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UAF's Poker Flat Research Range roared to life with the successful launch of the Alaska Student Rocket Project's ISIS mission in early January.

ISIS -- Ionospheric Science and Inertial Sensing -- was the first of eight NASA sounding rockets scheduled to launch this year from Poker Flat, the world's largest land-based sounding rocket range.

"It's a 6˝-year-old mission that we had going on, and I've been on it for four and a half," said Devin Hahne, a recent UAF graduate who went to work at NASA's Goddard Preflight Center in Maryland. "I'm happy it's done ... it didn't explode on the pad. It's really exciting to finally be done."

Students developed the instrumentation inside the payload, which included items to study the thinning of ultraviolet rays in the atmosphere, an experiment conducted in collaboration with Tokai University and the University of Toyama in Japan.

Senior Tess Caswell said the rocket project is the reason she decided to stay at UAF to finish her degree. Caswell plans to start her new job as an environmental and thermal systems flight controller at NASA's Johnson Space Center after graduation.

Following the launch, students began combing through the data. One student from the ISIS team planned to recreate the launch in a three-dimensional visualization that the team will study in the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center's Discovery Lab.

Video by Megan Otts, UAF Marketing and Communications

The Tanana Valley Campus paramedic program recently became the first and only nationally accredited paramedic program in Alaska. According to the program's medical director, Dr. William Wennen, certification has become the gold standard in virtually all forms of medicine. Students in the program spend at least 500 hours in the classroom and more than 700 hours in clinical and field internships. The third semester is spent in hospitals and EMS service locations outside Alaska. Following the successful completion of the required courses, TVC students are eligible to take the National Registry Paramedic Examination for certification as a paramedic. Once nationally certified, students can apply for licensure as a paramedic in the state of Alaska.

Hundreds of spectators and amateur lumberjacks flocked to campus in early October for the Forest Sciences Department's Farthest North Forest Sports Festival. The annual event draws dozens of would-be loggers, who demonstrate their forestry prowess during a day of ax throwing, logrolling on land and on water, bow sawing and crosscut sawing, fire building and more. Faculty members and students started the competition as a way to commemorate old-fashioned forest festivals. While today's professional foresters and natural resource managers use high-technology tools, the festival pays tribute to simpler times when traditional woods activities were the basis for work and play, survival and revival.

Video by Todd Paris, UAF Marketing and Communications

After spending a week working with homeless people in Washington, D.C., as part of the UAF Leadership Program's Alternative Spring Break, students Anna Dale and Mariah Acton (pictured) decided to bring home what they learned. The two students, along with a host of campus volunteers, spent a week in late November in a tent camp in the center of campus surrounded by a forest of homemade cardboard signs. In addition to raising awareness, the students organized a donation drive for several local nonprofits. Both students said they hope the tent camp becomes a yearly event.

With his horn-rimmed spectacles and plain speech, Edward Lewis "Bob" Bartlett was Alaska's face in Washington for two decades. KUAC television's new documentary film, which premiered in January, explores Bartlett's life and celebrates his role in the creation of the 49th state. Mr. Alaska: Bob Bartlett Goes to Washington continues the narrative begun with KUAC's Emmy Award-winning production, The 49th Star.
 

Happy 50th Birthday, Alaska

Video: Mr. Alaska: Bob Bartlett Goes to Washington trailer

The International Arctic Research Center celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. IARC's success is one of many examples of how UAF continues to be a leader in arctic science, with researchers recognized internationally for their work and expertise on the complex arctic ecosystem.

A $1.35 million award from the National Institutes of Health will allow UAF to bring biomedical research education to Alaska's middle school and high school students. UAF's award will provide support for the Biomedical Partnership for Research Education Pipeline in Alaska.

The UA Museum of the North's ornithology laboratory was dedicated in honor of Henry Springer, museum research associate, by the UA Board of Regents and the museum. For more than 40 years, Springer has donated his time and expertise, as well as specimens, to the museum's bird collection.

The Bernard Osher Foundation provides an endowment to support the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UAF, educating the Interior's older adults. Classroom topics include art, computer technology, health, history, music and philosophy.

