Convocation 2019

Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2019

Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Good afternoon. Please welcome Professor Brian Hall and Ryan Fitzpatrick performing for you.

(Applause)

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(Applause)

Wow! and that is the arts that you have! Thank you. I welcome you in the Indigenous language to recognize the importance of the ancestral lands that we inhabit and this land at UAF is on. Thank you. It is appropriate as I think about the way we ended last year with the recognition of Reverend Anna M. Frank with an honorary Ph.D., one of our elders. If you are on campus, thank you for joining us. If you are out in our Fort Yukon campus, thank you for joining us there.

And if you are here in the audience or online, thank you for choosing UAF and thank you for being here.

(Applause)

Ordinarily at convocation what we would do is spend about a third of the time talking about the budget and about a third of the time talking about UAF’s goals and the Board of Regents’ goals. But in the last two months I sent out 30 communications on the budget, and there is a board meeting on Friday and Thursday, which I encourage you to tune into, so today I thought we would expand that third of the time and celebrate who we are at UAF. So thank you for being here and thank you for choosing UAF. We are who we are because of you.

Everyone is welcome at UAF, and as you will see in some of our new signage, we talk more about belonging; everyone is welcome here, but we want everyone to belong here also. This is a place of belonging, and I would like to thank Margo Griffith and her team at the Department of Equity and Compliance for their work in creating a respectful, diverse, inclusive and caring environment, because all of the faculty, staff and students at UAF deserve it.

I would also like to recognize Jessica Rhoads with the Center for Student Rights and Responsibilities for their efforts on campus wellness. It is important to us all. Thank you.

Be sure to take your Title IX training. Everyone is required to take their Title IX training by September 30. We are about 50 to 60% complete so please take that. It is important for you and it is important for all of us. It will take you somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour, but it will be time well spent for us all.

This is the third convocation I have done, and I cannot go through it without taking a safety minute.

It is a little different because [I watched some of our people] doing a safety exercise and putting on a survival suit.

It occurred to me as I watched a video of the dean and Sabrina and they were putting on survival suits, but it was a race, and as I watched that race I thought to myself how important would it be to see who is the fastest because I want to know if I have to get off the ship, who I want to get in line behind.

Sabrina is one of the members of our women's basketball team. Thank you.

(Applause)

And here is your vice chancellor.

And I and another volunteer who is willing to jump into a survival suit — we only have 30 minutes for convocation so we will have to keep this moving. Somebody keeps volunteering. Arleigh is shaking his head no. Do we have another basketball player? All right, Arleigh, come on up here and give this a try.

(Applause)

So here is what we are going to do. We are going to need some space. Watch closely because this is a survival safety minute.

Larry has done this before.

What we are going to do first, before the chancellor gives out a scarf — the fastest gets a scarf. Arleigh, go ahead and pick [a suit], and if you are not the fastest, you don't have to keep going until the end. Give up.

(Laughter)

The way this works is we all dump them out and then we get into the suits. Have you seen this? It is a suit and you put it on. Are you guys ready? Are you going to cue the music? 3, 2 ,1, go!

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All right.

(Applause)

(Laughter)

All right. Doggone it.

(Applause)

Well done, Sabrina. Congratulations! Here is your scarf. Thank you for participating.

(Applause)

I will just leave my shirt on.

(Laughter)

I am going to put my shoes back on.

So my kids ask me, what is it that you love? Why is it that you love working at the university? (And I tell them we have to have easier exercises.)

I tell them it’s because I get to spend every day with smart people who are dedicated and passionate about their work at the university.

That is really something that I see every single day in this group of people.

These are your vice chancellors and, of course, you have met Larry, our vice chancellor for research.

Dr. Keith Champagne, vice chancellor for student affairs, who is responsible for all the students and their wellness, and also our athletics director responsible for athletics at UAF.

Evon Peter, our vice chancellor, Julie, our vice chancellor for administrative services, and, of course, the provost and vice chancellor. We have a great leadership team.

