It’s a sure sign of spring — the arrival of the first reindeer calf at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm.

The event occurred on April 4 this year at the University of Alaska Fairbanks facility, which keeps a herd of reindeer for research.

Reindeer caretaker Erin Carr said the calf was born at 10:30 a.m., just 10 minutes after a co-worker noticed the cow was in labor.

Reindeer calf 1701 curled up in a ball near her mother, Astrid, the next morning. As visitors watched, the cow nudged her calf with a hoof to get her up to nurse. The calf wobbled to her feet for breakfast in a reindeer pen opposite the Georgeson Botanical Garden.

Carr said the calf seems healthy. The first calf usually arrives in early April. Altogether, about 20 calves are expected this spring. They will become part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Reindeer Research Program herd, which numbered 65 as of Tuesday morning.

Darrell Blodgett, the data manager for the program, monitors the herd by video camera from his office at the farm to make sure deliveries are progressing well and the staff is aware of cows in labor.

As is tradition, schoolchildren are encouraged to submit names for the calves, which are named in July or August, after they are weaned. Many of the ideas seem to come from children’s movies, Carr said.

“When Harry Potter was popular, we had names like Hagrid and Hermione,” she said.

Children may submit names on the Reindeer Research Program website at http://reindeer.salrm.uaf.edu/index.php. Names selected last year include Hodor, Jorah, Podrick, Two Socks, Chicory, Diego and Taco Supreme.

The Reindeer Research Program is the only program devoted to reindeer research that is affiliated with a U.S. university. The program conducts research on nutrition, animal health, meat quality and range management to support the reindeer industry.

A team of computer science students will represent the University of Alaska Fairbanks at the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition from April 13-15 in San Antonio.

The annual competition helps colleges and universities test their computer-security curriculum in a competitive environment. About 200 schools participate, with the top 10 traveling to the national competition each year.

Team captain Arsh Chauhan said the environment provides a unique test for the team, which includes eight students in the UAF Computer Science Department. Teams are scored on their ability to protect a fictional company’s computer system from outside threats, keep services running amid those attacks and juggle customer-service calls during the crisis.

Student teams are judged on how they respond to those challenges during two six-hour sessions.

“It’s definitely high pressure,” Chauhan said. “There’s a lot of stress, and allegedly a lot of cussing.”

This is UAF’s fifth trip to the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, where the school’s team finished third in 2014. UAF qualified this year by winning its at-large regional competition in March.

UAF competitors include Chauhan, vice captain Rohan Weeden, Addeline Mitchell, Christopher Bailey, Jason Warta, Jacob McKenna, James Lang and Tristan Van-Cise. Mike Moss is the team coach.

A fossil discovered by a Montana hunter seven years ago is a new species in an ancient marine reptile group known as plesiosaurs. In a paper published Thursday, April 13 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, scientists at the University of Alaska Museum of the North and the University of Oxford have named a new species of long-necked plesiosaur known as an elasmosaur.

The new species is named Nakonanectes bradti for the Nakona, or Assiniboine, people of northeastern Montana and David Bradt, who found the specimen while elk hunting.

Museum Earth sciences curator Patrick Druckenmiller said these elasmosaurs lived exclusively in the Cretaceous Period, 145 million-66 million years ago. Elasmosaurs have been found all over the world, even in present day Alaska. They had extremely long necks with as many as 60 or more vertebrae, small heads, teardrop-shaped torsos and two pairs of paddle-like limbs. They were carnivorous and reached lengths of more than 30 feet.

The new elasmosaur is different, though. “It has an exceptionally short neck by elasmosaur standards in terms of both the number of vertebrae and absolute neck length,” Druckenmiller said. “We estimate the neck included 39-42 vertebrae and was approximately 7.5-feet long. This is the shortest long-necked plesiosaur ever found in North America.”

It’s also the stratigraphically youngest elasmosaur ever found in the Western Interior Seaway, a large inland sea that existed during the mid- to late Cretaceous and split the continent of North America into two land masses.

Danielle Serratos worked with Druckenmiller to describe the fossil as a graduate student in geosciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They determined it is a species of elasmosaur after making detailed comparisons of all parts of the skeleton, especially the skull, which is one of the best-preserved skulls of any elasmosaur discovered to date.

The scientists determined that the animal is a new species of elasmosaur. “This extremely well-preserved and mostly complete fossil provides evidence that contrary to popularly held belief, elasmosaurs did not simply develop longer and longer necks over millions of years of evolution,” Serratos said.

The new elasmosaur is approximately 70 million years old, determined by the types of invertebrate fossils found in the same rocks formed by sediments deposited at the bottom of the seaway. Druckenmiller said North America is one of the best places in the world to find elasmosaurs.

Bradt, the elk hunter, found the new species in 2010 on a remote rocky outcrop in northeastern Montana. It lived close to the same time as another elasmosaur called Albertonectes, which had the most neck vertebrae ever recorded in any animal with a backbone, an astounding 76 individual bones that supported a neck growing up to 23 feet long. “Put another way,” Druckenmiller said, “both the longest- and shortest-neck elasmosaurs lived in the same Bearpaw Sea, though probably not at exactly the same time.”

Before scientists could examine the specimen and distinguish it from all other known species, the fossil had to be excavated from what had been its home for millions of years, lands managed by the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.

“When most people think about the refuge, often their first thoughts turn to big game hunting,” said Paul Santavy who manages the refuge. “This is a vast, remote and rugged place that has changed very little since Lewis and Clark passed through these lands more than 200 years ago. While it is common for hunters to encounter elk during archery season, this is the first time anyone has found the fossilized bones of such a complete and new prehistoric sea creature.”

Druckenmiller organized a large operation to excavate the fossil from its remote location with the help of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge, and especially Beverly Skinner, the USFWS employee who hunter Dave Bradt first told about the discovery.

Santavy said the find is scientifically significant and promises to add to our knowledge about the remote past in what is now Montana. “Our staff felt very privileged to able to take part in its excavation,” he said.

The specimen is on loan from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Pat Druckenmiller, UAMN curator of Earth sciences, 907-474-6954 (office), 907-799-9608 (cell) or psdruckenmiller@alaska.edu. Ryan Moehring, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service public information officer, 303-236-0345 or ryan_moehring@fws.gov.

In fall 1998, a 29-year-old University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student stumbled out of a Siberian forest, bruised and bleeding from his neck. Breathless, he approached an airport police officer, telling him of the robbery and the beating he had just endured.

“And what do you expect me to do about this?” was the officer’s only response.

At a loss, and still losing blood, Michael Koskey turned and made his way back to a hotel.

