April 26, 2017
PayScale 2017 just released its annual College ROI report that measures the return on tuition investment 20 years after graduation. The organization ranked UAF fourth in the nation as a best value school for students pursuing engineering as a major.
More than 300 people attended the Alaska Native Studies Conference — one of the largest turnouts ever for the conference. Keynote speakers included Nobel Peace Prize nominee Sheila Watt-Cloutier.
Jason Gootee and his father, Robert Gootee, pledged $26,272 to establish the new Gootee Family Nanook Hockey Scholarship Endowment. Jason Gootee graduated from UAF in 2005.
In a recently published paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, scientists at the University of Alaska Museum of the North and the University of Oxford named a new species of long-necked plesiosaur known as an elasmosaur. Patrick Druckenmiller, UAMN Earth sciences curator, said these elasmosaurs lived exclusively in the Cretaceous Period, 145 million-66 million years ago.
Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. gave another $25,000 to the Troth Yeddha’ Park and indigenous studies center to be built on the Fairbanks campus. The company’s total giving to the Troth Yeddha’ Legacy Initiative is $142,500.
A new study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution reveals that increased moisture levels may have been a primary cause of death for giant herbivores approximately 10,000 years ago. Matthew Wooller, director of UAF’s Alaska Stable Isotope Facility, was part of an international research team that contributed to the study.
Taylor Gofstein, a UAF doctoral candidate, was awarded the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship by the Department of Defense for her research studying biodegradation of petroleum contaminants in marine and terrestrial environments. Only 150 of the 3,500 applicants received awards.
The monetary impact of changes in snowfall due to climate change is likely in the trillions of dollars, according to Professor Matthew Sturm with the UAF Geophysical Institute. The conclusion comes in a recent paper for the American Geophysical Union. Sturm collaborated on the invited paper with Charles Parr, also of the UAF GI.
Sonia Ibarra, a doctoral candidate in the UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, was honored with the Meritorious Service Award from the Alaska Chapter of the American Fisheries Society. Ibarra works on an Alaska Sea Grant project on sea otter impacts on subsistence shellfish harvest.
The Georgeson Botanical Garden Society gave $27,060 to the Charles C. Georgeson Botanical Garden Fund to support the garden’s operations at UAF.
David McGuire, UAF professor of ecology, received a U.S. Geological Survey Unit Award for Excellence of Service for his contributions to the LandCarbon Team. The citation recognized the LandCarbon Team's creation of new precise datasets and novel modeling techniques to analyze carbon cycling in the United States.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine hosted a workshop on "A Century of Wildland Fire Research: Contributions to Long-term Approaches for Wildland Fire Management" in Washington, D.C., in late March. UAF Professor Anupma Prakash served on the National Planning Committee for the workshop and led the technology breakout session.
UAF named four finalists in its search for a new chancellor. The candidates had campus visits and forums April 20-27. The finalists came from a pool of 24 candidates from Alaska and the Lower 48. Finalists Dan White, J. Michael Kuperberg, Tony Haymet and Mirta Martin met with UA and UAF leaders, and attended forums for students and employees while on campus.