(Applause)

So thank you to them. They are working hard every day for all of you, faculty, staff and students, and it is an honor and a privilege for me to serve with them. I would like to just go through a few minutes of administrative changes. We have some new people around campus at our rural sites. The first is Stacey Glaser out at our Chukchi Campus in Kotzebue.

Bill Schnabel started as our dean, and Kinchel Doerner, thank you for joining us.

(Applause)

I don't know if you know, I love clapping because it just makes you feel good. So feel free to do that.

Owen has just been an innovative leader on campus for many years. He’s just taken over as the eCampus director. It used to be called, of course, eLearning and Distance Education, and now it is the eCampus. He is a fearless leader.

Karen Jensen took over as our director of libraries after the departure of Susan. Karen has really embraced this new effort to make the library a modern student library with student space. We will talk about that a little bit more, but with a student services environment where all students can go and get various services at one place. That has been a colossal effort over the summer, and we appreciate her for that.

Adam Watson, our new PAIR director, thank you, Adam for joining the team.

Brian has big shoes to fill. Brian Uher, filling in for Mary Ann, is our acting dean, and we appreciate his efforts.

Milan Shipka already had a job, and he is now also the acting director of our Cooperative Extension.

Jessica Rhoads, I mentioned earlier, is the director for student rights and responsibilities. Jessica has a great team and they are caring for our students so thank you for you and your role here at UAF. Linda Curda, with the departure of our late Mary Pete, has stepped in as the director of the Bethel campus, and then we had the retirement this year of Bob and Barbara Amarok has stepped in.

Our longtime-serving associate vice chancellor has retired, and Jenny Campbell has stepped into that role. Thank you for that. As Julie came up from associate vice chancellor of finance and into the role of vice chancellor for administrative services, Amanda Wall stepped into her role.

Kate Ripley joined us as the development and alumni director. Thank you.

(Applause)

For everyone in this room who is a faculty, you are well represented by your Faculty Senate. The current leaders, the president and vice president, they meet frequently and, of course, they meet at the regular Faculty Senate meetings. They're doing a lot of work on behalf of all faculty. Thank you to the Faculty Senate.

(Applause)

Your Staff Council, I saw Carrie, but I don't know if Matt is here. Thank you for being here. This whole Staff Council represents all staff all across this university. The Staff Council is made up of representatives from different units on campus. They have Matthew as your president and Carrie as your vice president. Matthew is also president of the statewide alliance — Staff Alliance — which is all staff across all of the UA system.

Thank you for that work.

(Applause)

Students are represented on this campus by the Associated Students of UAF, and this is a picture — I don't have a picture of all of the students. But this is their president, Bernard, who ...

(Applause)

Bernard does a great job for the students. The vice president is Danny. Thank you, Danny, for your work as well.

We did a strategic planning exercise. I laid out some strategic planning goals, and this group had teams working on that for the better part of the year. It was led by the executive officer, Nickole Connolly. They presented their initial results of the strategic planning exercise at a strategic planning forum and this is the picture for that.

I want to recognize Alex Hirsch. In addition to being our fearless leader of our Honors College, our Honors Program has been renamed as the Honors College. They did a great job leading the strategic goals, which was modernizing the student experience.

Dr. Pat Sekaquaptewa, who has led our global leadership with the �ֻ�ֱ�� Native indigenous studies, Taryn Lopez who led our — I always have to stretch my arm up, it gets us from almost the very top to the very top of researched leadership in the country, and we are almost there — I think that the group came up with some strategies. It is not a great leap to get us from this last little step into the highest level of research universities in the country.

So thank you for your work, Taryn, and the work of the entire team. Peter Webley, I see him. Peter has been an innovative person on this campus for many years, and you will see again in this slide show our transforming our intellectual property and commercialization enterprise.

One of the things that is most important on this campus is our culture of respect, diversity, inclusion and caring. Dr. Jesse Young-Robertson led that effort and did a nice job. All of these things and reports are online, and I encourage you to see them.

Jennifer Tilbury, CTC, led the effort on revitalizing the academic program. Thank you to that group for the work that they did and for everyone in here who participated on one of their groups.

