Published Apr 29, 2024 by Carter Dejong

Each year, millions of active and prospective university students submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

Last year, the U.S. Department of Education rolled out changes to FAFSA to simplify the application process, but it has resulted in decreased applications and significant errors.

UAF encourages students to submit their FAFSA by Feb. 15, said Ashley Munro, University of Alaska Fairbanks director of financial aid. Usually the university receives 8,000 FAFSA applications per year. But with only a few months left until fall classes start, UAF has seen only about 4,000 complete applications.

“We do think there’s going to be a lot of students and families who come to campus fully ready to participate in academics and not be prepared on the financial side,” Munro said. “We have some continuing students as well that are going to be in this situation.”

The new FAFSA application consists of about 100 less questions than the older version and the changes have also allowed for more people to qualify for Pell Grants, Munro said. But many students have found errors in their applications due to tax data being incorrectly translated from IRS forms into the application.

Published Apr 29, 2024 by Gavin Struve

On Friday, the University of Alaska Fairbanks announced the last addition to its 2024 volleyball recruiting class. Ava Kronenberg, a six-foot tall middle blocker from Ankeny, Iowa, will begin her collegiate career in Fairbanks this fall.

Kronenberg joins five other signees for the upcoming season: libero Tessa Onaga, setter Ashlyn White and outside hitters Haylee Lyons, Rachel Pierce and Larissa Barreiros Scatamburlo. Onaga and Pierce are both Division I transfers while Barreiros Scatamburlo spent last season at a junior college in Iowa, just over an hour from where Kronenberg played in high school. White and Lyons, like Kronenberg, are incoming freshmen.

“We consider ourselves very fortunate to have athletes like Ava and the rest of our incoming class joining our team,” UAF head coach Brian Scott said via release. “Ava is a skilled middle blocker with great lateral speed and is someone who works extremely hard in transition. She has played a very high level coming from a great high school and club program. We look forward to great things from her and all of her teammates.”

Published Apr 29, 2024 by Denise Wilhelm

High school students may have to carry some of the cost for dual credit classes next year, thanks to a promised hike in the cost from University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Delta High School Principal Michael Lee mentioned at a March school board meeting that UAF was going to increase the rate of dual credit classes from $60 per 3-credit-hour class to $100 per credit hour, which means a single dual credit class will cost $300 – a 500% increase.

The district has so far been unable to get an official word from UAF on this matter.

“We have not officially gotten anything from UAF,” Lee said. “Unofficially, what we have been told is that dual credit classes are essentially going to be charged at the same rate as a class taught at the university.

“The other piece that worries us is that we’ve not been able to get clear answers on fees,” he continued. “Each department at the college determines what fee is charged per course. We can’t get a list ahead of time.”

By school board policy, Delta/Greely School District will pay up to $250 per class for dual college-high school credit classes. That would leave parents and students responsible for the remaining $50 per class.

Published Apr 28, 2024 by Ned Rozell

Ben Jones suspected he had found something special when he squeezed into a volcanic cave and saw pale wooden poles, some with ends shaped like a willow leaf.

When he crawled in farther, he found a cache of items — several paddles and a spear with a stone tip that was still attached. He suspected that the last hands to touch those paddles belonged to people who were no longer alive.

Schaff, Jones and UAF’s Ben Gaglioti carbon-dated the wood and a thread of caribou sinew used to attach a stone tip to a spear. They found the most likely time that wood had grown and that caribou was alive was the mid-1600s or 1700s.

Archaeologist Jeff Rasic of the National Park Service in Fairbanks helped create a display in Nome featuring the items, which were probably part of a hunter’s cache at the time when English migrants were first settling on the east coast of the U.S.

“The owners of these tools were intimately familiar with the landscape and the seasonal movement of animals,” Rasic wrote. “A common and reoccurring hunting tactic involved a group of hunters cleverly exploiting the juxtaposition of the lava field and Imuruk Lake.

