University of Alaska

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 24

The University of Alaska Fairbanks is a happening place. I was impressed at how academics there really capitalize on all that daylight. On my return from the tundra I got to spend a few days in Fairbanks and the University.

I took in the 99th annual Midnight Suns baseball game on the night of the Solstice. The Fairbanks Gold Panners handily beat the Kenai Peninsula Oil Drillers. That was quite a cultural experience in itself!

At the University campus culture and sciences abound. The Natural History Museum is a fantastic collage of humans and the ecosystem, natural resources and cultural heritage. Seals, oil, gold, Russian influence, I could have spent days there.

The Uof A Fairbanks is the only one in the country to offer a degree in the College of Arctic Biology. Right near campus they have a preserve with caribou and muskox.
There is also a program dealing with the science of domesticated caribou, or reindeer. To see it is just amazing!

I always like to include in my coursework with kids exposure to college and career pathways. A few pictures in my slideshow of these wooly, Pleistocene-looking Muskox
peering from behind a fence might spark some ninth grade curiosities for sure! Just to know that a school and a program like that exist, and that one can go there and return logistically makes the world a little smaller, and hopefully more connected for a young mind looking for science adventure.