I will try to keep going forward because you saw the last one already. But strategic enrollment planning is so important for all of us. It is important for our programs and important for our diversity and inclusiveness, and it is important for our financial bottom line. Enrollment is what makes us a vibrant university. I just recognized Mary Kreta, associate vice chancellor, with this grand effort. They came up with 71 recommendations and there was more than 150 faculty, staff and students that participated, and Mary gave me the list of 71 things that she wanted funded. That is a really long list.

(Applause)

But I think we are going to get through the top 10. I think it was time well spent and it was a valuable effort and I appreciate the 150 people, many of whom are in this room, and all of the effort that went into that because it was important to us currently and a support to our future.

We are going to talk about a few highlights. It seems like I always end up calling out the �ֻ�ֱ�� Satellite Facility and Dr. Nettie LaBelle-Hamer for her great work because there is so much great work going on there.

This year we got a $50 million grant. We don't get that very often.

But you have to have a lot of confidence. The funding agency has to have a lot of confidence in you to handle $50 million to UAF and her leadership. The whole team warrants that so thank you Nettie and Bob McCoy for that leadership.

The Arctic report card is something that is submitted to Congress every year. The Arctic report card talks about change in the Arctic, the needs in the Arctic. We are the world's leading university in Arctic research. We have not always had a presence in the writing of this report card, but this year we did, and we had seven scientists who contributed to the writing of that important document. It really kind of solidifies the leadership across this country and recognizes that.

So to the scientists — Uma Bhatt, Andy Mahoney, Martha Raynolds, Skip Walker, Rick Thoman, the incomparable John Walsh and Jackie Richter-Menge — thank you for the work in the leadership in this country in Arctic issues.

(Applause)

Some years ago UAF was recognized as a leader in unmanned aircraft. I always like to say that this university has the largest fleet of unmanned aircraft at any university in the country. Dr. Kathy Cahill is the director for the �ֻ�ֱ�� Center for Unmanned Aircraft and System Integration, and that group is transforming unmanned aircraft to a commercial product. Essentially what happened is with unmanned aircraft, there were hobbyists and there was military and nothing in between, and the FAA needed somebody to figure that space out. That is what Kathy and her team have done. They just started, and they’re the first in the country to do beyond lines-of-sight unmanned aircraft commercial activity.

So congratulations to them. They are the first in the country for this kind of work.

(Applause)

Again, and I will stretch my arm up to show how high we are in our research, almost right at the very tippy top. One of the other things that great universities do is they have university-affiliated research centers. These are centers that the DoD sets up in places they have a lot of confidence in to get funding more quickly to the scientists to do the important work than needs to be done. Curt Szberla and David Fee just got this this year, and it is a $46 million space in which they can work.

So it is up to $46 million that the DoD can put into this. Johns Hopkins has one of these and Johns Hopkins does $4 billion worth of work at the DoD so we are not there, but we are getting there.

That is important.

Another place — yes, let's give them a round of applause.

(Applause)

Another place that great strides have been made — a year ago, year and a half ago we talked about creating the One Health initiative. Dr. Arleigh Reynolds agreed to be the director of that One Health initiative, which has turned into One Health research because one health, think of the Indigenous world, the connection between people and the environment and animals and all of this great research at UAF and student research and health and wellness can plug into to create something bigger at UAF. One Health has taken off. There's been a lot of progress made. This March is going to be the international summit, One Health One Future, and there is a short video that was made. I will just give a shout out to a couple of people that have really contributed to this. Arleigh Reynolds and Michelle Renfrew, they were contributing to this One Health endeavor. We will roll this.

(Video playing)

»: Together, the Indigenous nations, the air, soil, growth, green leaves stretching toward the sun, a rough wind whistling across jagged rocks. Water, freshly melted ice, the urgency of the hunt, the drive to thrive and survive and grow. The wake left behind by the movement of magnificent creatures, the flash of speeds, exploration, innovation, expansion grows. This is all life interconnected. Every creature's survival, our very future made manifest to these dynamic actions.