“It was in Siberia during the post-Soviet collapse. I was doing field work at a time when Russian society had come to a standstill, especially out there on the edge,” Koskey said. The “edge” he referred to was the Chukotka region in the northeastern corner of Russia, across the Bering Strait from Alaska. As a UAF anthropology doctoral student, Koskey first went to Chukotka in 1997 to study the political and economic viability of reindeer herding. He later used the information collected on this trip to write his dissertation.

Koskey, who is now a UAF professor of indigenous studies and the head of the College of Liberal Arts’ Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, recalls the episode as one of several harrowing experiences he had while conducting his doctoral research in post-Soviet Russia.

“The whole story has become something of a joke, about what it takes to get a Ph.D. around here,” Koskey said. “Talk about trial by fire.”

The reindeer population in Siberia had began to collapse. During the Soviet era, Moscow subsidized the herds, which created massive numbers of reindeer. The herders had no way to feed them without help from Moscow. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, they made a hard choice: Rather than let the reindeer starve they killed the majority of the herd and harvested the meat.

“Things were tough,” Koskey said. “People had been working without pay for years. The local governments in some areas were shared between the legitimate government and the mafia — and that was typical in Russia at the time. People were malnourished — you could almost even call it starving. I’d go into the store and there would be a few pieces of old reindeer meat, and maybe a can of olives from Spain from 1967.”

Perhaps it isn’t surprising some turned to crime to fight off hunger, and Koskey was ambushed in the woods near the town of Sokol.

“I was beat down, with knives to my neck until they cut me.” Koskey said. “Half of my research money was stolen, about $1,800 worth.” He had hidden the rest in his boots, where his attackers didn’t think to look.

The attack was just one chapter of Koskey’s long, challenging journey.

Shortly after his ordeal, Koskey began his journey to Lavrentiia, a town on the coast of the Bering Strait, a mere 85 miles from the western shores of Alaska. But authorities were suspicious of the outsider — as soon as his plane touched down the border guards rushed in. Koskey was whisked away to a police station, his research confiscated. After about three hours of waiting, Koskey’s passport, visa and research were returned. He was pushed out into the pitch-black streets at 50 below zero.

Eventually Koskey traveled to Lorino, a reindeer herding collective. He hitched a ride on a mail truck to Lorino with half a dozen other people, who thought he may have been Chinese because of his clothing. When he explained he was American, they laughed and said that they had forgotten: everything in America is made in China. One of the women from the mail truck offered him a spare apartment, where he stayed until he left Lorino.

“Whenever I was down, it seems like someone was there to help me up again,” Koskey said. “They would never leave anyone behind.”

While the people of Chukotka showed Koskey kindness, the government of the region seemed determined to create problems for him.

In Lorino, a local government agent accused Koskey of being a spy. The agent demanded Koskey come to his office the next morning, where he grilled him over his military past for about three hours. (Koskey fought in the Gulf War.) A few days later, the armed guards confiscated all his research in the middle of the night. It was missing for days but was eventually returned in full.

After finishing his research in Lorino, Koskey caught a mail truck back to Lavrentiia, where a local contact, Yelena, was waiting for him. As he waited to board the plane going home, Koskey was approached by two border guards, who asked him to come with them.

The men led a panicked Koskey out onto the tarmac, past the plane he had thought would take him south, and toward a military helicopter. They boarded the helicopter, where three or four more border guards sat. “Don’t worry,” one of them said. “Sit down, we just want to talk to you because you’re American, we never see Americans here!” They shared a beer, then escorted Koskey back to his plane, saying a warm farewell and shaking his hand. Shortly afterward, he arrived home safely.

Koskey thought he was done. He came back to the states and presented his findings, telling of the high levels of government corruption and the poverty of average citizens. He also worked with people in Nome to support relief efforts, sending food, clothes and other supplies across the sea to the people of Chukotka. A year after his expedition, the FBI knocked on his door.

The two agents informed Koskey that Russia’s government had accused him of money laundering. “I told them ‘Look, you are being played … and as the FBI, I think you should be upset about that,” he said. The agents agreed and the investigation was dropped.

“Mike Koskey had the misfortune of experiencing many of the negative aspects of 1990s Russia,” said Peter Schweitzer, one of Koskey’s mentors involved with the research assignment. “What impressed me and others, however, was the fact that he didn’t give up and turn around but continued his research and went further into the field.”

“In the long run, it’s something I learned quite a great deal from, much more than I thought I would, and it’s something I can use in my own teaching,” Koskey said. “I work with master’s and Ph.D. students, and I can tell them from my direct experiences ‘Here’s what you need to look for, here’s what can happen.’”

Koskey completed his Ph.D. in 2003, basing his dissertation on research he collected on his journey. “UAF was behind me the whole way in Russia,” he said. “To get my Ph.D. from UAF … I’m proud of that.”

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has announced the winners of its first Alaska Center for Microgrid Technologies Commercialization industry competition.

UniEnergy Technologies, a flow battery company based in Mukilteo, Washington, will receive the Microgrid Project laboratory testing award. The award includes 25 dedicated lab days, consultation with staff and testing in the Power Systems Integration Lab at the UAF Alaska Center for Energy and Power. The lab can evaluate equipment under a range of real-world scenarios and emulates the microgrids and operating conditions found in rural Alaska.

“With the accelerating deployment of microgrids globally, including in cold-weather climates, the need for long-duration and long-life energy storage solutions such as UET’s advanced vanadium flow batteries is now widely-recognized,” said Russ Weed, UET’s vice president for business development and marketing. “We very much appreciate the Microgrid Competition award and anticipate working closely with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power.”

The university is also awarding two Technology Seed awards: one to Ocean Renewable Power Company, a marine renewable technology and project developer with headquarters in Portland, Maine, and one to DONμT Energy Technologies from Palo Alto, California, a software developer focusing on robust microgrid design tools. These awards include 125 hours of technical consultation with the PSI team.

The companies were selected from a competitive pool of applicants and based on the review and recommendations of an independent panel of technical and commercialization experts.

The Alaska Center for Microgrid Technologies Commercialization, led by ACEP, was launched in August 2015 with funding through the U.S. Economic Development Administration and the University of Alaska. It focuses on providing the technical and business assistance required to accelerate commercialization of technology to improve the affordability and reliability of microgrid energy systems. The University of Alaska Anchorage Business Enterprise Institute partners with ACEP on the center.

Navigant Research and GTM Research have estimated that microgrids could be a multi-billion-dollar global market over the next decade. In 2016, the Alaska Center for Microgrid Technologies Commercialization launched the industry competition to help entrepreneurs in the western United States move their concepts toward commercialization so U.S.-based companies could capture those local and global microgrid markets.

