UAF100 Timeline - 100 years of history

A gold miner uncovered Blue Babe, a frozen bison, at Pearl Creek north of Fairbanks in 1979. The 35,000-year-old carcass was preserved and is displayed at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. Scientists continue to study the frozen remains for clues about Earth鈥檚 changing environment.

Walter Roman had found many ancient bones as he washed muck from atop gold-bearing gravels at his mine. In midsummer 1979, he uncovered something new: hooves and legs with flesh and skin still attached.

Professor Dale Guthrie, a 汤姆视频 paleontologist, got the call to come take a look. Guthrie saw the appendages of a long-frozen ancient bison sticking from the mud bank next to Pearl Creek.

Roman moved his washing operation to let the carcass thaw gently. Guthrie and his wife, Mary Lee, spent about two weeks gradually excavating it. The skin was covered in vivianite, an iron phosphate that turns blue when exposed to oxygen, so they dubbed the bison 鈥淏lue Babe,鈥� recalling Paul Bunyan鈥檚 mythical ox.

After hauling the carcass to the university and refreezing it, Guthrie began analyzing Blue Babe鈥檚 details. He determined the bison lived about 35,000 years ago, but how did he die? Why he was so well preserved? What was the environment like then?

Guthrie matched puncture wounds in the hide with teeth from a Pleistocene lion skull in the museum. A fragment of lion鈥檚 tooth was later found in the skin. The fragment — no doubt broken when the lion tried to take a bite of frozen bison — the lack of decomposition and maggots, and ample body fat indicate Blue Babe was a healthy animal killed in the winter. The next spring, silt carried by snowmelt or rainwater buried the carcass.

The Guthries and others even cooked a bit of the 35,000-year-old meat in a stew.

Most of Blue Babe's skin was preserved and is now publicly displayed on a model at the museum.

The head and horns were kept frozen, and they continue to reveal not only Blue Babe鈥檚 story but also the Earth鈥檚. UAF Professor Matthew Wooller and others analyzed nitrogen isotopes, which reflect an animal鈥檚 diet, in collagen extracted from the bones. That analysis helped Wooller and other scientists confirm in a 2017 report that moisture spiked just prior to extinctions of many of the large species that populated the dry ice age steppe.

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The University of Alaska graduated its first Alaska Native student in 1935, but attendance and graduation rates for Native students remained low for decades. To change this, UAF created the Rural Alaska Honors Institute in 1983, at the urging of the Alaska Federation of Natives. The summer session on the Troth Yeddha鈥� campus in Fairbanks provides college prep courses and introduces rural students to urban campus life. Today, many of its more than 1,800 graduates will describe their summer at UAF as a life-changing experience, and studies back them up.

Several Alaska Native students who attended the university鈥檚 during its first decades successfully graduated and put their college educations to work in various ways. Examples included Flora Jane Harper, Tim Twitchell and Arthur Nagozruk Jr. 鈥� who were respective Athabascan, Yup鈥檌k and Inupiaq graduates from the university鈥檚 first three decades.

However, by the 1970s it was clear that too few Alaska Native students enrolled, and, of those who did, too few finished. In 1982, leaders of the Alaska Federation of Natives, meeting at the Fairbanks campus, asked the university to help better prepare college-bound Native students. UAF created the Rural Alaska Honors Institute to answer that call; the academy鈥檚 first summer was 1983.

The program has adapted over the years, but the basic approach remains the same: Students from rural Alaska live on the Fairbanks campus for several weeks while taking college courses and participating in recreational and cultural activities.

Teachers include not only UAF faculty but also others from around Alaska and even the Lower 48.

During the first decade, students were graded on effort and achievement. In 1994, students began receiving standard, graded university credits in the core classes. Jim Kowalsky, who became RAHI director in 1986 and would lead it for the next 18 years, described the change as 鈥渁 large leap.鈥�

Students might not be as willing to take tough classes, he noted in the 1994 yearbook, and there were questions about fairness when some students had lighter loads than others. On the positive side, 鈥渢he RAHI credit track allows students to enter college as full-time freshmen with anywhere from eight to 16 or more college credits already earned 鈥� the equivalent of more than one semester,鈥� he wrote.

In 2006, the American Institutes for Research found that rural Alaska Native students were twice as likely to earn a bachelor鈥檚 degree if they had attended RAHI.