The swimming Alaska Nanooks set myriad school and individual records in their fourth season of competition. Six swimmers qualified for the NCAA Division II championships: Samantha Zinsli (pictured), Mar Brunet, Courtney Nichols, Mariya Pavlovskaya, Abbey Jackson and Jacqueline van Driessche. This is the most national qualifiers since swimming originally became a UAF sport in 1968.

In her senior year of competition, Zinsli garnered the Nanooks' first-ever monthly conference honor by being named the Swimmer of the Month for October. The team earned a Division II Academic All-American title from the College Swimming Coaches Association of America for the seventh consecutive semester. The swim team has helped UAF increase scholarships for women by 81 percent since 2005, and The Chronicle of Higher Education recognized UAF for Title IX compliance in "Turnaround Stories" in 2007.

Editor's note: This publication went to press before the NCAA championships in March. Visit www.alaskananooks.com for final Nanook sports results.

A $488,000 NASA grant will enable the UA Museum of the North and scientists at the UAF Geophysical Institute to bring the state's only digital portable planetarium to communities in rural Alaska. The grant will support the development of an Alaska-specific planetarium program and "NASA Days" in rural communities over the next three years. Project organizers hope the traveling planetarium show and related community activities will inspire students, particularly Alaska Native students, to choose careers in science and engineering.

Bodil Bluhm and Rolf Gradinger, biological oceanographers at the UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, teamed up with Fairbanks artist Susan Farnham on an exhibit that celebrates the northern creatures they study. Farnham's paintings are based on the findings of the Arctic Ocean Diversity project, an international effort to catalog life in arctic seas and sea ice.

View more paintings

UAF's oldest magazine, Agroborealis, turns 40 this year. Agroborealis is published twice yearly by the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences and the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. Since the first issue in 1969, both UAF and SNRAS have expanded, addressing the research needs of a modern world.

Subscribe to Agroborealis (free)

A team from Google's Geo Education program and the University of Alaska Geography Program traveled to Barrow, Kotzebue and Nome last fall to demonstrate technology that helps students and teachers develop content in Google Earth.™

"The idea is to encourage teachers to incorporate new technology in their classrooms," said Mike Sfraga, director of the UA Geography Program and associate dean in UAF's School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences.

The students participated in hands-on training to learn how to overlay existing information into Google Earth™ and create their own maps using the My Maps feature.

"Students love to view things in 3D," said John Bailey with UAF's Arctic Region Supercomputing Center. "If they can fly around the slopes of Denali or tour down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon it seems so much more real than if they just view flat pictures on a screen. When you combine this landscape with features, such as placemarks, which have pop-up balloons that contain text and videos telling you about that mountain or canyon, you get a truly immersive multimedia experience."
 

The program is part of the Alaska Geographic Alliance, a UA Geography Program K - 12 initiative funded by the National Geographic Society. Significant support was also provided by Google.™

Video by Google Earth™

Schoolchildren from a village on the west coast of Alaska are helping UAF's School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences scientists learn where young salmon go when they enter the ocean. Since June, students from Quinhagak have been sending out buoys that track ocean currents into Kuskokwim Bay. Led by Terry Reeve, UAF's Marine Advisory Program agent in Bethel, the students released 32 buoys last fall. The buoys float at the sea's surface and transmit location information via satellite to oceanographers on the Fairbanks campus. By recording location data every 30 minutes, the buoys help oceanographers determine the ocean currents that carry juvenile salmon from the Kuskokwim River into the coastal waters of the eastern Bering Sea.

Juvenile Salmon Dispersal: A Drifter-based View

The Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra celebrates its 50th season this year, led by music director and conductor Eduard Zilberkant (pictured).

The Fairbanks Symphony Association, the parent organization of the orchestra, was founded in late 1958. Today, more than 70 musicians from the community volunteer their time and energy during an eight-month season to perform classical concerts for the greater Fairbanks community.

Zilberkant said his goal for the season was to highlight the strengths of each section and "feature the orchestra over the past 50 years -- how it's grown and what it's become."

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