Another round of the competition ​is planned for summer 2017.  Additional information will be posted on the ACEP website.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: George Roe, gmroe@alaska.edu, 907-888-2631

ON THE WEB:
UAF Alaska Center for Energy and Power: http://acep.uaf.edu
UniEnergy Technologies: http://www.uetechnologies.com
Ocean Renewable Power Company: http://www.orpc.co
DONμT Energy Technologies: http://donutenergy.com

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has named four finalists in its search for a new chancellor. The candidates will visit campus and speak at community forums beginning this week.

The finalists were selected from a pool of 24 candidates from Alaska and the Lower 48. During their time on campus, they will meet with UA and UAF leaders, as well as attend forums for students and employees.

Following are the four finalists and information about their community forums:

Dan White
Thursday, April 20, 5:30 p.m., Schaible Auditorium
Dan White has served as the University of Alaska vice president for academic affairs and research since March of 2015. He joined the faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1995 as a professor of civil and environmental engineering. White has served in several positions at UAF, including director of the Institute of Northern Engineering, UAF associate vice chancellor for research and head of the Office of Intellectual Property and Commercialization and interim vice chancellor for research. He has a bachelor’s degree in physics from Colorado College, a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Washington University and a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He is a registered professional engineer in the State of Alaska.

J. Michael Kuperberg
Monday, April 24, 5:30 p.m., Murie Building auditorium
J. Michael Kuperberg is the executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He is on detail to the White House from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Climate and Environmental Science Division, where he is a biologist. Prior to that, he was a member of the research faculty at Florida State University, where he served as associate director for environmental programs at the Center for Biomedical and Toxicological Research. Kuperberg has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from Florida State University and a doctorate in environmental toxicology from Florida A&M University.

Tony Haymet
Tuesday, April 25, 5:30 p.m., Murie Building auditorium
Tony Haymet is distinguished professor of oceanography and director emeritus and vice chancellor emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. Prior to his appointment at Scripps, he was chief of marine and atmospheric research and then science and policy director for CSIRO, Australia’s science, industry and business research agency. He is co-founder of CleanTech San Diego, a business organization that promotes and supports clean technology businesses, and co-founder and co-owner of MRV Systems LLC, an ocean robot company. Haymet has a degree in chemistry from the University of Sydney, a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Chicago and a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Sydney.

Mirta Martin
Thursday, April 27, 5:30 p.m., Murie Building auditorium
Mirta Martin most recently served as the president of Fort Hays State University in Kansas. Martin began her career in the banking industry, working up to senior vice president at First Union National Bank of Virginia. She made the move to higher education in 1992 and has served in a variety of faculty and leadership positions at public and private colleges, universities and community colleges. Martin has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and political science from Duke University, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Richmond and a doctorate with an emphasis in strategic management and leadership from Virginia Commonwealth University.

The community forums are co-sponsored by the UAF Alumni Association and will be available via webcast. Visit www.uaf.edu/chancellor/search/ to access webcast information and download curriculum vitae for the finalists. Links to feedback forms for each will also be available on the site.

ON THE WEB: http://www.uaf.edu/chancellor/search/

NOTE TO EDITORS: To download photos of the finalists, visit news.uaf.edu/chancellor2017.

Young people in foster homes or other temporary care have an opportunity to spend June 26-30 exploring wildfire science at an Interior Alaska forest camp.

Applications are being taken through May 15 for Hot Times — Fire in the Forest, a day camp located 20 miles southwest of Fairbanks at the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research Site. Fourteen youths will be accepted.

The camp is organized by Fostering Science, a University of Alaska Fairbanks program that introduces science to young people who are cared for by foster parents, relatives, a group home or other similar facilities.

Christa Mulder, the UAF professor of plant ecology who directs the program, first became interested in child welfare while working in an orphanage in Colombia as a teenager. Mulder now has two kids by adoption and volunteers as a court-appointed special advocate for young people cared for by the state of Alaska. As she became familiar with the system, she found no camps for kids in temporary living conditions such as foster care.

“So, I put together my love of science with my interest in vulnerable youth and decided to create a science camp for youth in care,” Mulder said. “Luckily, the National Science Foundation thought it was a good idea and funded it.”

Participants in the Hot Times camp will explore nature, hike, make art, make friends, experiment and work with scientists from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. No prior science skills are needed. The camp is free and transportation will be provided.

To qualify, applicants must:

• Be in foster care, a group home, temporary custody of a relative or a shelter at the time of the camp
• Be entering seventh through 10th grades in fall 2017
• Be willing to spend a week (mostly) outside in the woods
• Be excited about learning and trying new things.

Applications can be found on the camp website, https://sites.google.com/alaska.edu/fosteringscience/2017-camp. For more information or to apply, visit the program website.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Christa Mulder, 907-474-7703, cpmulder@alaska.edu

ON THE WEB: https://sites.google.com/alaska.edu/fosteringscience/home

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.

“The mass extinctions of mega-herbivores across the globe have been an ongoing puzzle for scientists,” said professor Matthew Wooller, director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  “We looked at carbon and nitrogen isotopes in ancient animal bones to learn about what the herbivores were eating, which can also tell us about what climate was like around the time that the megafauna died.”

Mega-herbivores — large vegetarian animals including some species of horses, bison and mammoths that used to tromp around Alaska — rapidly disappeared or declined at the end of the Pleistocene era about 10,000 years ago. The mass extinction coincided with a period of significant environmental change, when the Earth transitioned from the last glacial period to the current interglacial period. This was also the time that modern humans began to spread into the Americas.

Wooller was part of an international research team led by University of Adelaide researchers Alan Cooper and Tim Rabanus-Wallace that looked at bone samples from a number of species that lived in a variety of environments on different continents. Funding came from the National Science Foundation, Norges Forskningsråd, Australian Research Council and Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. Wooller is also part of the UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

The researchers used carbon isotope data to place megafauna fossils on a timeline. Nitrogen isotope data helped showed what environment was like when the animals were alive.

Wet and dry environments can leave very different isotopic signatures in soils, plants and subsequently the bones of herbivores. Nitrogen isotopes found in the collagen of herbivores’ bones reveal the environment they lived in.

“You are what you eat,” said Tim Rabanus-Wallace, a Ph.D. student at the University of Adelaide, who spearheaded this project. “When you consume food with a certain ratio of heavy and light isotopes, your bones develop a related ratio. So we can learn what and where different animals ate based on the isotopes in their bones.”

Across the board, these isotopes show a spike in moisture just prior to the extinction of megafauna.

“This change in moisture could have affected the dominant environment that the mega-herbivores were living in,” Wooller said. Large herbivores likely preferred living in cool, dry grasslands. Increasing moisture could have caused grasslands to became swampy and eventually transition into forests.