Enrollment has risen and fallen with budgets. In 1993, following state cuts, only 27 students could be enrolled. In 2016, the 68 students comprised the largest graduating class. Kowalsky was that year鈥檚 keynote graduation speaker.

KSUA, broadcasting from the Fairbanks campus at 91.5 FM, continues a tradition of student-led radio that spans more than half of the university鈥檚 100 years. KSUA FM began public broadcasts as an independent, student-owned commercial station in 1984. It shut down briefly after financial problems in 1993 and returned later that year as a university-owned, student-operated station, which it remains. In 2013, KSUA won the Woodie Award presented by MTV to the nation鈥檚 best college radio station.

KSUA FM opened its first broadcast on Sept. 6, 1984, with the Steely Dan hit 鈥淔M (No Static at All),鈥� according to Jerry Evans, a Fairbanks radio veteran who helped launch the student station.

Evans and his buddy, Glen 鈥淕lenner鈥� Anderson, had started their popular banter on KMPS, the low-power student station that transmitted across campus over electrical wires for much of the 1970s.

KMPS wasn鈥檛 the first student station of that sort. The first, KUOA, powered up in 1955 in Room 115 of the Eielson Building. Its carrier current system performed poorly. So students sold the KUOA license to what became KUAC, the university鈥檚 public radio station, in 1962. A decade later, student government started KMPS, which was then phased out as the nonprofit Student Media Inc. launched KSUA.

In 1984, with KSUA鈥檚 public signal at 103.9 FM, the student station gathered a much wider audience. Its mix of singles and album-oriented rock in a wide variety of genres drew listeners not only on campus but also in the greater Fairbanks area. However, an economic downturn caused by low oil prices hit the state in the late 1980s, and then multiple competing stations opened in Fairbanks in the early 1990s. KSUA couldn鈥檛 overcome its financial problems and closed on March 8, 1993, playing Pearl Jam鈥檚鈥淎live.鈥�

In the following months, Student Media Inc. was dissolved and the university acquired the license. On Dec. 2, 1993, the station began broadcasting again, opening with 鈥淎live.鈥�

Today, the university continues to hold the license in trust for students. The station is managed by the Associated Students of UAF via the KSUA Media Board. In addition to student employees, dozens of volunteers help keep the station running from its studio in Constitution Hall. KSUA now broadcasts on 91.5 FM after trading its 103.9 position to a Fairbanks commercial station.

Articles from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Regents may put off store talks written by Karen Aho (PDF)
Regents consider store site written by Jonathan Holland (PDF)
University land in great demand written by Karen Aho (PDF)

As concern about global climate change grew in the 1990s, the 汤姆视频 opened its International Arctic Research Center to focus on that and other science of interest to the North. The government of Japan paid for about two-thirds of the building鈥檚 cost, thanks to a decade of diplomacy by Syun-Ichi Akasofu, director of the UAF Geophysical Institute. Akasofu became IARC鈥檚 first director in 1999.

When President Bill Clinton and Japan鈥檚 Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto released a statement during Clinton鈥檚 visit to Japan in April 1996, it contained a short sentence of great import to the 汤姆视频.

鈥淲e will soon collaborate on Arctic research,鈥� the statement declared. The seven words were among more than 900 in a joint summary of the U.S.-Japan common agenda.

The words appeared in part due to the efforts of Syun-Ichi Akasofu, then the director of the UAF Geophysical Institute (GI). Akasofu had first come to Fairbanks from Japan as a student in 1958, at the invitation of the famous space physicist Sydney Chapman. Akasofu stayed at the university after earning his doctorate and took the Geophysical Institute鈥檚 helm in 1986.

鈥淣ot long after he became director of the institute, Akasofu had an idea to create a formal arrangement that would allow more international researchers to follow the path he took to Fairbanks and study the most pressing issues of the Arctic,鈥� wrote Fairbanks Daily News-Miner columnist Dermot Cole in March 1998. 鈥淭he fruition of that effort, one of the great success stories to emerge from the University of Alaska in many years, is taking shape next to the Geophysical Institute.鈥�

That great success story opened a few months later as what is now called the Akasofu Building, home to the International Arctic Research Center.

Akasofu had spent a decade traveling between Tokyo and Washington, D.C., to secure the agreements and funding necessary to create the center. He estimated he had visited one of those cities at least once a month during the past four years.