An interwoven complex web that surrounds and includes every creature, be it human, animal, environmental, each locked in a dance through all time, nothing existing alone. The strength of one enriching another, all suffering when one falls, this universal global dance of cause and effect and cause and effect, interconnected lives, health and being tied together woven into an intricate, delicate balance. Together we grow, all one, one planet, one existence, one health, one future

(Applause).

CHANCELLOR WHITE: Thank you. That is a nice work for our One Health team and they put that together. Stacy Rasmus is another key person in this.

And also the PI of a project on suicide and addiction in our rural communities. It is also with Evon Peter. I will talk about this getting to this last bit of global research. These three have just submitted a MacArthur 101 change in proposal. You have to be at a certain level to submit the proposal. This is a $100 million proposal on One Health and �ֻ�ֱ��. They have made it past the first round and they are now in the round of, I think, for 17 in the entire country. This is a really big deal so congratulations. It is a big deal just to submit the proposal so congratulations to Stacy Rasmus, Evon Peter and Arleigh Reynolds.

Also, in the area of One Health, Kelly Drew had her Center for Transformative Research funded by the NIH. That is around $12 million. Brian Barnes had submitted a project renewal that is an NIH program that is about $20 million.

We also had a submission of a renewal of our BLAST program, which is getting underrepresented youth into research, and that is about a $16 million project. These are great, great signs that UAF’s One Health research is making progress and on its way to getting us to that last level.

Just an indication, we had as part of Stacy Rasmus' project, 12 or 14 NIH directors. These are people at the highest level of NIH you want to come here. They wanted to go out to the village of Emmonak, which is one of her budget sights to see what UAF is doing. They were amazed and impressed with all of the work that Stacy and her colleagues were doing so that is also a great sign.

Last year I put this picture up because I noticed that we have at UAF this icebreaker and there was nothing on it that said UAF.

So I hung that flag on it. It is a virtual flag and not a real flag.

And then I got this picture sent to me about six months later.

(Applause)

So now everybody that gets on that ship is part of that nation. Hopefully, they know how to put on the suits better than some of us, but thank you for doing that, to the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. The College of Fisheries also bought a smaller boat and they just named it the Nanuk. I figure they got that message so thank you for doing that.

(Applause)

MOSAic is the biggest project in the Arctic ever. This is a 600-scientist project that is going to freeze a German icebreaker in the ice for an entire year to do the science. We have a team member on that ship. Rob left yesterday to get on that ship. He will be doing chemical work. It is another sign that UAF is right in the middle of this work. I look at the students that are out here. These are works that students can get involved in. The biggest project in the Arctic, 120 million euros is what I think the total value is.

Karen Jensen, I want to shout out for her work, they removed 10,000 volumes from the library, 10,000 volumes that had not been used. They were old and outdated, and they have created new space in the library for students and student activities.

A shout out to the School of Management for putting on a gaming and e-sports summit, part of modernizing our student experience, and something that came out of strategic enrollment planning. Students now are interested in gaming and we want to create a gaming space for them to do that.

Arizona State — I don't know if you have heard of Arizona State on the radio advertising all the time. They are selling products to our high schools and getting all of our high schools to take packages of e-learning courses from Arizona State. Oh, one came up is — you know we are better than them at this and we are here. Are we allowed to compete with Arizona State? And I said yes, absolutely. Fourteen schools now have foregone the Arizona State model and chosen the UAF model for our virtual middle college led by Owen Guthrie and his team at eCampus.

So congratulations, Owen.

(Applause)

Now Rev It Up, this is a great team welcoming students on campus and also all the athletes.

And I see basketball and volleyball and some hockey and some swimming. I cannot see that well, but thanks for all that you did, all of these athletes were out there helping new students move into the dorms, getting them into UAF. It is a great week and if you haven't participated in Rev It Up before, I encourage you to do so.

(Applause)

From the beginning to the end, this is a picture of Hishinlai' Peter, who was a student in linguistics and graduated this spring. Twenty years ago we had four �ֻ�ֱ�� Native Ph.D. students, and today we have 40. That is a big deal. It is a lot of progress. Vice Chancellor Peter and I agree that any time any �ֻ�ֱ�� Native receives a Ph.D. from one of our rural communities, he and I will go there and do a special hooding ceremony to show the importance of that and the importance of that commitment that that person made.

