Dear faculty and staff,

Welcome to the 2023-2024 academic year. I hope you all took advantage of the long summer days and are continuing or returning with fresh energy to start the fall semester. As always, this is a busy time of the year and I have lots to share with you.

Academic calendar: Our digital catalog includes the UAF academic calendar. Four important dates for you to keep in mind are:

• Aug. 28 (Monday): First day of instruction; add/drop period begins

• Sep. 4 (Monday): Labor Day (no classes, offices closed)

• Sep. 5 (Tuesday): This marks the start of the second week of classes and is a really important deadline. Per the new motion passed by the faculty senate, in this week, students will require faculty approval to add all 100- and 200-level courses and any math or statistics course to their schedule. Students email their instructors to request permission. Instructors can approve students to enroll through UAOnline. For questions or help, faculty can reach out to the Office of the Registrar.

• Sep. 8 (Friday): Deadline for adding and dropping classes; 5 p.m. in person, 11:59 p.m. at UAOnline. This is the last day for student- and faculty-initiated drops with refund (course does not appear on academic record). The deadline for tuition and fee payment is 5 p.m. in person, and 11:59 p.m. at UAOnline.

Enrollment: Thanks to the hard work of each one of you, especially the faculty and staff actively working to recruit, advise, register, and support students, our incoming fall enrollment numbers look strong for both undergraduate and graduate populations. Compared to this time last year, our incoming degree-seeking student enrollments are up by 13.3% and our non-degree seeking student enrollments (that include our dual enrollment students and students who are taking courses for personal enrichment) have almost doubled, growing from 262 to 500! Kudos to the early registration efforts, our baccalaureate retention rate (broadly speaking – percentage of students from previous fall enrolled in the current fall) is up by over 6%, with some colleges already surpassing the percent retained at the end of fall 2022. Weekly enrollment updates, with details on college-level enrollments are available on our institutional research website.

New faculty orientation and mixer: A two-day new faculty orientation is scheduled for Aug. 21-22 in the BP Design Theater, ELIF401. If you are a new faculty member, or a faculty member who was hired in the last two years but could not attend orientation, or are a postdoctoral fellow – this orientation is for you. Twenty-four new faculty and 55 postdoctoral fellows have received invitations for the orientation. If you believe you belong to this group and have not received an invitation, please reach out to Jen Hoppough at the earliest.

In addition, the provost’s office will be hosting a new faculty mixer at The Pub – a catered event that will be held on Aug. 24 from 4-6 p.m. All new faculty and postdoctoral fellows are encouraged to attend and mingle with your peers as well as administrators.

Faculty promotion/tenure: The Office of the Provost will host a promotion/tenure file organization workshop on Aug. 17. This workshop is specifically designed for faculty standing for pre-tenure, promotion/tenure, and post-tenure or faculty considering to stand for promotion/tenure in the next academic year. Please bookmark Aug. 17 on your calendars. We will share the location and time for the workshop soon.

Academic leadership institute: The application deadline for the 2023-24 Academic Leadership Institute is Aug. 25, 2023. Here is the application form to apply for this popular and exciting higher academia leadership development opportunity. There is no cost for the academy, seats are limited, and an application is required for the competitive selection to the academy.

Canvas is UAF’s LMS: Canvas is the official Learning Management System for UAF. A small percent of our faculty are still using Blackboard. Please be reminded that UAF is no longer supporting Blackboard and this is the last academic year to make the transition to Canvas. Please check the Canvas page on iTeachU for the significant support available for faculty to migrate courses to Canvas and to enhance course offerings. These include multiple two-hour Canvas quickstart workshops and one-hour workshops on a specific aspect of Canvas. There are two upcoming important opportunities to work with professional staff: (i) for complete migration of your course (Aug. 21 & 22: Canvas moving day),and (ii) for building a course in Canvas from scratch (Aug. 23-25: Canvas Barn-raising). All workshops are available for preregistration. You can also schedule an individual consultation with an instructional designer.

Nanook Navigator early engagement report: Nanook Navigator is UAF’s official advising and retention tool to drive student success. UAF recently added a convenient Nanook Navigator mobile app that helps students throughout their journey from admission to graduation. It helps them make appointments with advisors, manage their schedules, and monitor their roadmap to graduation. Increased use of Nanook Navigator is already showing positive impacts in student retention through early and customized interventions, and this is projected to increase significantly with the ubiquitous adoption by every staff and faculty member who advises and supports our students. I strongly encourage instructors to complete Nanook Navigator early engagement reports starting Friday, Sept. 1 through Friday, Sept. 15. Please enter any student concerns at the earliest so that advisors can provide additional support to you and the students prior to the Sept. 8 add/drop deadline. Please login to Nanook Navigator and check that you have the Professor role setup. For any assistance with Nanook Navigator please email Jessica Skipper or call 907-474-7414.

