UAF TO BESTOW FOUR HONORARY DEGREES AT COMMENCEMENT THIS SPRING

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 7, 2001

Fairbanks, Alaska - Geologist Nathaniel Rutter will be the keynote speaker for the University of Alaska Fairbanks commencement and one of four honorary degree recipients recognized during the ceremony Sunday, May 13, 2001 at 1:30 p.m. in the Carlson Center on Second Avenue.

Recognized internationally for his work in geology and climate studies, Rutter was recently named a fellow with the Arctic Institute of North America. Rutter received his master’s in geology from UAF nearly 40 years ago and began his prominent career in Alaska by tackling the ice dynamics of the Gulkana Glacier. His research has taken him around the world in search of geological clues about past climate changes. As a research scientist for the Geological Survey of Canada in the early 70s, Rutter led a major geology mapping program in the Mackenzie River region of northern Canada in connection with a proposed gas pipeline.

He is the former president of the International Union for Quaternary Research and holds an Honorary Professorship from the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of four awarded internationally. Rutter is currently a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta. Rutter will receive an honorary doctor of science degree.

In addition to Rutter, UAF will honor Alaska Native leader Poldine Carlo, who was a founding member of the Fairbanks Native Association, a non-profit organization employing more than 300 people and offering social services on many levels.

Carlo has shared her culture and heritage by authoring the biographical, "Nulato: an Indian Life on the Yukon," participating in UAF’s elder in-residence program and recording Native songs for the Smithsonian Institution. Carlo is an adviser for the UA Museum of the North and has worked as a lecturer at the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. She has served on the board of directors for Denakkanaaga elders program, a cultural service group serving primarily Alaska Natives throughout the Interior region of Alaska.

Carlo was instrumental in developing the Alaska Native Language Program at UAF and assisted in the creation of the recently released Koyukon-Athabascan dictionary. She currently sits on the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee for Native Education. Carlo will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree.

Former University of Alaska administrator and horticulture professor Art Buswell will also receive an honorary degree this spring. During his 20-year tenure at the university he served as vice president for public service and dean of the Division of Statewide Services, director of the Cooperative Extension Service, and as the UA agriculture department head.

Buswell helped to expand mining and cooperative extension programs, add a Sea Grant program and extend academic credit programs to military personnel at installations as far away as Adak in the Aleutian Islands. He worked to make post-secondary education available to a wide range of students, using radio, television, correspondence courses, and travelling professors to provide learning opportunities throughout the state.

He left Alaska in 1971 to serve as the president of the University of Maine at Machias where he retired as president emeritus. In 1984, he returned to Alaska where he has remained active in the Fairbanks volunteer community. Buswell will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree.

Also receiving an honorary Ph.D this year is social anthropologist and medical genetics educator Richard Osborne. He was born in Kennicott, Alaska in 1920 and spent his undergraduate years at UAF supervising the potato patch where students worked to help pay for their education. He also helped Otto Geist catalog bones from the last ice age that the noted archeologist had collected.

After attending UAF from 1939 to 1941, Osborne earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1956 in genetics, anthropology and health sciences. He became a professor of genetics and preventive medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College at Cornell University Medical School and at the University of Wisconsin at Madison where he is professor emeritus.

Throughout his professional life, Osborne has supported the university and has remained active in polar research. He has maintained a working attachment to the UA Museum of the North. He has also authored several books and dozens of papers on genetics including genetic-environment interactions in human diseases, dental genetics, anthropology and Alaska Eskimos. Osborne will be awarded an honorary doctorate of science degree.

The honorary degree recipients were selected for significant achievements that have brought distinction to their academic or professional careers, and for their lasting contributions to the state and the nation.

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NOTE TO EDITORS: Honorary degree recipient photos available upon request.

CONTACT: UAF Public Information Officer Carla Browning at 907-474-7778 or email: carla.browning@uaf.edu.

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