In the end, Japan covered $20 million of the center鈥檚 $32 million construction bill, with the rest coming from U.S. sources. Akasofu credited U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, with securing much of the federal funding.

During an October 1998 media tour of the building in advance of its grand opening, Akasofu expressed satisfaction with the outcome but trepidation about its future. 鈥淚t鈥檚 sort of an anti-climax,鈥� he said. 鈥淭o build the building is one thing. To get all the scientists to come here is the more difficult task.鈥�

By the late 1990s, global warming was a hot topic for scientific inquiry, and the center was expected to play a big part in studying its causes and effects in the Arctic.

鈥淭his will be a major scientific project for years to come,鈥� Akasofu told Cole in 1998, and the prediction has proved correct.

Akasofu became IARC鈥檚 first director, serving until he retired in 2007.

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Troth Yeddha' Initiative
by the Alaska Native Language

UAF jumped to the forefront of national efforts to develop uses for drones in December 2013 when the Federal Aviation Administration chose it to lead one of only six federally authorized test ranges. The 汤姆视频-led range involves other organizations in an area roughly centered on the northern Pacific Ocean.

UAF began its organized effort to develop unmanned aircraft systems in 2001, but the effort expanded and grew more focused when the UA Board of Regents officially created the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in December 2012.

A year later, the Federal Aviation Administration selected the center to lead the Pan-Pacific UAS Test Range Complex. The complex involves state partners in Oregon and Hawaii, which, like Alaska, have designated test range areas. The complex also has a range in Iceland.

ACUASI already has put drones to work in numerous fields.

Public safety needs were an immediate source of interest. The center sent a drone over the 200,000-acre Funny River Fire on the Kenai Peninsula in 2014 to help crews identify hotspots within its perimeter. In 2016, the center helped search for a missing boy near Fairbanks by launching a drone with an infrared sensors that could 鈥渟ee鈥� into forests. The drone didn鈥檛 find the boy — a motorist did — but the information helped narrow the search area, making efforts more efficient.

Drones are also helping to watch wildlife with ACUASI鈥檚 help. In 2015, the center subcontracted with Northern Embedded Solutions, a Fairbanks company founded by UAF engineering students, to help a UAF researcher track sea otters.

ACUASI has also participated in cutting-edge science work on a national and international scale. In September 2016, staff helped track a high-altitude glider from its release by a balloon 13 miles above the Earth to its landing in Oregon. The NASA-funded project was part of a study of next-generation space planes.

ACUASI鈥檚 complex in 2017 also helped test the ArcticShark, a drone with a 22-foot wingspan that will carry more than a dozen instruments to sample Arctic air starting in 2018.

But drones are also just plain fun. In December 2017, the center held drone races in the Patty Center ice arena on the Fairbanks campus. Staff had already built a test course in the basement of the Akasofu Building — a series of hoops suspended from the ceiling and surrounded with nets.

In the course of just a few years, UAF began work on a new heat and power plant, a biology building on West Ridge, a dining facility in Wood Center and an engineering building next to Duckering. Work progressed at different rates, but all will be done by 2018, completing the most dramatic changes to the Fairbanks campus landscape in decades.

Heat and power

On Dec. 11, 1998, a boiler tube in UAF鈥檚 heat and power plant blew up just as the outside temperature dropped to minus 22 degrees. Temperatures in university buildings began to fall. 汤姆视频 10 hours later, employees were able to restart the plant, heading off a campuswide evacuation by just an hour.

The incident illustrated the risks posed by the aging plant, whose main boilers were installed in 1964.

University officials put a new plant on the top of their wish list, but securing money for such an enormous project took many years. Using state grants and money from a revenue bond, work on the $245 million project began in July 2015. The university plans to open the new, coal-fired heat and power plant in 2018, 20 years after the dramatic December boiler tube failure.

Wood Center

A 34,000-square-foot expansion of the William Ransom Wood Center created a new central dining facility for the Fairbanks campus when it opened in August 2014.

The new facility, which replaced the 51-year-old Lola Tilly Commons, also features a coffee shop and remodeled student services offices. A portrait of Lola Tilly, a beloved professor from the university鈥檚 early years, hangs in the new 420-seat dining hall.

The 2014 expansion was financed, designed and built by private companies. UAF will lease the building for 30 years and then will take ownership. The plan limited the amount of up-front construction money needed from the state.

