Around campus
- Hear that? It's a Strange and Sacred Noise
- Rolling out the green carpet
- Project Ummid: Better lives, one cow at a time
- Tracing Triassic in the Tongass
- Accreditation visit in October
- Practicing percussion from Fairbanks to Sweden
- Quote/unquote
- New coach for men's b-ball
- Alaska Nanooks volleyball schedule 2011
- Endowment means more for future engineers
- Did you know?
- Campus briefs
Image from the film Strange and Sacred Noise.
Hear that? It's a Strange and Sacred Noise
That strange noise you're hearing isn't what you think. It's a film by Leonard Kamerling, curator of film at the UA Museum of the North. Strange and Sacred Noise premiered nationally in New York City last February at the music festival Tune-in.
"I am a documentary filmmaker," Kamerling says. "I deal with the narratives of real events, of people living their lives, and I look at stories through that filter. Strange and Sacred Noise pushed me far beyond that familiar zone."
It was something new for composer John Luther Adams as well. "I'm not usually a hands-off kind of guy," he says. "In this case I've done my best to stay out of Len's way. He's the filmmaker. My attitude now is one of curiosity about what I might learn and what Len made of that extraordinary night."
Kamerling and Adams had long talked about making a film together, but nothing stuck. Then a musician who had already performed Adams' symphony of the same name in various outdoor locations wondered what it would be like to return to an Alaska setting, the source of the glaciers, rivers and mountains that inspired the piece. This time Kamerling, who is also a professor of English with the College of Liberal Arts, sensed a story. So the crew trucked musical instruments, recording equipment and camping gear to one of Adams' favorite camping spots in the Alaska Range.
The performance transpired through an Alaska night in June 2008. As the sun dips below the mountains, bathing the lake and tundra in a supernatural glow, Kamerling shows the audience different perspectives of the environment, from expansive mountain vistas to miniature elements like the small white flowers that flourish on the tundra.
"To experience it there was moving," he says. "It was like setting an animal free in its environment."
Kamerling used the composer's on-camera narration as a balance between the live performances and location footage. With that addition, the film became an exploration of Adams' artistic process as well as a record of the performance.
Adams says he took his symphony outdoors -- from the desert of California to the woods of New England, a meadow in Ohio and finally the tundra of the Alaska Range -- in a spirit of exploration.
"The experience was humbling and transformative for me. Outdoors some things that sounded so powerful, even frightening in the concert hall, simply blew away in the wind. But at other moments, I began to hear a magical dialogue between the music of my composition and the music of the places in which we performed it."
The film Strange and Sacred Noise will premiere at the Davis Concert Hall Sept. 24.
Wearing a dress made of plastic grocery bags, Heather Currey sits on a bench made of recycled plastics during Earth Day activities at Lola Tilly Commons.
Rolling out the green carpet
Three students were recognized for their efforts to encourage campus sustainability with the first Green Carpet Awards in April. The awards recognize leadership in advancing sustainability on campus.
Heather Currey, a biology major, chaired the student sustainability board and was president of the Sustainable Campus Task Force. She helped organize campus sustainability events like the Earth Day Fair, the campus bike fest and the Sustainable Living Conference. She also volunteers at green community events such as clean-up days and the Interior Alaska Green Star recycling event.
Ryan Good, '11, served as the recycling director for ASUAF. As a member of the Sustainable Campus Task Force, he helped organize the Earth Day Fair and obtained funding to purchase energy efficiency devices for campus vending machines.
Jessie Huff is a senior working toward an interdisciplinary bachelor's degree in renewable energy in rural Alaska. She helped with many sustainability projects, including a proposal for the campus' first large-scale solar project. One of Huff's grants is to determine the greenhouse gas emissions for the Fairbanks campus, which will in turn be used to plan future emissions reductions. A second grant will be used to create an energy dashboard for 20 campus buildings -- a computerized, real-time energy-usage device so viewers can track exactly how much energy is being consumed at any given time.
Also in April, UAF kicked off its Green Bike program, which allows students to rent bikes free. A student bike shop is operated through Outdoor Adventures, and workshops are offered throughout the year on bike and sustainability topics.
Photo by Michael Schulte.
Project Ummid: Better lives, one cow at a time
By Sitara Chauhan, '11
Project Ummid (Hindi for "hope") was created in spring 2009, after fellow student Michael Schulte and I learned about microfinance, where small loans are awarded to some of the world's poorest people, allowing them to improve their lives and escape poverty. As members of the School of Management's student organization Students in Free Enterprise, we had the resources to put our idea into action.