“If you’re adapted to grass, you can’t live in a forest,” Rabanus-Wallace said. “The plants are full of plant toxins specifically designed to fend off herbivores.”

This trend was observed across continents, even though the timing of the extinctions varied.

“We find that on different continents the climate changes happened at different times, but they all showed a similar kind of feature, that moisture levels changed just prior to extinction,” Wooller said.

These results are a good indication that increasing moisture had a significant role in the extinctions, and support the findings from previous, regionally focused research on the mega-herbivore extinctions. However, this does not rule out the possibility that other environmental changes, including the spread of humans, also played significant parts. As the researchers continue to collect a broader range of global samples, it will be easier to piece together the whole story of what caused the extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Matthew Wooller, 907-474-6738, mjwooller@alaska.edu. Jeff Richardson, 907-474-6284, jarichardson6@alaska.edu.

In the Arab business world, it’s necessary to differentiate.

Siham AlKurdi, who works as a brand manager for a fashion company in Amman, Jordan, is developing a new business, set apart from others by its unique combination of technology and fashion. By using tools like virtual reality and 3-D printing, she will enable customers to create fully customized clothes.

“No item is going to be repeated, ever again,” AlKurdi said, joking that sometimes two of something might get made — one for the customer and one for herself. “Everything will be made to measure, very personalized and will include the customer (throughout) the process.”

Now, as she gets ready to move to Dubai to launch her new brand, AlKurdi is brushing up on her business skills. She is finishing her first semester at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, working toward her associate of applied science degree in applied business.

“Business models change country to country, continent to continent and from one culture to another,” said AlKurdi, who specifically sought out an accredited American university that offered online degrees. “I would love to see my brand travel around the world.”

AlKurdi knows fashion. She has worked in the industry for seven years. She knows technology, too. Gadgets, gizmos and drones are scattered throughout her home. She and her husband like to figure out how everything works and occasionally build their own versions.

They also named their Pomeranian Neo, from the main character in “The Matrix.”

“Very predictable for two geeks,” she said.

After comparing hundreds of schools, she chose UAF for its quality and affordability. With every assignment, “I’m taking notes, I’m making a plan, and I’m going to use this,” AlKurdi said. She is on track to complete the degree in 2018 and plans to launch her business soon after.

“Everything is going to be experimental,” she said. “I’m going to try everything and maybe I’ll figure out a new way of designing.”

While working full time and taking nine credits, AlKurdi, a perfectionist, is also taking local fashion classes and enrolling in an online digital marketing certificate program through the University of Vermont. “I have passion for everything I do,” she said. “And if I don’t have passion for it, I just don’t do it.”

The monetary impact of changes in snowfall due to climate change is likely in the trillions of dollars.

Professor Matthew Sturm, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, reported in a recent paper for the American Geophysical Union that the costs of snowfall changes are “measured in trillions, not billions, of dollars.” Sturm collaborated on the invited paper with Michael Goldstein of Babson College and Charles Parr of the UAF Geophysical Institute.

Their work on valuing snow comes on the heels of a 30-year run of falling snow levels and changing snow conditions. Snow scientists have recorded that snow depths and extent have decreased globally, that snow is falling later and melting earlier, and that more winter precipitation is coming as rain rather than snow. The potential impacts of these trends mean that action needs to be taken soon if the estimated costs are to be avoided.

“With snow cover changing worldwide in several ways, there is pressing need to determine global, regional and local rates of snow cover change, and to link these to financial analyses that allow for rational decision-making,” the researchers wrote.

The trend of decreasing snow creates problems in several ways. For one, less snow means that there will be less mountain runoff, which provides water to low-lying adjacent areas in the spring and summer, when farmers need it most. This spring runoff is extremely important for agriculture. Portions of the multibillion-dollar outdoor recreation industry are based on snow cover. Cities like Los Angeles depend on snow runoff for the water in their faucets and for electrical generation. Much of California’s food production relies on meltwater from snow.

Estimated losses to agriculture and industry in the American Southwest from reduced snowmelt flowing into the Colorado River alone range from $1 billion to over $1 trillion.

Most usable water in the western United States comes in the winter in the form of snow, and the snowpack stores water until spring and summer when it is most needed. Approximately 162 million acre-feet of snow water equivalent are deposited in the western mountains each winter.

Further, snow is uniquely helpful for keeping the planet cool.

“The cooling power of long-lying spring snow in northern Canada, Alaska and Siberia (an area of 19 million km²) sheds about 2X 10-12 gigajoules of energy per year back to space that might otherwise have heated our planet,” the researchers wrote. “This cooling benefit doubles when we add in the effect of snow-covered Arctic sea ice.”

The researchers sought to estimate financial losses from the changing snow resource. They merged snow science and financial analysis to find the answers. Depending on the valuation of water and the speed of change, the results showed losses of $1 trillion to as much as $4.4 trillion in 20 years from now.

One critical piece of information is knowing the rate of change to snow, both now and in the future. Small differences in the speed of the change can make a huge difference in whether projects, such as dams and reservoirs, are needed to mitigate the loss. “Given the magnitude of the impact and possible mitigation costs, we need to be making these decisions on the soundest and best scientific facts and knowledge possible,” the researchers wrote.

As decreasing snow is linked to our increasingly warming climate, snow loss can become a self-perpetuating problem. The solution, Sturm and his collaborators said, is action both within the scientific community and by decision-makers and stakeholders.

ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Matthew Sturm, 907-474-5257, matthew.sturm@alaska.edu

ON THE WEB: http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/issue/10.1002/(ISSN)2333-5084.SCISOC1/

Skiing to work over a persistent spring snowpack, I looked up to see a large white bird flapping gracefully over the spruce tops. A few gentle honks confirmed it was a tundra swan.

After a long winter when all the large birds were black, it was good to see one of the frontrunners of the billions now winging to Alaska.

Tundra swans can live to be older than 20. Perhaps this bird, about 15 pounds with a wingspan of almost six feet, had passed over the lowlands north of the University of Alaska Fairbanks many times. The swan was probably headed to northwest Alaska or the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

That’s according to a biologist who was part of a team that captured and released more than 500 tundra swans in 2007 and 2008. The birds were temporarily flightless as they shed old feathers and grew new ones in their favorite Alaska breeding areas: Cold Bay, King Salmon, the Yukon and Kuskokwim river deltas, Kotzebue Sound and the Colville River delta.

Craig Ely of the U.S. Geological Survey Science Center in Anchorage handled many of those swans and helped to implant satellite transmitters in the abdomens of 50 birds. Those transmitters lasted for a few years, enabling scientists to confirm a split in Alaska tundra swan populations.

