|
Dear faculty and staff,
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. As we embark on the spring semester,
here are some important reminders and updates.
Academic calendar: Our digital catalog includes the UAF academic calendar. Three important dates for you to keep in mind are:
Jan. 16 (Tuesday): First day of instruction; add/drop period begins
Jan. 22 (Tuesday): This marks the start of the second week of classes and is an 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 Stat course to their
schedule. Students will need to email their instructors to request permission, and
instructors can approve students to enroll through UA Online. For questions or help,
faculty can reach out to the Office of the Registrar at uaf-registrar@alaska.edu
Jan. 26 (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
Other important deadlines:
PBC: In preparation for the FY26 State of Alaska budget, UAF leadership is soliciting funding
proposals from UAF faculty and staff. Deadline for proposal submission is Wednesday, Jan. 31. The link to access the Request for Proposals form is here.
TVEP: FY25 TVEP Funding Request Proposals are due Friday, Jan. 26. Please submit your completed application requests, and/or TVEP status report via
this Google submission link.
Additional TVEP resources:
Emil Usibelli Nominations for excellence in Teaching, Research, and Service 2024:
Nominations for this award are due Feb. 13 via nomination submission form.
To see nomination guidelines and regulations, please visit the UAF Office of the Provost’s website.
Achieving R1: One of UAF’s six strategic goals is to achieve the Carnegie R1 status. Thanks to the many teams that are actively working on the strategies and
implementation plans to chart the path to R1. The latest updates on where we are,
where we need to get to, and how we will get there will be shared at the Chancellor's
Forum on R1 scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 25 at 1 p.m. in the Schaible Auditorium. The event is in-person and will be live-streamed for virtual attendees.
Academic Planning: UAF’s 2024-2029 Academic Plan has four guiding goals for UAF to pursue. Five teams, composed of one administrator, one student, one staff, and three faculty members,
will be working this Spring to identify concrete action plans for each goal. We are
currently working on a website to share the progress of the teams. Implementation
of action plans will commence in the fall of 2024.
Enrollment: Our recruitment and retention numbers continue to be strong and growing. Our year-end
data show that our fall 2023 student headcount was 7,452 (up by 0.4%) and our student
credit hours were 59,912 (up by 3.5%) compared to fall 2022. Retention rates measure the number of first-time, full-time students seeking baccalaureate
degrees who have enrolled in two consecutive fall semesters. For fall 2023, we retained
72.1% of first-year baccalaureate students who entered in fall 2022, an increase of
2.4%, and 51.5% of our associate students, an increase of 0.5%. Early reports for spring registration show a continued upward trend. The collaborative efforts of our faculty and staff community significantly and positively
impact recruitment and retention of our diverse student body. Weekly enrollment updates, with details on college-level enrollments, are available on our institutional research
website.
Canvas is UAF’s LMS: Canvas is the official Learning Management System for UAF, and spring 2024 is the
last semester to switch to Canvas. UAF is no longer supporting Blackboard. Please
check the Canvas page on iTeachU for the significant support available for faculty to migrate courses to Canvas and
enhance course offerings. You can always 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. I strongly encourage instructors to complete Nanook Navigator early engagement reports starting Friday, Jan. 19 through Friday, Feb. 2. You can review the alerts and case intervention key for more details. The ad-hoc alerts are available all semester for instructors to submit new or additional feedback. Instructor Engagement Report Training & Resources Available:
Please login to Nanook Navigator and check that you have the professor role setup. For any assistance with Nanook Navigator please contact Jessica Skipper at
uaf-nanooknavigator@alaska.edu or 907-474-7414.
Institutional accreditation: Vice Provost, Trent Sutton, serves as UAF’s accreditation liaison officer and is the
main point of contact for communications with the Northwest Commission on Colleges
and Universities, the body that has granted continued institutional accreditation
to UAF since 1934. The site visit with the NWCCU peer evaluation team for the Mid-Cycle
Evaluation took place on Oct. 2-3, 2023. Overall, the feedback was positive, and the
peer evaluation team noted that UAF has made significant progress and has a clear
roadmap in its preparation for the year seven EIE. The final official feedback from
the NWCCU will be made publicly available following its approval at the Commission
Board Meeting in February. That feedback will be distributed at that time with additional
guidance on what needs to be done moving forward.
Besides institutional accreditation, UAF also maintains several specialized accreditations. If you lead specialized accreditation work for your program, please be sure to provide
all updates to UAF’s accreditation office.
Regular and Substantive Interaction: 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. Our iTeachU website includes examples of how faculty may choose to adopt these new tools in teaching
and a thought article on AI-generated academic dishonesty from a policy and teaching
perspective. The UAF Faculty Senate is working on updating the syllabi templates to
include information on AI. It is important for all faculty to include their expectation
of students with respect to the use of AI on their syllabi. A faculty forum on AI
organized by the UA Faculty Alliance is planned for later this semester.
Additional updates will be shared weekly through the Cornerstone that I encourage
you to look out for. 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
|