Published Apr 28, 2024

Seaweed is versatile; it provides a habitat for marine life, shelters coastlines, and absorbs carbon dioxide. But in the United States, scientists are setting out to see whether seaweed has another particularly valuable trick hidden up its proverbial sleeve: to act as a salty, slimy source of precious minerals.

Within the U.S. Department of Energy is the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), a scientific branch devoted to tackling challenging, high-potential projects on energy technologies. ARPA-E takes big swings and looks for big rewards. And so far, the agency has awarded $5 million to three ventures investigating whether seaweed can serve as a practical source of crucial materials, such as platinum and rhodium, as well as rare-earth elements, including neodymium, lanthanum, yttrium, and dysprosium.

These valuable elements, which can be captured and concentrated by seaweed, are essential to the green-energy transition—and to technology more broadly. Seaweed could represent an alternative to conventional mining and other prospects, such as deep-sea mining.

“There are a lot of complexities in the entire process, and that’s why it’s in the category of ‘very exploratory,’” says Schery Umanzor, a seaweed expert at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and a lead researcher on one of the projects funded by ARPA-E. “The chances of success are low. But if we succeed, then the implications are huge.”

Published Apr 27, 2024 by Gavin Struve

The University of Alaska Fairbanks announced two women’s basketball signees in recent days. The first was Sunny Pedebone, a junior college transfer returning to her home state. The other is Grace Gillespie, an incoming freshman joining the program as a preferred walk-on by way of Houston High School in the Mat-Su Valley.

With college experience in hand, Pedebone may be the more likely early contributor. She spent two years at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, Washington, sitting out 2022-23 before playing semi-regular minutes this past season. She also spent a season on Alaska Anchorage’s roster in 2021-22 as a redshirt.

Pedebone averaged 2.3 points, 1.8 rebounds and 0.7 assists in 12.1 minutes per game across 22 appearances in 2023-24, starting three times. She shot 27.9% overall, 25% on 3-pointers and 64.3% at the free throw line. Those efforts came on a team that finished 22-3 and enjoyed an 18-game win streak from December to March, so she’ll bring the experience of contributing to a winning team.

That’s valuable for a UAF group that finished 5-23 overall and 3-15 in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) last season and 4-21 (1-17 GNAC) during the 2022-23 campaign for head coach Amy Donovan’s first season.

Published Apr 27, 2024 by The Sun Star

Over the last several months, we’ve covered the university’s bargaining with graduate students. Recall that bargaining is under a time crunch. There is a deadline for all contracts to be submitted to the state legislature by April 25th to be approved for the fall of 2024. For contracts to be submitted, both the student union and university must agree on new contracts.

 In late February, the university walked away from the table and canceled several days of bargaining after UAF students went to Juneau to gain funding for the university’s pursuit of R1 status. Achieving R1 status benefits the university because it attracts more funding. To achieve R1 status, the university must graduate a certain number of PhD students each year. The university is not meeting that number because it struggles to recruit, retain, and support students. There are several reasons for this.

UAF faces an uphill battle recruiting students, especially from the lower forty-eight. Evidence for this includes a Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) report. The organization tracks participation in the Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE). The program allows students from twenty Western states (including Alaska) to receive in-state tuition in other states. For example, if I am a resident of Alaska, I can receive in-state tuition in California. In the academic year of 2022-23, 430 students went to Alaska. At the same time, 1410 students left Alaska to go to other states.

This demonstrates that the University of Alaska is losing students, and to become an R1 institution, it needs to recruit and retain students.

At the same time, the university’s graduation rate is 32.3%, meaning only 1 out of 3 students graduate. This is roughly half the national average of 63%. Again, there are many reasons for this, and the university is in a unique situation compared to other universities in the US.

While some of these reasons are out of the university’s control, the university is not entirely devoid of blame. The university fails to attract out-of-state students because UAF refuses to pay its graduate students a livable wage.

As of this writing, the current minimum wage for one adult is $23.82. UAF has a minimum wage of $21 for graduate students. This does not consider graduate students who have children. A living wage is a sticking point for students negotiating new contracts. In a recent proposal, the university offered to raise the minimum to $21.53, still well below the amount needed to live in Fairbanks. 