Swans that spend their summers in tundra lakes north of the Brooks Range are East Coast birds in the winter, settling in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.

Swans that breed south of the Brooks Range in the wetlands of western Alaska are West Coast birds in the winter, feeding in farm fields of Washington, Oregon and the Central Valley of California.

Though the East Coast and West Coast swans migrate wingtip to wingtip and pause in similar barley fields and lakes in Saskatchewan, the birds almost never follow their neighbors to a new place.

“Tundra swans are extremely site faithful, so only extremely rarely would a Colville River bird end up on the West Coast,” Ely said.

Both the East and West Coast tundra swans spend the majority of their lives migrating. Based on information from the satellite trackers, the bird I saw might have left the Central Valley of California in late January. From there, it looped across Oregon and Washington, maybe northern Utah, on its way to the prairie in Canada. Then it flew over northern British Columbia and back to Alaska.

After a few weeks in wetlands of the boreal forest, the bird will be on its way to treeless tundra that will soon be thawed and rich with aquatic plants.

Unlike other birds now flying direct paths to Alaska, tundra swans take months to cross the continent.

“All the Alaska populations of tundra swans spend more time in migration than on breeding or wintering areas,” Ely said. “They truly are birds on the move.”

Ely and other scientists think the East Coast-wintering birds that summer on the Colville River may be flying an ancient ice-free corridor that could have been the only unfrozen pathway north during the last ice age.

Fascinated by the unique, divergent paths of the two populations of tundra swans, Ely and others studied which group, including lower Alaska Peninsula tundra swans that don’t migrate, might have a survival advantage. They found all swans were doing well despite how far they traveled and how little time that might give them on the breeding grounds.

“The tremendous diversity of migration strategies we identify in Alaskan tundra swans, without clear impacts on survival, underscores the ability of this species to adapt to different environments and climatic regimes,” Ely wrote.

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks will present three honorary doctoral degrees and a Meritorious Service Award on Saturday, May 6, 2017, at its 95th commencement ceremony.

Fairbanks architect Charles Bettisworth, ecoscientist M. Torre Jorgenson and public-health advocate Karen Perdue will receive honorary doctorate degrees. Bill Brophy, a retired Usibelli Coal Mine executive and U.S. Army colonel, will receive a Meritorious Service Award.

Honorary degree recipients are chosen for their lasting contributions to Alaska and the nation, and for significant achievements in their disciplines.

Bettisworth and Perdue, who are married, will each receive Doctor of Laws degrees. They will also give the keynote address at the commencement ceremony.

Bettisworth, now retired, is a lifelong Alaskan who 40 years ago founded the architecture firm that still bears his name. He was the principal architect in charge of many notable and award-winning projects, including elementary schools, retirement homes, courthouses and airport terminals. A particular focus of his work has been to strive for an aesthetically pleasing and sustainable Fairbanks, with an emphasis on renewable energy sources. He was named the City of Fairbanks’ Outstanding Citizen of 2014 and the Alaska Chamber’s 2015 Alaskan of the Year. Bettisworth and Perdue were jointly named the 2016 Distinguished Citizen of the Year by the Midnight Sun Council Boy Scouts of America. Three of their four children, as well as their partners, have graduated or are expected to graduate from UAF.

Perdue has had a varied and dynamic professional life, including work as a Teamster, health planner, business owner, newspaper reporter and aide to U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. Her work includes service as the Alaska commissioner of health and social services and as the University of Alaska associate vice president for health programs. She also has been recognized with the 1998 Alaska Meritorious Health Service Award and 2012 Farthest North Girl Scout Woman of Distinction Award.

Gov. Bill Walker appointed Perdue to the University of Alaska Board of Regents in February, after she had been chosen to receive an honorary UAF degree.

Jorgenson will receive a Doctor of Science degree.

Jorgenson has an international reputation as a permafrost scientist who has studied linkages in geomorphology, ecology, hydrology and soil science. His business, Alaska Ecoscience, is dedicated to studying the impacts of climate change on Alaska’s landscapes. Jorgenson’s contributions to UAF began as a camp manager at Toolik Field Station in 1977, which led him to earn a master’s degree in land resources management from UAF in 1986. His has contributed to oilfield impact assessments, land rehabilitation techniques, ecosystem and permafrost mapping, and coastal dynamics research. He has worked with many UAF graduate students and holds affiliate faculty positions with UAF’s Institute of Northern Engineering and Institute of Arctic Biology.

Brophy will receive a Meritorious Service Award, which recognizes service to the local community or state.

Brophy first arrived in Fairbanks as a member of the military, serving as deputy commander of the U.S. Army in Alaska while stationed at Fort Wainwright from 1995-98. He returned to Fairbanks after retirement to accept a job with the organization that would become the Fairbanks Economic Development Corp. In 2001, he became a vice president for Usibelli Coal Mine and executive director of the Usibelli Foundation, retiring in 2016. Brophy has served on the boards and committees of more than 25 nonprofit, advocacy and trade organizations, and his support for UAF includes work with the College of Engineering and Mines, Community and Technical College, ROTC, School of Management and University of Alaska Museum of the North.

A research team led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Colorado College has solved a century-old mystery involving a famous red waterfall in Antarctica. New evidence links Blood Falls to a large source of salty water that may have been trapped under Taylor Glacier for more than 1 million years.

The team’s study, published in the Journal of Glaciology, describes the brine’s 300-foot path from beneath Taylor Glacier to the waterfall. This path has been a mystery since geoscientist Griffith Taylor discovered Blood Falls in 1911.

Lead author Jessica Badgeley, then an undergraduate student at Colorado College, worked with University of Alaska Fairbanks glaciologist Erin Pettit and her research team to understand this unique feature. They used a type of radar to detect the brine feeding Blood Falls.

“The salts in the brine made this discovery possible by amplifying contrast with the fresh glacier ice,” Badgeley said.

Blood Falls is famous for its sporadic releases of iron-rich salty water. The brine turns red when the iron contacts air.

The team tracked the brine with radio-echo sounding, a radar method that uses two antenna — one to transmit electrical pulses and one to receive the signals.

“We moved the antennae around the glacier in grid-like patterns so that we could ‘see’ what was underneath us inside the ice, kind of like a bat uses echolocation to ‘see’ things around it,” said co-author Christina Carr, a doctoral student at UAF.

Pettit said the researchers made another significant discovery – that liquid water can persist inside an extremely cold glacier. Scientists previously thought this was nearly impossible, but Pettit said the freezing process explains how water can flow in a cold glacier.

“While it sounds counterintuitive, water releases heat as it freezes, and that heat warms the surrounding colder ice,” she said. The heat and the lower freezing temperature of salty water make liquid movement possible. “Taylor Glacier is now the coldest known glacier to have persistently flowing water.”