That summer we traveled to Jamsuth, a village on the west coast of India, with our goal to help impoverished women earn a living. The challenge was that most women in Jamsuth are illiterate, working on family farms and taking care of children. Their situation gave us the idea of co-operative microfinance. Our model consists of lending money to a woman to buy a cow; she then rents her cow to a local agricultural-based business, Salvi Estates. This way, the women have a minimum financial investment, and expenses such as the care of the animals and milk production are covered by Salvi Estates.
In the last two years, SIFE has raised a total of $8,200 for this project and has changed the lives of 10 women. Project Ummid has helped increase the women's income 65 percent, helping them afford better nutrition and provide an education for their children.
Sitara Chauhan graduated in May 2011 with a BS in biochemistry, Michael Schulte with a BA in political science.
Eugene Primaky, Jim Baichtal and Patrick Druckenmiller at the site of the thalattosaur find. Photo by Kevin May.
Tracing Triassic in the Tongass
Sometimes finding a fossil is as easy as a walk on the beach. That's what happened in May when a member of a geological team working in Southeast Alaska chanced upon a find during an extremely low tide.
Something caught team member Eugene Primaky's eye. "I instantly thought 'fish' and brushed it with my boot to make sure it wasn't a branch."
The fish turned out to be a fossil of a prehistoric marine reptile called a thalattosaur. It may be the most complete fossil of its kind found in North America.
Tongass National Forest geologist Jim Baichtal immediately sent photos to UA Museum of the North earth sciences curator Patrick Druckenmiller.
"Then we went through the process of eliminating what it could be," Druckenmiller said. "We know the rocks are about 220 million years old. Based on the age of the rocks and what I could see in the picture, I was 99 percent sure that's what it was."
Photo by Patrick Druckenmiller.
Thalattosaurs are rare, prehistoric marine reptiles. They range in length from between three and ten feet and have long, flattened tails and paddle-like limbs. Some have downturned snouts, like modern lizards. They evolved from land-dwellers and became extinct at the end of the Triassic Period.
Druckenmiller and his museum colleague, Kevin May, traveled to the site in mid-June to collect the specimen from an outcrop near Kake. The location lies in the intertidal zone, so the fossil would only be exposed during extreme low tides. That meant they needed to excavate during a two-day window and would only have four hours each day, when the tide was at its lowest, to retrieve the fossil. If they missed their chance, the outcrop wouldn't be exposed again until October.
Accreditation visit in October
Evaluators from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities will visit Fairbanks Oct. 3 - 5 to review UAF and make recommendations concerning reaffirmation of its institutional accreditation. Accreditation is the process through which the quality of an institution's programs is evaluated and areas for improvement are identified. Accreditation qualifies UAF and its students for federal funds for teaching, research and student financial aid.
The site visit is the culmination of a self-evaluation process of all aspects of UAF's programs and processes. For more than two years, teams from UAF have assessed its academic, research and public service units to determine if it is meeting the standards set by the NWCCU and fulfilling its mission. The mission encompasses these themes: educate, discover, prepare, connect and engage.
The site visit team will summarize its findings after visiting the Fairbanks campus and a community campus.
Photo courtesy of Morris Palter.
Practicing percussion from Fairbanks to Sweden
In March 2011, members of Ensemble 64.8 (the UAF percussion lab) went to Sweden to perform at the Percussion Repertoire Festival held at the Institution for Music and Media of Luleå Technical University in Luleå. The festival attracted percussionists from across Europe and North America. During the weeklong festival, the group participated in five concerts and performed a grand finale concert at the Kroumata Theater in Stockholm. Ensemble director Morris Palter also gave a master class on memorization techniques for solo, multiple-percussion performance.
Ensemble 64.8 was invited to perform at the festival by famed Swedish percussionist Anders Åstrand, director of Ensemble Evolution. He and his group will perform at UAF with Ensemble 64.8 in November.
Quote/unquote
"Please don't flush your laundry down the toilet. [It's] not going to come out cleaner."
-- Bill Cox, Facilities Services maintenance superintendent, in response to the mysterious sock flushing episodes in the Fine Arts Complex last winter and spring, The Sun Star, April 22, 2011, www.uafsunstar.com/?p=4532
"The earthquake, which measured 9.2 on the Richter scale, and the tsunami waves that followed, impacted every marine community in Prince William Sound."