So he and I and Hishinlai' went out to Fort Yukon to celebrate her Ph.D. there and we had a special ceremony.

This was the spring, and we were in Fort Yukon the year before to award two Ph.D.s, and we will be in Fort Yukon next year to award another Ph.D. There is not that many people in Fort Yukon, and it occurred to me that Fort Yukon may have the most Ph.D.s of any place per capita in the country.

(Applause)

That is something to be proud of.

(Applause)

So congratulations to everyone. Now our Kuskokwim Campus, Evon and I had the pleasure to go out there. Eight master’s students were recognized in Bethel, another sign to know that the campus work that UAF does is so important.

As I looked at the Carlson Center with 3,500 people in it, after two hours they needed to stand up. So this year we are going to do the wave at commencement. It is going to start in the middle, at least this is the way I saw it from where I was sitting, and then it will wrap around. Here is what we are going to do. You will be there so we can just practice once. If you can raise the lights up. Can you come up and help do the wave? The women's basketball team?

(Applause)

Women's basketball team?

We will also shoot T-shirts out at commencement.

So if you don't mind, just for practice because you will need some blood, we will start over here.

And Lane Louis will start the wave. Do you have that, Lane? Start the wave and it is going to go this way and then Olivia is going to catch it from over there, can you see them? And then we will give it back to Lane, Nook, and me, not everybody has to stand up but you still have to raise your arms. Are you ready, Lane, go. Nice! Look at that! You got it! Okay, come on! Nice! All right! Let's give yourself a hand!

(Applause)

All right. Now these guys are going to throw some T-shirts out here. We are going to do that at commencement too. Chuck them out there as far as you can.

(Laughter)

Don't put any eyes out.

OK.

Get those out there. Try to get them where the people are. OK.

So we are not going to shoot the T-shirt cannon. We are done — thank you. We aren’t going to shoot the T-shirt cannon, OK, there is one in here still. We are going to shoot it at commencement, but we are not going to shoot it here because we tried it and it is really loud.

The other thing that happens is that either the T-shirt falls apart and it goes about two rows or it shoots out the light at the end of Davis. But anyway thank you for indulging in that fun.

Now the UAF School of Education did a great job of picking up all of the students from U of A and the challenge that they had. Thank you to Amy Vinlove for your work.

(Applause)

Incidentally, the person in this picture is Joe Bifelt, who graduated from the School of Education in the spring. If you are out and you see the movie that is about to hit the theaters, you will see Joe. It is just great when we see UAF people out in the community, whether they are starring in movies or they are athletes or whether they are our faculty and staff engaging with young people from the community. Congratulations to the College of Liberal Arts in the visual arts academy.

(Applause)

It is arts and science. This is a picture of Katie and her work with the Fresh Eyes on Ice to protect students, young kids to understand the ice and what different ice conditions mean.

RAHI graduation — this is the 37th commission of RAHI bringing young people around �ֻ�ֱ�� to UAF.

The CTC fire academy — John puts on the fire academy for CTC. Thank you to him for his leadership and Michele's leadership. These are the firefighters that populate all of UAF and all of our communities so they do a great service from CTC to us at UAF and also to our community.

(Applause)

This is a picture of the certified nursing assistant program. It is so important to our communities. Thank you for training the CNA's, the people who will stay there and serve their communities.

(Applause)

Terlyn is our new executive assistant athletics director.

(Applause)

She has made lots of changes in athletics and there is a lot to be proud of there. Thank you for coming and sharing your ideas.

I encourage you to come and engage in the athletics event and be part of the Nanook Nation this year. Our group is the second-best team in the division, Division I rifle. We have the volleyball team, which is ranked fifth. We are expecting great things from them and it is a great crew again this year. Men’s and women’s cross-country is active now.

And the skiing will be active soon.

And women's swimming, thank you to the women’s swim team for being here and women’s basketball, of course, you see the winner up here in the swimsuit or whatever that thing was.