Pettit said she enlisted Badgeley as an undergraduate student to help with the overall mission of understanding the hydrological plumbing of cold-based glaciers.

“Jessica’s work is a perfect example of the high level of work undergraduate students can do when you give them a challenge and set the expectations high,” she said.

The National Science Foundation sponsored the research.

ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Erin Pettit, ecpettit@alaska.edu

ONLINE: “An Englacial Hydrologic System of Brine Within a Cold Glacier: Blood Falls, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica,” Journal of Glaciology, April 24, 2017, http://bit.ly/2peicdz

The University of Alaska Fairbanks honored dozens of students on Saturday, April 22, at its annual student awards breakfast. Each spring, UAF recognizes students who have distinguished themselves throughout their academic careers.

Among those honored were the winners of the Marion Frances Boswell Memorial Award (outstanding senior woman) the Joel Wiegert Award (outstanding senior man) and the Gray S. Tilly Memorial Award (outstanding non-traditional student).

Emelia Van Wyhe, of Kenny Lake, Alaska, received the 2017 Marion Frances Boswell Memorial Award. She is graduating with a bachelor of arts double major in political science and rural development, with a concentration in natural resource development.

During her four years of undergraduate study at UAF, Van Wyhe has served as a student ambassador, a new student orientation leader and a resident assistant. During her junior year, Van Wyhe worked as an intern for the Alaska Legislature in Juneau. She is a member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and Golden Key International Honor Society, and has spent every semester on either the Dean’s List or Chancellor’s List.

After graduation, Van Wyhe plans to remain in Alaska to gain work experience in the Legislature. She eventually hopes to pursue a master’s degree in food policy and agricultural law.

Gabriel Cartagena, of Fairbanks, received the 2017 Joel Wiegert Award. He is graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in psychology.
Cartagena’s passion has been in balancing research, service and academics. His research interests have been in psycho-immunology, studying how people live with chronic illnesses such as HIV/AIDS. Through the support of UAF and the National Institutes of Health, he has been able to work with communities in Alaska and South Africa. He also enjoys serving the Fairbanks community as a mentor and volunteer.

After graduation, Cartagena plans to pursue a doctorate in clinical health psychology at the University of Florida, working in a psycho-oncology laboratory and studying cancer survivorship.

Katrina Nunemann, of Fairbanks, received the 2017 Gray S. Tilly Memorial Award. She is graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in child development and family studies.

Originally from Montrose, Colorado, Nunemann is completing a 30-year journey to complete a degree that supports working with young children and their families. After getting married and moving to Fairbanks in 1987, she delayed efforts to earn a degree while raising her two sons and running a business from home. Nunemann rejoined the workforce in 2002, returning to take occasional college courses while spending more than 15 years working in the field of education and family services with organizations such as Alaska Camp Fire USA, Resource Center for Parents and Children, and the Fairbanks Native Association Head Start 0-5 Program. She is grateful to family, friends, co-workers and university instructors for providing encouragement along the way to her longtime goal of graduating from college.

Scholar Athlete Awards

The Scholar Athlete Awards honor male and female student-athletes at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The recipients are selected based upon their excellence in academic achievement, athletic achievement, campus and community service, and character.
• Nichole Bathe, senior,  justice and social work, cross-country skiing
• Brandon Morley, senior, business administration, hockey player

ASUAF Award for Outstanding Faculty and Staff

The Associated Students of UAF Award for Outstanding Faculty and Staff is selected by students and awarded to the faculty and staff members who have made the most significant contributions to students.
• Anvil Williamson, ASUAF office manager and advisor
• Jeremy Speight, assistant professor of political science

Outstanding students by schools and colleges

College of Engineering and Mines
Elliott R. Anderson, civil and environmental engineering
Lonny D. Strunk, computer science
Justin W. Long, electrical engineering
Zachary D. Theurer, computer engineering
Nora Gyswyt, geological engineering
Michael Fehrenbach, mechanical engineering
Alan Lipka, mining engineering
Jackson Conrad Page, petroleum engineering

College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences
Alina Fairbanks, fisheries

College of Liberal Arts
Baxter W. Bond, Alaska Native language
Jessica K. Obermiller, anthropology
Devante Owens, art
Lindsey Heaney, communications
Antonio D. Hamilton, English
Rosemary Svenson, foreign language
Sarah Shaw, history
Spencer Tordoff, journalism
Patrick J. Nestor, justice
Joshua Pharris, linguistics
Scott Stephen Hansen, music
Christin Martin, philosophy and humanities
Jacob B. Gerrish, political science
Gabriel Cartagena, psychology
Shirlie Morin, social work
Adante’ K. Jones, sociology
Amanda A. Casterline, theater and film
Jenelle Bess Jacobson, women’s and gender studies

College of Natural Science and Mathematics
Olivia Rhines, chemistry
Adam Haberski, wildlife biology and conservation
Savanna Burke , biological sciences
William Crumpacker, geosciences
Reyce C. Bogardus, geography
Harrison T. Hartle, physics
Julia M. Olson, mathematics and statistics

College of Rural and Community Development
Francisca Charriez-Miranda, social and human development
Jolene Nanouk , Alaska Native studies
Emelia K.C. Van Wyhe, rural development
Raymond I. Otto, developmental education
Lucinda B. Conwell-Wieler, tribal management

Community and Technical College
Michael S. Bristol, aviation maintenance
Joseph A. Rife, professional piloting
Sabine R. Todd, associate of arts
Marcela Nichifor, applied accounting
Suki Merica, applied business
Jordan Hayward, automotive technology
David Smith, computer information technology specialist
Cory B. Crook, computer information technology specialist (distance)
Tammy Jo Keith, construction management
Cassandra Black, culinary arts and hospitality
Travis Clinton Sears, diesel/heavy equipment
Ryan Lind, drafting technology
Jennifer Taylor, early childhood education
Rebecca McPherson, fire science
Taniesha Rose Emry, human services
Mark Zastavskiy, paramedic academy
Joseph Brunsvold, paralegal studies
Thomas O’Donoghue, instrumentation technology
Luke Schruf, process technology
Danielle Francesca Wiley, safety, health and environmental awareness
Sonya Hale, medical assisting and allied health

School of Education
Daniel Nero, secondary education
Jamie E. Mayer, elementary education

School of Management
Gracelynn Jo Wiseman, business administration
Irina Brown, accounting
James Cameron Gilchrest, homeland security and emergency management
Jacob B. Gerrish, economics
Stephen Newman, military science and leadership

School of Natural Resources and Extension
Jennifer L. Sybert, natural resources management
Kelly Schmitz, agriculture and horticulture

With an upside-down box for a desk and her 11 siblings dutifully sitting in a row as her students, Caroline Tritt-Frank was a teacher decades before she formally took that role at her village’s one-room school house.

