the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce.

The student head count this spring semester is 4% above what it was a year ago, she said, a contrast with national trends of sliding college enrollment. And the number of new students has increased dramatically, with first-time freshmen numbers up 16% at the start of the academic year last fall, she said.

“That’s meaningful progress,” she said. “That is momentum that we’re celebrating.”

A related upward trend is shown in the increased use of Alaska Performance Scholarships, the state program that helps fund in-state postsecondary education of high-achieving students. Use of those scholarships by qualified students graduating from high school in 2023 was 50% higher than for students graduating the previous year, Pitney said. 

For Alaska’s economy and for the business audience she was addressing, enrollment growth is important, Pitney said.

Nine out of every 10 University of Alaska system graduates, across all campuses and degree programs, stay and work in Alaska, she said, citing state Department of Labor and Workforce Development statistics. In comparison, only 25% of Alaskans who leave the state for college return after graduation, she said.

“Long term, that means investing in and taking advantage of UA is the single best thing we can do to build a skilled workforce in Alaska, from vocational and industry certificates to baccalaureate and graduate degrees,” she said.

Another area of growth – and a key source of revenue – is research, in which progress is “substantial,” Pitney said.

The university system received $235 million in research funding last year, over $60 million above levels of five years ago, she said.

Published Mar 11, 2024 by @adndotcom

The presence of beavers in the Arctic landscape around Kotzebue is no longer news. The beaver population, previously not an Arctic feature, has exploded in that region — and quickly transformed the landscape.

That transformation was summarized at a workshop in late February at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where scientists and community residents shared research findings and observations.

In a 100-square-kilometer area near Kotzebue — just under 40 square miles — the number of beaver dams jumped from two in 2002 to 98 in 2019, according to UAF research presented at the beginning of the three-day workshop. The workshop was part of a National Science Foundation-funded program called the Arctic Beaver Observation Network, or A-BON. On a wider area of the Baldwin Peninsula, the number went from 94 in 2010 to 409 in 2019. Across a wider area of Arctic Northwest Alaska, their presence went from nothing in the 1950s, as shown in aerial photos, to more than 11,300 beaver ponds identified through satellite imagery by 2019, according to the UAF scientists. The presence of beaver ponds in that region more than doubled between 2004 and 2017, the scientists found.

While climate change has enabled beavers to live farther north, the animals are exacerbating the effects of Arctic climate change. Through their dam and lodge engineering, they are inundating some areas with water, speeding up permafrost thaw. Elsewhere, they are drying out areas.

Published Mar 11, 2024 by Dermot Cole

There are assumptions piled on assumptions and monumental subsidies in a so-called University of Alaska Fairbanks study proposing a coal-fired power plant in Southcentral Alaska to replace natural gas.

I say so-called because on page 2 of the report, it says the document was prepared by the Energy & Environmental Research Center of the University of North Dakota. It says that “economic results were developed by UAF with guidance from EERC,” the research center of the University of North Dakota.

Here is the study from the North Dakota group.

The federal grant went to the University of North Dakota.

UAF and the University of Wyoming are subcontractors on the grant, UAF for $384,000 and Wyoming for $330,000. I have asked UAF for its contract with North Dakota.

I have asked UAF officials why this study was presented as a UAF study, the topic of the lead story in the Anchorage Daily News today, when it was a North Dakota study funded under a federal grant to a North Dakota entity with participation by UAF.

I will update this post as I find out more.

The North Dakota/UAF study reads more like a sales pitch for the Flatlands Energy Corporation than an objective analysis or in-depth research paper.

Published Mar 10, 2024 by Ned Rozell

Denali, North America’s highest peak at 20,310 feet above sea level, always seemed abnormally high to Peter Haeussler. He is a geologist who has studied the mountain for years and has also climbed it a couple of times.

Denali soars at least 9,000 feet above surrounding peaks in the Alaska Range, except for neighbor Mount Foraker.

“It’s ridiculous how much bigger it is,” he said.

He recently came up with a theory as to why Denali is so tall.

Denali grew (and is growing) so high that its rock is “beyond the reach of erosion,” Haeussler said.

He explained that the air temperature almost never gets above the freezing mark above 14,500 feet or so in the Alaska Range. That prevents rocks from crumbling due to the repeated expansion of liquid water into ice.

“That shuts down the freeze-thaw that other mountains experience,” he said. “(Denali) has shut off the weathering.”