May 2010

by Kathleen McCoy  |   

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Nearly 100 people gathered for the Topping Out ceremony for the Health Sciences Building (HSB) celebrating the completion of framing. Thank you to all those who have made this building a reality -- staff and faculty, regents, legislators, designers, contractor and all those working on the building. Scheduled to be completed in fall 2011, we will ask the legislature for operating funds in this year's budget so that it is possible to open HSB to students on time next year!

HSB is the first phase of a multi-phase project of health sciences buildings on the U-Med campus which will help us meet Alaska's growing health care workforce needs. These facilities will make it possible for us to educate and train Alaskans to treat and care for Alaskans. View a video of the UAA Health Sciences Building "Topping Off" Ceremony here.

UAA Staff Development Day

On May 13, we celebrated UAA staff and their accomplishments at our 20th annual Development Day. Over 600 employees from the Anchorage campus and our Kenai Peninsula, Mat-Su, Prince William Sound and Kodiak campuses participated in activities for personal and professional development.

Gloria O'Neill speaks at UAA Development Day

Gloria O'Neill spoke of the importance of vision, mission and values and how partnerships are key to success. We are grateful to Gloria and Cook Inlet Tribal Council for their partnerships with UAA. Click here to listen to a podcast of Chancellor Ulmer and Gloria O'Neill's opening remarks.

Green retirement options at UAA

Retirees supported the new "UAA Retiree Rain Garden" and "Tree Campus UAA," options developed by Pat Leary, landscape and horticulture supervisor, (whose efforts also brought UAA recognition as a "Tree Campus USA") and Cindy Douthit of the Chancellor's Office. Thank you to you all for greening UAA!

Collaborative Conversations, a two-day series of workshops focusing on how families, individuals and providers can work together to create a successful network of care for those with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) was sponsored by the Arctic FASD Regional Training Center at UAA's Center for Behavioral Health Research and Services last week. The Center provides a variety of services that are helpful to care providers, administrators and policy makers in the areas of mental health, substance abuse, physical health and criminal justice. We are very proud of the work being done at UAA to bring together experts from around Alaska and the United States, along with parents and individuals, to work on prevention and intervention strategies for FASDs.

Next month we bid farewell to President Mark Hamilton and welcome new UA President Pat Gamble. Please join me in thanking Mark for his many years of service to the University of Alaska and to our state. We look forward to continuing our great progress under the leadership of President Gamble!

Did you know?
  • For 17 straight years WWAMI has been ranked first among primary care medical schools, according to U.S. News & World Report.

  • The School of Nursing has a continuous 100 percent pass rate for certification of our Family Nurse Practitioner graduates.

  • The Seawolf Auction raised more than $56,000 for direct student support of athletes and $70,000 for the scholarship endowment. Thank you to organizers and supporters of Seawolf Athletics!

  • Prince William Sound Community College successfully sponsored the 18th Annual Last Frontier Theatre Conference May 16-23 in Valdez with playwrights, actors, dramaturges and more from around the world.

  • Writer Michael Cunningham is featured at the Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference which runs June 11-15 in Homer.

  • Alaska Quarterly Review (AQR) continues to live up to its reputation as one of the best literary magazines in the country. Work previously published in AQR has been selected for the Best American Mystery Stories 2010, the Best American Poetry 2009, 2009 Pushcart Prize: The Best of the Small Presses, and has been cited in the Best American Short Stories 2009. Editor Ron Spatz recently learned that AQR published the title short story of the book, Homicide Survivors Picnic, which was named a finalist for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, America's largest peer-juried prize for fiction. Congratulations!

  • Summer registration as of May 21 is up from last year with 6,460 students registered (up 8.77 percent) for 32,198 student credit hours (up 8.98 percent).

  • Fall registration as of week six is also on the rise with 1,070 more students throughout the MAU compared to the same time last year. That is a 13.2 percent increase for UAA!

  • Next year's 33rd Annual Great Alaska Shootout includes UAA teams along with
    • women's teams: Kent State, San Jose State and Washington
    • men's teams: Arizona State, Ball State, Drake, Houston Baptist, St. John's, Southern Utah and Weber State

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

Sincerely,

Fran Ulmer, Chancellor

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