She had always loved school and preferred reading to doing housework. Maybe that was why the years she spent juggling University of Alaska Fairbanks correspondence classes with raising her two daughters in a traditional subsistence lifestyle never seemed particularly overwhelming. In 1990, Tritt-Frank became the first person to graduate from college in Vashraii K’oo (Arctic Village), a remote Alaska Native community of about 175 people where Gwich’in have lived for thousands of years.

As her two little girls played quietly at her feet, Tritt-Frank squinted to make out the words in her textbook. Even with two Coleman lanterns and the kerosene lamp on her desk, there wasn’t enough light in their one-room log cabin for her to read. That’s when her husband, Kenneth Frank, had a bright idea. Without saying a word, he left and returned with a headlamp so Tritt-Frank would have enough light to read and write her assignments on a yellow legal pad.

Online classes weren’t an option when Tritt-Frank was earning her bachelor’s degree in education in the late 1980s. Instead, she took correspondence classes where professors mailed her lessons and assignments. Handing in homework meant either walking a mile each way to the post office or sending a fax one page at a time.

“It was faster to walk to the post office and back than wait for the fax machine,” said Tritt-Frank, who still has her homework stashed away in her family’s cabin back in Arctic Village. “I waited for what sometimes seemed like an eternity for my professors to mail back my graded papers.”

After graduating from UAF in 1990, Tritt-Frank was promoted from a teacher’s aide to the teacher at the Arctic Village School, where she had worked since 1972. As a Gwich’in immersion teacher, she taught all classes in science, reading and social studies in her indigenous language.  While it was impossible to translate all of the curriculum into Gwich’in, she used the language to make academics more meaningful and relevant to her students.

“I became a teacher because I don’t want to lose my language,” said Tritt-Frank, who was part of the painstaking effort to translate voting and election materials from English into Alaska Native languages like Gwich’in. The November 2016 election was the first time that her 91-year-old mother, Naomi, who speaks very little English, could understand the ballot.

When Tritt-Frank walked across the stage at her commencement, she didn’t know she was starting a movement. Her example inspired those around to her realize that they could make their dreams of a college education a reality. Her husband, daughters and best friend, as well as more than a dozen of her former students, followed in her footsteps by earning degrees from UAF. A decade later, Frank-Tritt walked across the stage again, this time to receive her master’s degree in education.

Caroline’s daughter, Crystal Frank, hadn’t started kindergarten when she first accompanied her mom to meet with an academic advisor at UAF’s Interior Alaska Campus. She remembers playing hide-and-seek with her sister in the Harper Building. It was those visits, and watching her mom study by the light of the headlamp every night, that made Crystal decide that when she grew up she was going to college too.

“Whenever I felt discouraged in school, I thought of my mom,” said Frank, who is a graduate student and administrative coordinator for UAF’s Center for Cross-Cultural Studies. “She knew that earning a degree from UAF would make our lives better. She made it through college without luxuries like a computer, running water or electricity and while raising two little girls. Even though it was challenging for her because English is her second language, she never complained or talked about giving up. Her example motivated me to earn my master’s degree from UAF too.”

When Tritt-Frank was 16, she was sent away to Mt. Edgecumbe High School, a boarding school at Sitka in Southeast Alaska. During that era, the late 1960s, boarding schools forbade Alaska Native students from speaking their traditional languages. Even though she knew she would be punished, Tritt-Frank remained steadfast in her commitment to keep her culture and language alive. She persevered because even at a young age, she knew she wanted her children to speak their language and live their culture. Today, she, her daughters and Kenneth, who also attended boarding school, are among several hundred fluent Gwich’in speakers and language learners.

Once as punishment for speaking Gwich’in language in class, Tritt-Frank and three of her cousins were not allowed to join their classmates at weekly movie night.

“We pushed barrels next to the windows and watched the movie anyway,” said Tritt-Frank. “It was a Western movie. It didn’t matter to us that we couldn’t hear. We didn’t speak English well enough to understand what the actors were saying.”

Such punishments didn’t stop her from speaking her indigenous tongue.

“Gwich’in is the language of my soul and worthy of that sacrifice,” she said.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has announced recipients of the 2017 Emil Usibelli Distinguished Teaching, Research and Service Awards.

Sarah Fowell, associate professor of geology and director of the GeoFORCE Alaska program, received the teaching award; Eugenie Euskirchen, research associate professor of terrestrial ecology, received the research award; and Erin Pettit, associate professor of geophysics, received the service award. All three will be honored at a reception Monday, May 1.

Fowell, recipient of the teaching award, gets high marks from her students.

“She consistently receives teaching evaluations in the ‘very good’ to ‘excellent’ range, with the majority of students ranking her classes as ‘excellent,’” wrote Paul McCarthy, chair of the Department of Geosciences.

In nomination letters for the award, Fowell’s colleagues noted her efforts to incorporate a variety of learning methods in classes and her work mentoring other science educators. In addition to this year’s Usibelli teaching award, she has also been recognized with the 2007 College of Natural Science and Mathematics Outstanding Teaching Award and the 2014 Rural Student Services Dennis Demmert Award.

Fowell is also program director for GeoFORCE Alaska, a four-year, field-based summer geoscience program for high school students from the North Slope and Northwest Arctic school districts.

Fowell earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and two master’s degrees and a Ph.D., also in geology, from Columbia University. She has taught at UAF since 1997.

The research award went to Eugenie Euskirchen for her work in Arctic science, especially in identifying the effects of climate change on Arctic and boreal ecosystems using observations and modeling scenarios. She led the Integrated Ecosystem Modeling program at UAF, which combines fire and permafrost models and has applications in Alaska and other cold regions.

“She has become the ‘go to’ person for modeling of Arctic terrestrial ecosystems, particularly the ecosystem changes that will affect Alaska,” wrote John Walsh, chief scientist at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center and President’s Professor of Global Change, in a nomination letter.

Euskirchen, an associate research professor of terrestrial ecology, also attracted international attention when she collaborated with an economist and a social scientist to analyze the economic impact of climate change in the Arctic. Their estimate ran in the trillions of dollars.

Euskirchen has a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Marymount College, a master’s in mathematical sciences from Johns Hopkins University and a doctoral degree in forest science and ecology from Michigan Technological University. She has been affiliated with UAF since 2004.