Published Apr 27, 2024 by Adrian Peterson Adrian Peterson

After major changes were made to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, better known as the FAFSA, significant issues have developed leaving many students and families ”rightfully” concerned about how to pay for college.

The FAFSA is an application used to identify students seeking post-secondary education that qualify for financial assistance such as federal grants, work-study funds, and loans. Since 2021, the U.S. Dept. of Education has been working on changes to the FAFSA. Those changes included shortening the application “from 110 question down to about 30, 35 questions,” said Ashley Munro, the financial aid director at UAF. In addition to a shortening of the questions, a new calculation formula has also been implemented on the processing side. Those changes were implemented for the 2024-2025 application.

Munro said there have been “hiccups” since those changes were implemented. Rather big ones at that. About 30% of all applications filed for he 2024-2025 school year are inaccurate or incomplete. In addition to that, the U.S. Dept. of Education “is about seven months behind in processing,” Munro said.

The setbacks have resulted in schools being unable to award and inform students about their financial aid qualifications.

Of the estimated 450,000 scholarships available at UAF, most of them are not impacted by the issue. Those unaffected scholarships have been, or are being awarded already. The needs based scholarships have faced setbacks, however. Those scholarships are normally determined by FAFSA applications. “Those are the scholarships we’ve had to hold off on awarding or we’ve had to change the criteria to not use the FAFSA as a determining factor,” said Munro.

Published Apr 26, 2024 by Martin Kozminsky

The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) has unveiled its revamped website, aimed at providing an enhanced and user-friendly experience for students, faculty, and visitors alike. With a sleek and modern design, the new website is set to become the go-to platform for accessing information about UAF’s academic programs, student life, and campus resources.

One of the standout features of the new UAF website is its improved navigation system, making it easier than ever for users to find the information they need. The homepage offers a clean layout, prominently highlighting important announcements and events, ensuring that visitors are always up-to-date with the latest news.

Furthermore, the UAF website boasts a responsive design, optimizing the user experience across different devices and screen sizes. Whether accessed from a laptop, smartphone, or tablet, users can seamlessly browse through the website and access the desired information without any hassle.

With a focus on accessibility, the new website also accommodates individuals with disabilities by adhering to WCAG 2.1 guidelines. This ensures that everyone, regardless of their abilities, can engage with UAF’s online presence without limitations.

While the previous UAF website served its purpose, the university recognized the need for improvement to meet the evolving expectations and demands of its users. By investing in the development of a more intuitive and user-friendly platform, UAF is committed to enhancing the overall browsing experience and strengthening its digital presence.

Published Apr 26, 2024 by Rod Boyce

It was also near-perfect conditions for the two drones helping collect data for the Lightweight Airborne Snow and Sea Ice Thickness Observing System, or LASSITOS, project.

LASSITOS was the main effort on this day on the Beaufort Sea ice, though as often happens during fieldwork some team members were collecting data for other related projects.

The LASSITOS project is funded by the National Science Foundation and led by University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute Research Professor Andy Mahoney. He leads the institute’s sea ice research team, which had several members on the ice.

Mahoney explained the work a day earlier when the team was working closer to town.

“We are developing an instrument package capable of being deployed by a drone that can measure both sea ice thickness and snow depth at the same time,” Mahoney said. “These are two pretty fundamental properties of Arctic sea ice.

“We’re really good at telling by satellite how much sea ice is covering the ocean,” he said. “Measuring the thickness of that sea ice is more of a challenge. We’re developing an instrument that will allow us to make those measurements over large areas with a drone.”

The drone work was accompanied by other “ground truth” tasks to validate the data from the airborne instruments: augering ice holes to measure ice thickness, water depth and ocean salinity; and making thousands of snow depth measurements using a device called a magnaprobe, somewhat like a modified ski pole that can measure snow depth and ice topography.

The LASSITOS project fills a knowledge gap. The project’s NSF description states that “methods of observing sea ice thickness at regional or basin scales with sufficient accuracy and resolution to capture growth and melt processes, detect hazards, or assess habitat quality are lacking.”