June 20, 2024

Faculty and Staff,

Thank you for tuning in to the fourth in my series of six communications on how we are thinking about enrollment at UAF - big picture. In last week’s series I talked about how we think about recruiting - and more importantly how we direct the limited funds available to reach the goals we have for the students we seek. I left last week with the comment that once we get the students to campus, they will seek (and deserve) the modern student experience, or as we have coined it in our vision - transformative experiences. So what does that look like? 

Modernizing the student experience is one of our six strategic goals established in 2017. When established, the strategic planning committee envisioned modernizing the student experience by “reenergiz[ing] students' experiences while strengthening academic rigor and depth.” 

Our strategy for modernizing the student experience to contribute to sustainable enrollment and budget can be boiled down to a common theme in these enrollment messages, differentiation. How do we differentiate ourselves from other universities or from other options for continuing education? And how do we communicate what makes UAF unique? 

There are many options for college-bound students out there! We are fortunate that merely by our location, we are a unique university and that in itself makes us attractive. We are the furthest north public university in the country with locations in all corners of the state. Our Troth Yeddha’ campus consists of 2,250 acres of beautiful land with ski trails, a musk ox and large animal research station, and a rocket range. When students come to UAF to do research, they don’t just read about things in books. They hike up volcanoes, sample ice cores from glaciers, take research cruises in the Bering Strait, canoe down wild and scenic rivers, and see the aurora from their backyard. They also have access to transformative experiences in marine science at Kasitsna Bay, fisheries at Lena Point, seafood and marine science in Kodiak, and the Arctic tundra landscape at Toolik Field Station.

Our location is a strength. But, location is not a university, it is just geography. What makes a university is the experiences students have and the education they receive. From the moment a prospective student walks onto campus, they should be able to look around and know that UAF is a place where they will get the tools they need to achieve their goals. Whether that goal is to get a credential to advance their career, to connect with top researchers in their field, or to make new friends and have unique experiences (or all of the above), what a student sees and feels around them influences their success. 

A recent survey shared by Inside HigherEd found that the look and feel of a campus is a critical factor to students in deciding which university to enroll in. Students care about how their dorms look and that they feel safe, what their food options are, and which extracurricular activities are available. And they should! Attending a university is a big commitment, and when students choose UAF, we want them to have a positive experience. For more traditional students who visit UAF, having a modern introductory experience and high-quality residence halls are the first step. This same infrastructure builds confidence in parents that may have apprehension about sending their children away to college , especially if they are coming from out of state and are not familiar with Alaska. The way our campus looks and feels is determinative to our ability to recruit and retain students. 

Looking ahead, we have an exciting vision for the future of our facilities at UAF. The first step in a sustainable, modern campus is addressing our deferred maintenance (DM). This means fixing what we can, removing old buildings that have passed their useful lives, and building new when necessary. In the near future, I look forward to breaking ground on the Troth Yeddha’ Indigenous Studies Center, a one-of-a-kind facility that will house the newly minted College of Indigenous Studies. I also look forward to investing in UAF’s “Main Street” (Lower Tanana Drive in front of the current Patty Center) by securing a public-private partnership to build new residence halls. 

UAF is actively investigating ways to increase vibrancy such as exploring ways to bring to campus a new hockey arena and a hotel - both along Main Street. Facilities like these lead to great connections with our community and enable us to generate revenue from our assets. Of course we won’t build or operate the hotel, but we need one on campus and we anticipate there are developers who want to build one that also want to partner with UAF. As ideas are modeled financially and tested for viability, we will integrate them into our planning for approval by our UA Board of Regents. We also want to convert Lola Tilly into a Welcome Center, and build a new emergency services and workforce training facility to replace the old fire station that is beyond its useful life. A revitalized UAF campus will by its nature attract students, faculty, and researchers, setting us on a strong path for the future.

As we think about Main Street, one could get the impression that we are just about building new buildings. What about deferred maintenance? I am glad to say that building new and renovating old buildings is all about reducing our DM! Many of our buildings have $10-30 million of DM, or renewal, that is needed. Without a major renewal, we can still operate the building but the operating cost increases significantly as it requires increased repairs at higher costs. It is important to keep in mind that it is not out of negligence or delinquency that we have DM, it is because our buildings are old and old buildings have accelerating maintenance needs.

So think about the math. If we put $30 million into a 70-year-old building to fund DM, we still have a 70-year-old building. There are just certain things that $30 million can’t re-age and old parts will continue to fail. In some cases, if we build a new building for $40 million to replace a building with $30 million in DM it essentially costs us $10 million and it is new, with $0 in DM and is more efficient and less expensive to operate. It is a no brainer!

So, renovation, removal and replacement are all part of improving the look and feel of UAF’s facilities, increasing enrollment and revenue, reducing our long term building cost AND increasing our fiscal stability. It’s a win-win-win.

Facilities are one piece of the student experience, but there is a lot more to what a student experiences as a Nanook that contributes to retention and graduation. There’s dorm life, intramurals, study sessions, dining options, clubs, community groups, entertainment, and more! All of these things that we do at UAF are critical to a student's academic success and persistence to graduation. This is because we know that whether a student persists through college and receives a degree is tied to student well-being. These are the things that help students feel like they belong at UAF and can propel them forward on a path towards their goals. Currently, we are transitioning the Center for Student Experience to be the home of our transformative experiences that will connect students with the resources and community they need to know they belong at UAF. We are also opening our new Student Success Center in the top floor of the Rasmuson Library this fall where advising, tutoring, testing and other support services will be co-located in a modern way. The student experience is directly tied to student’s success, and we are constantly exploring new ways to ensure students have a positive experience at UAF. 

Academics are also critical to the student experience at UAF. We know that academics are a key driver in enrollment and retention rates, and we need to adapt to meet the programmatic needs of future Nanooks in the forms the students want - in person and online. Next week, I will share more about our vision for a modern academic experience at UAF.

Let's keep talking.

— Dan White, chancellor