-- Arny Blanchard, research assistant professor, Institute of Marine Science, on the 1964 Alaska earthquake and its effects on marine life, UPI.com, April 25, 2011
www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/04/25/Quakes-effect-on-sea-life-lasts-decades/UPI-84741303773007/
"I didn't get a sense from anybody that it's something that was completely under control or ever will be. "
-- David Fazzino, assistant professor of anthropology, in an interview about his visit to Chernobyl 25 years after the worst nuclear accident in history, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, April 25, 2011
http://newsminer.com/view/full_story/12924725/article-University-of-Alaska-Fairbanks-professor-visits-Chernobyl-site/
New coach for men's b-ball
Mick Durham is the new head coach for the Alaska Nanook men's basketball program. He takes over as the 12th head coach in program history, replacing Clemon Johnson, who coached the Nanooks for the past four seasons.
Durham has spent the past three seasons as an assistant men's basketball coach at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Before that he served for 16 years as the head coach at Montana State University, part of the Big Sky Conference. He left in 2006 with the second-most victories and second-longest coaching tenure in Golden Bobcat school history.
Alaska Nanooks volleyball schedule 2011
(Away games in italics. Tournament games in blue.)
August
Alaska-Hawai'i Challenge
26 @Hawaii-Hilo, Honolulu, Hawaii
@Chaminade, Honolulu, Hawaii
27 @Hawaii Pacific, Kaneohe, Hawaii
@BYU-Hawaii, Laie, Hawaii
September
1 Minnesota State
Flint Hills Resources Nanook Classic Tournament
2 Dallas Baptist
3 Minnesota State
Grand Canyon
8 Saint Martin's
10 Western Oregon
17 Alaska Anchorage
22 @Western Washington, Bellingham, Wash.
24 @Simon Fraser, Burnaby, BC
29 Montana State Billings
October
1 Seattle Pacific
6 @Northwest Nazarene, Nampa, Idaho
8 @Central Washington, Ellensburg, Wash.
15 @Alaska Anchorage
20 Simon Fraser
22 Western Washington
27 @Seattle Pacific, Seattle, Wash.
29 @Montana State Billings, Billings, Mont.
November
3 Central Washington
5 Northwest Nazarene
10 @Western Oregon, Monmouth, Ore.
12 @Saint Martin's, Lacey, Wash.
Endowment means more for future engineers
Student engineers will soon have better lab facilities and more research opportunities because of the $500,000 ConocoPhillips UAF Engineering Endowment, which will augment engineering labs, and increase academic support services and undergraduate research opportunities.
"Our company is investing in UAF's engineering programs to create the workforce our state will need in the future," says Trond-Erik Johansen, president of ConocoPhillips Alaska. "We hope that funding these programs will encourage students to stay in Alaska, work in Alaska, and bring their skills, technology and innovation to the state."
Under construction
It was a busy summer on the Fairbanks campus, with construction beginning on the new greenhouse next to the Arctic Health Research Building and on the Life Sciences Facility near the museum. Groundbreakings for both occurred last spring. The Life Sciences Facility is the first new building constructed on the Fairbanks campus since the state-owned virology lab opened in 2009. Watch the building take shape at http://facilities.alaska.edu/uaf/sitecam/view.htm.
Community campus construction projects included Kuskokwim Campus' Alaska Native health research clinic renovation; Chukchi Campus' expansion for a flight simulator room and classroom; and Bristol Bay Campus' addition for a science lab and research space.
Did you know?
… Judge James Wickersham, who conceived the idea of establishing the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, later UAF, and who served 14 years as Alaska's territorial delegate to Congress, never made it past the eighth grade. (Courtesy of The Cornerstone on College Hill, by Terrence Cole, '76, '78)
Campus briefs
The National Weather Service marked its 100th anniversary of weather observation at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm this past summer. The farm is the oldest continuous weather observation site in Alaska.
UA Press has 32 titles available as e-books through the Amazon Kindle Store, including Fighting for the Forty-Ninth Star: C.W. Snedden and the Crusade for Alaska Statehood, by Terrence Cole, '76, '78.
Ocean surging in the front door, fire raging in the back? A new website helps Alaskans plan their communities' future in the face of climate change.
The Frontier Scientists website gives those curious about arctic discoveries a direct link to Alaska scientists and their work.