Erin Pettit won the service award for her education outreach efforts, which encourage girls and young women to study science fields. Pettit, an associate professor of geophysics and glaciology, established the popular Girls on Ice program, an annual summer field school for high school girls that combines glacier studies, art, and outdoor and leadership skills. The field schools are staffed in part by undergraduate and graduate students who are mentored by Pettit to improve their own science teaching abilities. Girls on Ice has programs in Alaska, Washington and Switzerland.

“Erin has worked tirelessly to raise money for the program — and it has remained free to participants for many years as a result. Thus, this program has real potential to broaden participation in science among those who most need encouragement and support to consider a career [in the sciences],” wrote Laura Conner, a research assistant professor of science education at UAF, in support of Pettit’s nomination for the award.

Pettit has an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Brown University and a Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Washington. She has been at UAF since 2008.

The Emil Usibelli Distinguished Teaching, Research and Service Awards are considered among the university’s most prestigious awards. They represent UAF’s tripartite mission and are funded annually from a $600,000 endowment established by Usibelli Coal Mine in 1992.

Each year, a committee that includes members from the faculty, the student body and the UA Foundation board evaluates the nominees. Each winner receives a cash award of $10,000.

The elementary education degree program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks ranks seventh among the nation’s top 35, according to a national college review service.

College Choice said UAF’s education and training is honed to help local communities. For example, future teachers take classes in the Native cultures of Alaska to help them meet standards for preparing culturally responsive teachers.

The price of the education is also a prominent feature in UAF’s ranking. Alaska residents can expect to pay about $3,588 per semester in tuition. Nonresidents pay more, but students who live in states covered by the Western Undergraduate Exchange still get an almost unprecedented bargain.

“With a very respectable expected early career salary and extremely low tuition, UAF is a fantastic prospect for future educators,” said Christian Amondson, managing editor of College Choice.

College Choice developed the 2017 ranking for the 35 Best Elementary Education Degrees by looking at a combination of institutional academic reputation, specific program quality and return on investment. Data for the ranking comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. News & World Report, individual college websites and the National Council for Teacher Quality‘s 2016 ranking of 875 traditional undergraduate elementary programs.

Scientists and fishery managers will gather May 9-11 in Anchorage to discuss how climate warming, sea ice loss and ocean acidification affect fish in Arctic and sub-Arctic waters.

The 31^st Wakefield Symposium, organized by Alaska Sea Grant, will bring nearly 100 researchers and managers together at the Hotel Captain Cook.

They’ll discuss:

• The influence of ocean temperatures on Chinook salmon.
• The Blob, a region of warm North Pacific water, and walleye pollock.
• The effects of ocean acidification on Pacific cod.
• Evaluating management strategies under projected environmental changes.
• Coastal community adaptation to environmental variability and climate change.

A full agenda can be found at www.alaskaseagrant.org.

Other sponsors include National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, North Pacific Fishery Management Council, North Pacific Research Board, University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and North Pacific Marine Science Organization.

Alaska Sea Grant is a statewide marine research, education and outreach program operated as a partnership between UAF and NOAA. Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program agents help Alaskans wisely use, conserve and enjoy marine and coastal resources.

Objects are a powerful way to connect with something intangible. Think of the Liberty Bell or a dinosaur fossil. These symbols help bring abstract concepts alive, like a historical event or a past that existed long before people walked the Earth.

University of Alaska Fairbanks student Kate Tallman spent this semester working to excavate some of the university’s history for a centennial exhibit now on display at the Rasmuson Library. She had plenty of resources, from documents archived at the library to the history collection at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

She just had to decide on a theme.

After some preliminary research, Tallman noticed that the first president of the university had a signature vision for the school.

“Charles Bunnell’s vision was very community driven,” she said. “I discovered that the university had been a key player in many significant events over its history, so that became my goal when looking for specific stories to feature in the display.”

Exhibits rely on objects to help tell stories. So Tallman pored through thousands of historical artifacts in the museum’s collections to find the best ones.

Once Tallman had a general idea of a story she wanted to feature, she searched the museum’s database for related artifacts. One of her favorites is a movie camera used by Otto Geist, a naturalist commissioned by Bunnell to collect archaeological, ethnological and paleontological specimens for the museum he envisioned as part of the new university’s mission.

Geist filmed the people of St. Lawrence Island during one of his most prolific expeditions. Some of those videos are now preserved at the university’s film archives.

Tallman was also excited to include several borrowed editions of the High Water News. Produced by the university during the 1967 flood, the title of the newspaper was updated as the water levels changed. During the flood, the Chena River covered downtown Fairbanks in a lake 5 miles wide. Thousands of people evacuated to the university, located on higher ground.

Tallman said finding objects that are historically relevant can be time consuming.

“That was the longest part of the process,” she said. “You want to be absolutely sure that you are featuring artifacts that are not only interesting and applicable but are also the most historically accurate.”

Angela Linn, the museum’s senior collections manager of ethnology and history, has worked over the past 15 years with student employees and interns to install real museum exhibits. These pop-up displays at locations across campus highlight specific topics relating to the stories of Alaska’s residents.

“Exhibits are the way most people interact with museum collections,” Linn said. “Unless you have a class or a research project that involves coming into the lower level of the museum, the majority of the university community experiences only a tiny percentage of those 1.5 million objects and specimens preserved at the museum.”

The university’s centennial legacy is also on display at another location on campus, a newly installed wall case in the chancellor’s suite. Linn is excited about the new case, which offers a large-format installation space that can be refreshed every few years.

The current exhibit showcases the legacy of graduation at UAF. It features home economics professor Lola Tilly’s cap, Geist’s gown and university regent Mike Walsh’s honorary doctoral hood. It also includes copies of two of the first diplomas awarded to graduates. The display was the result of a collaboration with Jeannie Phillips from the chancellor’s office.​

While some people might feel that history is just a monotonous string of names and dates, Tallman hopes exhibits like these can change minds. Her own interest flourished when she moved to Fairbanks with her husband to pursue a degree at UAF and discovered the museum research apprenticeship program.

“You get to learn from and gain work experience under industry professionals who have decades processing, cataloging, curating and preserving knowledge,” she said. “And Alaska is such a unique environment. The ethnology department works to preserve and protect the history and culture of people who live nowhere else on the planet.”

Linn said that has been a common experience.

“I have loved seeing the creativity and academic rigor students put into these exhibits over the years. I’ve never been disappointed,” Linn said. “I think the most important thing that they learn is that exhibits don’t ever just ‘pop up.’ They take a lot of effort and coordination.”

The centennial exhibit now on display in the Rasmuson Library is something the extended UAF community can connect with, though Tallman herself doesn’t have long years of experience here.

As it turns out, she was learning all about her new community as she worked on her project.

“It might sound cheesy, but I really grew to love this school as I learned about its history,” she said. “I am so proud to say I will be an alumna of UAF.”