Friday Focus: Modernizing the enrollment experience

In the early 1990s, I worked with a field research team in Egypt. Among many wonderful experiences, one of the things I marveled at was the arcane nature of the Egyptian department store retail model. As an outsider, it was a neat cultural experience. From a retail perspective, from a consumer perspective, and likely from an economic perspective, the model was painfully constraining. Unfortunately, in higher education, we still do something quite similar. Last week, a team of Enrollment Management superheroes gathered at UAF with a common goal: to modernize the enrollment experience of our students.

110 years since the largest Alaska eruption

To put the largest eruption in Alaska's written history in context, Robert Griggs pondered what might have happened if the volcano was located on Manhattan Island. Griggs, a botanist from Ohio State University, ventured to what he named the Valley of 10,000 Smokes a few years after the giant eruption.

UAF in the news

• Birdwatching boosts Alaska’s economy by hundreds of millions (Earth.com)

• UAF Geophysical Institute pilots drone education program in Alaska schools (KTVF)

• A half-century in a difficult, dynamic place (Alaska Native News)

• Cleanup on remote Southeast Alaska island aids research into marine trash and microplastics (KTOO)

• Russia’s war in Ukraine forces Arctic climate projects to pivot (Nature)