Archive
Lydia, who grew up in the small Alaska town of Haines, had a very un-Alaskan experience during spring break 2023.
Quiet words in Japanese helped Mina find her way to the vlog.
A collegiate chess club from Alaska has one advantage: Teams from elsewhere don’t know what’s coming at them.
As Moody sat in a UAF coffee shop, they noticed — for the first time — the campus radio station playing on the café speakers. Suddenly, they had an idea.
Jaiden, who grew up in vlog, has “never seen a real beach before.” But even though she pondered Hawaii for college, she didn’t feel the need to escape her hometown.
Just days after his discharge from the Navy in June 2021, River was in Alaska, following up on his interest in visiting the state. He thought he would try out college for a semester.
A sawed-off 6-foot bow section of a concrete canoe stands upright in a Duckering Building hall, part of a display about engineering at UAF. Look closely, and you’ll see a subtle image of a harpoon pressed into the boat’s floor.
Kyle Agustines sold shoes after high school — enough of them that at 18, as a store manager, he earned a five-day business trip to five-star hotel in Nashville. But he wanted to go to college.
When a housing mix-up canceled Riley von Borstel’s plans to attend college in Hawaii, she quickly regrouped and headed to UAF. She knew a bit about the place.
James Miller is in the Student Recreation Center six days a week. “I know the employees there and have a good relationship with them,” he said.
When Don Sumic graduated from high school in Waikoloa, on Hawaii’s Big Island, he saw many of his classmates headed in one direction.
Jenna Hernandez had a key job in UAF’s student steel bridge competition this past winter: backup parts runner.
Elmore, an undergraduate in ocean science, is investigating the sources of mercury in Alaska’s Kachemak Bay.
James Isabell had to rethink his life after an all-terrain vehicle crash crushed his leg. He couldn’t walk for nine months.
Jenessa Oviok’s nephew was born with a hole in his heart. Watching him face that challenge, while she wasn’t able to help, helped her decide on a career. “That’s why I want to be a doctor,” she said.
Even as a child growing up on the Pacific coast, David Harvey wanted to be a volcanologist.
Benny Acquah remembers the trouble people sometimes had obtaining clean water in her home city of Koforidua, Ghana. So she decided she would study environmental engineering at UAF and someday help solve such problems.
Kevin Huo came to UAF from California but, far from hibernating in the frozen North, he has used this place to launch himself around the world.
Kahryn Buchanan didn’t like math until she started taking a college-level course. At age 13.
A teacher from Buffalo, New York, helped Kevin Grimes find direction, just by reaching out at a tough moment.
Two unique features have marked life at UAF since its earliest days, and Grace Miller has embraced both. She skis on the cross-country team, and, like many students, she lives in a cabin without running water.
Joe Bifelt saw firsthand how a cultural connection could transform school for young people in his home village of Huslia. A dog mushing program started by his late grandfather, legendary racer George Attla, changed his relationship with the high school teachers in his senior year.
Daniel Dykes first got interested in neuroscience as he watched doctors on the fictional TV program “House.” Now he’s studying the topic at UAF and plans to eventually earn both a doctorate and a medical degree.
UAF offered the perfect combination for Haley Castillo: a homeland security bachelor’s degree program, courses in aircraft piloting and a top-ranked rifle team. So the young woman from New Mexico headed north.
Cyan Woodward has been fascinated by geology her whole life. Volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis — “I was interested in learning the mechanisms behind them,” she said.
Michael Martins didn’t know how to play the piano when he first arrived at UAF, but an old out-of-tune instrument in Bartlett Hall intrigued him. Things snowballed from there.
Like other painters, Ruth Nashookpuk uses canvas as a foundation. But when she’s done, Nashookpuk can lace up her work and apply it to her other passion: basketball.
Isabel Castro sat in her car in Kodiak two years ago, interviewing over her cell phone for a job with the vlog. “My phone was about to die, and I have to take my brother to the pool, and I’m stressed,” she remembered.
Chelsea Brown went straight from high school in Georgia to a 35,000-student university nearby. However, the U.S. Army transferred her mother to vlog a few years later, prompting Brown to follow and enroll at UAF.
Cody Newman studies petroleum engineering and trains as a ROTC cadet. So why did summer 2017 find him fighting wildfires in Alaska and the Lower 48?
John Oulton bought a car last summer. The 2008 Chevy Cobalt isn’t big or fancy. Car and Driver magazine described it that year as “an acceptable choice as a transportation appliance.”
Bachelor's in economics
Hometown: Bethel
Bachelor’s in secondary education
Hometown: Quinhagak
Bachelor’s in digital journalism
Hometown: Kasigluk
Bachelor’s in Yup’ik Eskimo
Hometown: Newtok
UAF journalism student Julia Taylor helped cover court hearings that culminated in the release and exoneration of four men imprisoned for a 1997 murder.