The expansion represented a favorite milestone for then-Chancellor Brian Rogers. He was a student when the Legislature approved a $4 million loan to build the original Wood Center, completed in 1972. Eight years later, as a state legislator, Rogers obtained state money to pay off the debt.

Biology

The ribbon-cutting and dedication of the Margaret Murie Building was held Aug. 22, 2013. The building was named for the first woman graduate of the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, which eventually became the 汤姆视频.

Murie grew up in Fairbanks. She and her husband, Olaus, later became nationally known wilderness advocates.

The facility has nearly 100,000 square feet of state-of-the-art laboratories, classrooms and office space, as well as a 150-seat auditorium. The building serves as a central home for the Department of Biology and Wildlife and supports research and teaching in biology, physiology and infectious diseases.

The $88 million in construction money came from a statewide bond issue approved by Alaska voters in August 2010 after a long campaign advocating for a new life sciences building.

Engineering

Engineering enrollment grew rapidly in the first decade of the 21st century, and UAF needed new space to adequately meet the demand. UA regents approved a new building in 2010, but funding lagged.

The Alaska Legislature supplied part of the money, so construction began in 2013. However, legislators declined to provide more funding in 2015, so the work halted in August that year. It didn鈥檛 resume until a year later, after regents approved alternative financing.

A ribbon-cutting was held in December 2017, and classes were to begin in January 2018.

The six-story Engineering Learning and Innovation Facility, nestled between the Duckering and Bunnell buildings, features open labs, a cold room, a 48-foot high bay for testing large structures and a 鈥渟trong floor鈥� that can support extremely heavy items.

The research vessel Sikuliaq, which UAF operates for the National Science Foundation, arrived in its homeport of Seward on Feb. 23, 2015. The 261-foot oceanographic vessel can break through ice 2.5 feet thick. That makes it able to handle more spring and fall conditions in the Arctic and Antarctic, extending the annual window during which ship-based scientists can study polar oceans. The Sikuliaq hosts up to 26 scientists and students on a voyage.

On a cold Wisconsin day in October 2012, the newest, most advanced oceanographic research ship in the United States slid down a set of rails and splashed into Lake Michigan.

A few moments before, Vera Alexander had christened the vessel 鈥�Sikuliaq,鈥� an Inupiaq word meaning 鈥測oung sea ice.鈥�

Alexander, who worked on the ship鈥檚 design starting in the 1970s, served for decades as a faculty member and dean in what is today the 汤姆视频 College of Fisheries and Ocean Science.

鈥淚t was a long, long odyssey,鈥� she said of the effort to make the ship a reality. After scientists settled on the needed features, Congress approved $1 million for a detailed design in 2001.

Finally, in an economic stimulus bill passed after the 2008 U.S. financial meltdown, Congress provided $200 million for construction.

A few years of sea trials followed the christening in 2012. On Feb. 23, 2015, the Sikuliaq sailed into Seward, its homeport on the Gulf of Alaska coast.

Though operated by UAF, the ship is part of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System, and scientists from across the globe use it.

From the Sikuliaq (pronounced see-KOO-le-auk), researchers can collect seafloor sediments, guide remotely operated vehicles, winch scientific equipment throughout the water column and take samples with a wide variety of instruments. The ship鈥檚 design minimizes underwater noise to avoid disturbing marine mammals and fish.

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UAF kicked off the centennial celebration with an enhanced version of the traditional Sparktacular fireworks show on West Ridge. KUAC-FM broadcast 鈥淰ariations on Happy Birthday鈥� — performed by the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin and Misha Rashlevsky — in synchrony with the fireworks.

UAF then held multiple special events throughout the anniversary year.

They included a celebration and re-enactment of the signing of the university鈥檚 founding legislation, numerous lectures featuring prominent faculty and administrators, a midsummer Nanook Rendezvous for alumni, a talk by National Public Radio correspondent Shankar Vedantam, a 鈥淐entennial鈥� overture performance, and even a keg-tapping to taste beer made from 汤姆视频-grown barley.

UAF100 Timeline

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The Sun Star

汤姆视频

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

A bison for the ages

A head start on success

KSUA hits the airwaves

University reorganizes 鈥� again

The big blue dish goes to work

Shopping center fails to sell

Diplomacy creates research center

Majestic museum opens amidst contract strife

A decade of champions

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A ray of sunshine

Ridge name restored

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Unmanned aircraft center soars