March 2010

by Kathleen McCoy  |   

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Thank you to all who participated in UAA's 2010 Day of Service by contributing your time at Children's Lunchbox, Food Bank of Alaska, Kid's Kitchen, New Hope on the Last Frontier and Willow United Methodist Church. More than 50 people participated in the day organized by Anna Bryant, and other Governance Day of Service committee members including Debbie Narang, Russell Pressley, Melodee Monson and Ira Rosnel. We are very proud of the contributions our faculty, staff and students make to the community!

UAA Day of Service
Governor Parnell recently visited the Student Union to talk with a group of more than 60 students, faculty and staff about domestic violence and scholarships. Students thanked him for his efforts to expand scholarships and talked about the importance of more needs-based scholarships in the future.

Governor Parnell with UAA students
Legislative budget update: Senate Finance Committee held a statewide public hearing on March 24. Thank you for testifying on behalf of UAA priorities. The Governor's proposed budget for UA is a $12.4 million increase, 3.8 percent over the current fiscal year. The House Finance Committee's proposed budget for UA is slightly lower at $11.8 million, a 3.5 percent increase. The Senate Finance Committee's proposed budget for UA is slightly higher at $14.1 million increase (4.3 percent). The next major step in the budget process is a conference committee between the House and Senate, where legislators must work out differences. The university prefers the Senate level of funding and a single appropriation as proposed by Gov. Parnell.

After a successful visit from the Board of Examiners for the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), we received an oral report that all programs in our College of Education received favorable reviews with technology, diversity and assessment being especially strong. Congratulations and thank you for your excellent work!

Please turn off the lights when you leave a room, set your printer's default to duplex and ride the bus to work one time this week. Take these steps to help UAA win our sustainability competition with UAF.

Sustainability Cup

Visit www.uaa.alaska.edu/sustainability for incentive prizes and more information on how you can continue to help us become more efficient in our use of paper, electricity and transportation.

"UAA Against Domestic Violence" kicked off this month and continues on Monday, April 5, with the improv show, "Sex Signals," free to the public at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium at 7:30 p.m.

Sex Signals program

Come to the den at the Student Union on Wednesday, April 7, when retired Judge Karen Hunt moderates a panel discussion on domestic violence including an overview of work at UAA and in the city. UAA professors Randy Magen and Marny Rivera are joined by Municipal Prosecutor Pamela Scott Washington -- the only prosecutor in the state devoted exclusively to domestic violence cases -- and Melissa Emmal, director of AWAIC and UPD detective Michael Beckner. Refreshments will be served.

Provost Driscoll and I recently visited Mat-Su College to speak with faculty, staff and advisors about the need to find a replacement for retiring director Dennis Clark. I have appointed a search committee and encouraged them to move quickly so that we can find a good candidate over the summer.

This week I am visiting the Kenai River and Kachemak Bay campuses of Kenai Peninsula College (KPC). Among its many successes, KPC has the highest growth in enrollment of all our campuses and thriving distance education delivery.

At this time of transition, we are looking forward to working with incoming UA President Pat Gamble, our students, faculty and staff to continue the progress we are making at all of our UAA campuses.

Did you know?
  • Amy Voss and Charles Beattie both received 2010-2011 Teaching Fulbright. Amy is also sharing the highly competitive UAA Discovery Award, one of the University Honors College award programs.

  • Heather Shelton, a student in the German language program, received the Congress-Bundestag Scholarship. She is UAA's sixth recipient of this prestigious award in five consecutive years.

  • Dr. Natasa Masanovic mentored Amy Voss, Charles Beattie and Heather Shelton as well as the five prior recipients of the Congress-Bundestag Scholarship. Thank you and congratulations to you all!

  • Polar Bear Jump OffUAA Psychology students raised $3,300 for cancer studies and plunged into Resurrection Bay in the 2010 Polar Bear Jump Off in Seward.

  • UAA's FAFSA Frenzy effort is producing great results. FAFSAs received in January and February for the 2010-11 academic year are 17 percent or 774 more than last year and a whopping 57 percent or 2,644 higher than five years ago. Great job Enrollment Services!

  • UAA received a $1.2M National Institute of Health grant for our Center Addressing Health Disparities through Research and Education (CAHDRE). The award to Alaska WWAMI Director and Associate Dean Dennis Valenzeno creates the first NIH-funded Center of Excellence on UAA's campus.

  • Diane Hanson wins NSF grant$430,000 National Science Foundation Grant to Diane Hanson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, will be used to survey for upland sites on Adak Island in the Aleutians.

  • Microsoft gave Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP) $1M to provide Windows 7 and Microsoft Office software for ANSEP's Pre-College component benefiting high school students.

  • Icicle Seafoods made third $200,000 gift to support programs and scholarships at UAA campuses including Seward, Kenai, Homer and Kodiak, as well as to support ISER's Fisheries Fund.

  • On the Horizon: The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) has progressed to the point of being included in NSF's FY11 budget request. This collaborative project being lead by UAA's Jeff Welker and UAF's Donie Bret-Hart has the potential to be the premier network to means and monitor environmental and land use change across the U.S. Stay tuned.

The Annual Faculty & Staff Giving Campaign kicks off this week. Please join me in showing your support with a charitable gift to UAA. Gifts of every size count! Please visit www.uaa.alaska.edu/facultystaffgiving for more information about giving. You may also contact Alissa Nagel, Annual Giving Coordinator, at (907) 786-1010 or anaen@uaa.alaska.edu.

As always, thank you so much for all you do to make UAA a great university!

Sincerely,

Creative Commons License "March 2010" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.