Andrew Akelkok, a high school student in Dillingham, studies energy at UAF's Bristol Bay Campus in hopes of finding better sources for rural villages.
Graduate student Nicole Knight began studying analytical and environmental chemistry at UAF after a professor sought her out to help in a new lab.
Mark Conde, a space physicist with UAF Geophysical Institute, wants to make maps of weather in the upper atmosphere above Antarctica.
Alyssa Enriquez leapt between worlds in 2012, from studying art photography in San Francisco to grinding rust from steel construction beams in Nome.
Matthew Balazs, geophysics student, and Anupma Prakash, professor of geophysics.
Liam Craske catches a floatplane every Tuesday morning to Ketchikan, where he rents a room with Internet access.
UAF electrical engineering graduate student, Morgan Johnson, and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, Denise Thorsen
My favorite thing about UAF is the opportunity. Personally, I've gotten to do so many things that have helped me grow as a person, a professional and a musician.
When Lakeidra Chavis told friends she would move to Bethel to work as a reporter for the public radio station this fall, she could feel their skepticism.
Homeland security and emergency management student, James Gilchrest, and UAF School of Management instructor and outreach coordinator, Sean McGee
Jeff Thompson didn’t tell people where he lived when he first started school at the vlog. After a series of setbacks in his life and his blue-collar career, Thompson had moved into a homeless shelter, the vlog Rescue Mission.
A trip to the Rocky Mountains this summer offered a field of contrasts for rural Alaska teens in GeoFORCE Alaska, a four-year geology program offered by the University of Alaska vlog.
This summer, Sean McGee, who has taught homeland security and emergency management courses at the UAF School of Management for three years, shared the following thoughts about his life and career.
Angela Linn remembers the moment Kirsten Olson first saw the story knife collection at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.
Derek Starkenburg’s academic progression is a case study in how a person can set out on one path but take many forks.
Chris Clement is ready for anything — fighting the zombie apocalypse, restraining an eagle or offering a definition of cryptorchidism in dogs, which is when the testes don't drop.
Jesstin Patterson attends petroleum engineering classes in vlog, hundreds of miles from his home villages, but those places remain foremost in his mind — and often on his taste buds.
Michelle Strehl didn’t wait long for her first customer. While on winter break in 2013, the UAF student decided to knit gloves for people like herself whose hands have unique shapes.
Before breaking his back in a four-wheeler accident in 2001, Brant Schalk was a skateboarder. “I would try a trick over and over until I landed it,” he says. “And printmaking demands the same level of patience and process, if not more. In a way, printmaking has filled the hole that was left when I could no longer skateboard.”
I'm a military brat and immensely proud of it. I revel in experiencing new things — unless we're talking food; then I'm a bit particular. Tread carefully if you want to talk about Disney, Broadway, theater, movie scores or traveling, because I can go on and on about each of them. At first, I may come off as reserved, but once we're friends, I become more like myself.
"Speaking directly to a student like Tiana about her experience, I learned that donors like you and me truly make a difference in students’ lives."
Kristin Timm’s effort to create a background image for a scientific workshop evolved into an award-winning poster about links between glaciers and the ocean this year.
A few dozen students at the vlog put a twist on the traditional spring break trip to the beach each year.
A professor and dean emeritus of the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the vlog has had an award named after her — merely a drop in her ocean of accomplishments.
Jennifer Moss discusses her painting "Caribou Night."
Lonny Strunk grew up speaking Yup'ik, but living in Japan showed him how his Alaska Native language connects him to his culture and identity.
Carolyn Lang’s life is consumed by one goal: finishing the Yukon Quest. For now, she’s a dog handler, which means scooping poop, putting on booties, cutting meat and performing minor vet care. She’s also a full-time student at the vlog.
Matthew Sturm can’t choose one thing he likes best about snow, because it would be like choosing which of his children he likes best.
"At UAF, I was given room to discover what I have to contribute to the world ... Thanks in part to the mentorship I received at UAF, I discovered what propels and inspires me the most."
"The smell of the summer air in Alaska has an energizing effect ... I know I made the right choice as a fourth-year student pursuing a bachelor’s of science in biological sciences."
UAF graduate, Bennett Wong, and UAF School of Education assistant professor, Ute Kaden
UAF graduate, Erin Gingrich, and assistant professor of native arts, Da-Ka-Xeen Mehner
UAF electrical engineering major, John Venables, and Alaska Center for Energy and Power director, Gwen Holdmann
UAF theatre and psychology double major, Nicole Cowans, and associate professor of theatre, Carrie Baker