Close to 600 undergraduate and graduate students are enrolled in UAF’s biology and wildlife programs, making it one of the largest degree programs in the entire UA system. Yet most of UAF’s existing biology teaching labs were built before 1960.

The UAF Life Sciences Classroom and Lab Facility is urgently needed for our students and for Alaska’s premier life science research program.

Our students are not being served when we try to teach them in antiquated biology laboratories. Our state is not being served when we don’t have the proper space to conduct biological research in areas of vital importance to Alaskans, from avian influenza to sudden infant death syndrome, and from climate change to emerging diseases.

Life sciences includes research in infectious diseases, virology, microbiology, toxicology, cellular mechanisms of disease, food safety and physiology; and academic programs such as biological sciences, biology, botany, wildlife biology, wildlife management, zoology, biochemistry and molecular biology. UAF academic and research programs promote the health and welfare of Alaskans. Life sciences trains biologists for several state of Alaska and federal agencies, undertakes studies necessary for oil and gas and mineral development, and conducts research on what’s changing in our wildlife, forests, tundra and waters as the climate changes.

The facility is UA’s top priority for new construction, and understandably so when you consider the statewide impact of the teaching and research that will take place in the facility.

Enrollment and research in this area has been surging, but we’ve packed too many people into too-small classrooms and laboratories for too long already.

The Life Sciences Classroom and Lab Facility is needed now -- for UAF, for UA, for all of Alaska.