Accreditation site visit: UAF as an institution has been accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities since 1934 and I encourage everyone to read my Friday Focus to appreciate what it means to be accredited. In the 7-year accreditation cycle, UAF is in Year 3 and we just submitted our mid-cycle report. A group of peer-evaluators will be on-site in Fairbanks on Oct. 2-3. If you have questions about the site visit, or are interested in contributing more actively to UAFs accreditation efforts, please reach out to Vice Provost & Accreditation Liaison Officer Trent Sutton.

Important academic discussions: There are two important national discussions that have direct implications for our universities. I encourage all faculty and staff to be aware and engaged in the discussions, adoptions, and implementation of related requirements. Governance groups are already engaged and will also be reaching out in this regard with additional guidance.

• Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI): RSI is now a requirement in all classes where the instructor and student are not sharing the same physical space, and the Faculty Senate teams will be working on implementation details of this requirement. Please check out this excellent resource on how to build RSIs in your classes.

• Use of AI tools such as ChatGPT: Many tools such as ChatGPT, that use Artificial Intelligence to generate content, are now available for employees and students. These tools will not go away and will only get more refined with time. Our iTeachU website includes examples of how faculty can adopt these new tools in teaching, and a thought article on AI generated academic dishonesty from a policy and teaching perspective. We will also be launching workshops and forums on this topic and will be working closely with governance groups on related academic policies.

Organizational structure updates: On July 25, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Owen Guthrie and I shared an important message on three changes to modernize UAFs organizational structure. The message includes details on the following three changes:

• Establishment of the Center for Teaching and Learning: CTL will house eCampus and maintain the eCampus brand name. 

• Transfer of Honors College to the Office of the VCSAEM: to streamline student engagement services

• Creation of the Office of Dual Enrollment: to support the rapid expansion of dual enrollment

Select facilities updates: 

• Student Success Center: We are on track with the budget and timing for the renovations in the Rasmuson Library 6th floor for the physical move of the Student Success Center in fall 2024. The books and racks from the 6th floor have been thoughtfully moved and the floor looks like a large open hall ready for modernization.

• North Star College (external link): Bunnell 402 has been upgraded to add more office spaces for staff who support the expanded North Star College. As a reminder, NSC was established in partnership between UAF and the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, is now in its fourth year, and has expanded from 40 students to 180 students who are pursuing dual enrollment courses at UAF.

• On campus housing: Renovation has commenced in the Moore-Bartlett towers. Additional student housing spaces have been created by opening up all other residence halls on campus. UAF is actively managing residence requests. There is a temporary suspension of the mandatory requirement of first-year on-campus living. If you are still running into housing issues, please email Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Ali Knabe or call 907-474-5497.

Finally, personnel updates: There have been some top academic leadership changes recently. 

• Alex Fitts: After serving for 28 years at UAF, Fitts retired as UAFs vice provost and ALO. Among her many contributions, she led UAF through a successful reaffirmation of institutional accreditation.

• Trent Sutton now serves as UAFs vice provost and ALO.

• Karsten Hueffer started as the CNSM dean, after serving in an interim capacity for nearly a year.

• Michele Stalder retired after 42 years of service to UAF, with the last 13 years as dean of CTC. A search for a permanent dean is underway.

• Bryan Uher and Veronica Plumb are serving as the interim deans of CTC and CRCD, respectively. The CRCD team site has other important updates in CRCD leadership.

I also wish to introduce you to some new staff members in my office and service units. 

• Alyssa Enriquez (amenriquez2@alaska.edu; 907-474-6634) started as my assistant and serves as your contact point for scheduling, event request, academic MoU/MoA, and other administrative support from the provost office.

• Rochelle Rodak (rlrodak@alaska.edu; 907-474-2764) supports Vice Provost Sutton as the accreditation & assessment coordinator and can answer your questions on program reviews and student learning outcomes.

• Catherine Cameron (clcameron2@alaska.edu; 907-474-7677) will serve as the international services coordinator at International Student and Scholar Services. Cate will provide additional support to the F-1 and J-1 students and help as we work to increase international student enrollments.

• Heather Lanz (hmlanz@alaska.edu; 626-391-4541). Heather provides data support for faculty services, interface design for AirTable, and ensures that PAIR is running at full capacity.

Additional academic updates will be shared through the Cornerstone. I encourage you to look out for them. As always, should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact your dean or me at aprakash@alaska.edu.

— Anupma Prakash, provost and executive vice chancellor