Shortly after arriving in Fairbanks in 1976, Ruth Lister found work as a diesel truck mechanic. Fifteen years later, she began overseeing the UAF community college program that offered training in such work.

In 1915, it was an audacious idea — to create a college in tiny, remote Fairbanks, Alaska. Already, the gold rush town was fading. But the man who named the town, James Wickersham, admitted no embarrassment in also proposing a college for it.