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Friday Focus: Happy start of the new year

Happy new year and start of the spring semester to the UAF community! I hope that you experienced a joyful holiday season and are looking forward to what 2024 has to bring. We have so much happening at UAF that continues to make it a wonderful place to be. This Friday Focus highlights a couple of exciting developments and upcoming events planned for the spring.
 
Save the date: 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of UAF’s Festival of Native Arts. This year’s festival will take place Feb. 22-24 at the UAF Troth Yeddha’ Campus. The tradition of Festival of Native Arts began in 1973, when a group of UAF students and faculty conceived of a spring festival that focused on Alaska Native cultural expression. In less than three months, artisans and performers traveled from across Alaska to gather at UAF to participate in the first ever Festival of Native Arts celebration. That tradition has continued over the past five decades, making the festival not only one of the most highly anticipated annual events but also an official Nanook Tradition. Over these many years, one enduring aspect of the event is that it continues to be driven by UAF students. Planning for the Festival of Native Arts is a year-round affair and it is thanks to the dedication of UAF students who volunteer countless hours of their time every year that we get to enjoy this wonderful event. The theme of this year’s festival is “Troth Yeddha’ Forever,” which is both appropriate in terms of acknowledging that the ridge that UAF sits upon has/is/forever will be Troth Yeddha’ and also timely in that the efforts to advance the future Troth Yeddha’ Indigenous Studies Center at UAF just hit another important milestone.
 
As many of you may be aware, UAF’s No. 1 capital priority is construction of the Troth Yeddha’ Indigenous Studies Center, which will be located between the UA Museum of the North and the Reichardt Building. The vision for TYISC began over a decade ago and has come a long way since then. Momentum began building in June 2021 when the Board of Regents granted the formal project approval needed to begin moving from conceptual design of the facility to schematic design. Since then, UAF has been off to the races by assembling the Legacy Committee to guide capital fundraising efforts, a user committee that works in partnership with our contracted design team, and a growing team of UAF staff with dedicated roles to help the center become a reality. This past December, UAF hit another milestone in our journey towards the Troth Yeddha’ Indigenous Studies Center by accomplishing 35% design. With this development, we now have the initial blueprint of what will be a three-story, 40,000-square-foot facility that was designed with Indigenous knowledge, pedagogy and artistic inspiration in mind. To learn more about the Troth Yeddha’ Indigenous Studies Center Initiative or see the latest renderings, visit the initiative website. I am excited to continue making progress and providing all of you with updates on this transformative initiative in the coming year.