(Laughter)

I was trying to remember — so this was after the Governor's Cup and those guys were holding up 10 and I think it means that somebody won the Governor's Cup 10 years and it was either UAF or UAA. Do you remember which one it was? It was UAF. Congratulations to the hockey team.

(Applause)

To continue with outreach, Colton Parayko graduated and he left here in 2016 to go win the Stanley Cup for the St. Louis Blues. But then he comes back. He comes back and he helps a kids camp, young girls and boys camp. What’s special about Colton? He won the Stanley Cup and he signed a big contract with the St. Louis Blues, but that is not the special thing. The special thing is that he finished his degree playing professional hockey and he left before he was done. They said we need him. He wasn't done, but he finished it online and congratulations to the School of Management for putting all of their degrees online so people like Colton can finish even while they are playing professional hockey.

(Applause)

Thank you to everyone that showed up for the Golden Days parade. Again, it is part of our community outreach. This is the research open house, and participating or going to a play.

This was directed by Carrie Baker in our film department.

Or going to the orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra and, of course, Brian Hall is our concertmaster and conductor.

And Molly of Denali.

(Applause)

Well done. Well done. Poker Flat held a late-night open house, two scientists, Rich Collins, exposing people who have always known Poker Flat was there but never knew what they did. Thousands of people were able to go out there and see what the special work is that is done at UAF. On behalf of the nation really.

We were declared a Purple Heart campus this year for our outreach to both the Purple Heart and military students and their families. Thank you to Jackie Morton who you see in the background for that.

(Applause)

And then the Nanooks Brotherhood project. A number of diversity initiatives across the campus. Everyone belongs here and we want everyone to feel that they belong here. Thank you for the efforts for the Nanooks Brotherhood project.

I will say just a quick thing about Facility Services because they do so much for all of us. Their hard work and keeping the campus beautiful and safe.

(Applause)

We have 3 million square feet of indoor space at UAF, overall. We have 2 million square feet of parking areas. If it snows 6 inches, that produces 71,000 cubic feet of snow that they have to move.

And if you don't think of cubic feet of snow, that is 4,750 dump trucks full of snow, every time it snows 6 inches.

So good on you, Facilities. Thank you.

(Applause)

Summer Sessions has kept us entertained and inspired all year.

Steel bridge, the most winningest team in the history of the country, again in the top 10 of the country.

(Applause)

eCampus partnered with the museum to put this 111,000 Arctic butterfly collection online for anybody in the world to view. It’s a great partnership.

I am just going to wrap up with a few things. Mark Herrmann who I am sure is sitting right in the center because I saw when I went by — we all know him because he is an innovative leader in the School of Management, all of those programs online, he is now the U of A Foundation Edith R. Bullock Award winner. It is the highest award, congratulations.

(Applause)

Peter Webley who I mentioned earlier was recognized this year by the National Academy of inventors for his progress in innovation and all the work he has done for UAF. Thank you, Peter.
We recognize Early Career Award, it gives career awards to promising young scientists, science, arts everything. Last year we had two and this year we had one, and we want to recognize Chris Maio for his work in decision-making theory.

So thank you, Chris.

(Applause)

I will recognize all of the faculty that was promoted and tenured. Those of you here, congratulations and thank you for the work that you do.

(Applause)

And then finally Emil Usibelli, the three highest awards that UAF gives to faculty in three areas: teaching, research and service. These awardees are Charles Mason, Katey Walter Anthony and Michael West, and congratulations to them.

(Applause)

So lastly, as we just close, there are a lot of challenges ahead. I think we are going to go into a really challenging time with consolidation and accreditation and that discussion. But I just encourage you to walk tall. What you saw here is just a tiny sampling of all of the great stuff at UAF. Be proud. Be proud to be part of UAF and keep in mind the dialogue agreements. I have written about the dialogue agreements in my columns and the last, but certainly not least of the dialogue agreements is to take care of yourself and take care of each other. Thank you all for choosing UAF. Let's go get some ice cream!

(Applause)

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