May 10, 2005
The University of Alaska Fairbanks expects to confer 1,054 degrees to 1,010 students
during its 83rd commencement on Sunday, May 15, 2005 at the Carlson Center. The following
profiles of a few graduates reflect the diversity and excellence of the 2005 graduating
class.
Joel Wiegert award winner balances it all
Biological sciences major Dane Lenaker will receive the Joel Wiegert Award recognizing
the outstanding graduating senior man. Lenaker has used his college experience to
get involved in a wide range of campus activities while maintaining a high level of
academic achievement.ξξ
He worked as a resident assistant, implementing a number of programs to build a positive
environment and a sense of community in the halls. He also served as a student ambassador,
volunteering his time to share his passion for the university by providing campus
tours to prospective students. He finds plenty of time for fun as captain of his broomball
team, which has gone undefeated the last six seasons.
Lenaker received many honors including the 2003 Carol Feist Memorial Scholarship for
excellence in undergraduate biology, the 2002 Film Club Best Animation Award, the
2003-2004 NANA Board Plan Scholarship and the 2002-2003 Alaska Airlines Travel Scholarship.
After graduation he plans to attend dental school in Arizona.
Outstanding senior values service
Kiana Bormann, this year’s recipient of the Marion Frances Boswell Memorial Award
for Outstanding Graduating Senior Woman, might not be leaving UAF with many memories
of intramural tournaments and late night pizza parties, but she will be leaving knowing
that she made an impact on the lives of others.
Bormann, who will be graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and an associate
degree in early childhood education, worked full-time as a lead teacher at Open Arms
Child Development Center while going to school. What spare time she had, she filled
as a volunteer Young Life, working with teenage girls in the Fairbanks community.
Bormann graduated from West Valley High School in 1999 and came to UAF as a UA Scholar.
While her educational experience at UAF is coming to an end, she has a lot of options
ahead of her. She is strongly considering the Peace Corps prior to continuing her
education, and she was recently offered a full scholarship to work on her graduate
degree in special education at UAA.
Tilly Award winner dedicates degree to father
Education major Raymond Joseph will receive this year’s Gray Tilly Memorial Award
for a graduating senior whose education has been interrupted by family responsibilities.
When Joseph crosses the stage in May to receive his bachelor’s degree in education,
he will dedicate it to his father. Joseph began his education in the fall of 1998
with hopes of continuing until he graduated, but delayed his education to be with
his ailing father in the village of Alakanuk; In doing so he became ineligible for
his scholarships and also had to find a job to support his family of six. He returned
to UAF to continue his education after his fathers’ death in 2000.
His volunteer work with Rural Student Services earned him the honor of Outstanding
Freshman in 1998-1999. He also received the Outstanding Student Award in 2001-2002
and 2004-2005, respectively.
Joseph has been active in his village of Alakanuk was selected to represent his community
on fishing issues. He coached basketball for both elementary and high school teams.
After graduation Joseph would like to return to the village of Alakanuk to teach.
Student speaker finds pipeline to success
Petroleum engineering student Phillip Tsunemori is this year’s student commencement
speaker. During the summer of 2003, he worked as an undergraduate research assistant
on Alaska North Slope gas hydrate project. This research involved measurement of gas
hydrate phase behavior using state-of-the-art equipment.
Tsunemori’s research findings were presented at the 54th Arctic Science Conference.
He successfully wrote an undergraduate research proposal and received a $2,400 grant
to continue his research. His accomplishments at the undergraduate level were noticed
by two separate oil companies and he was offered internships. Phillip accepted an
offer from ConocoPhillips Alaska as a summer intern in 2004 and was subsequently offered
a permanent job after graduation.
He represented UAF at the Society of Petroleum Engineers in the Western Region student
paper contest in 2004 and won first place, competing against students from Stanford
University and the University of Southern California among others.
Tsunemori was selected as the department’s Outstanding Student for the class of 2005.
He has been on the chancellor’s list six times while at UAF. He has a wife, Julie,
and two daughters, Hannah and Amy.æ
French horn player makes the most of life’s choices
For music student John Plucker, though UAF was his second choice of schools, what
he received was a first-class education and the opportunity of a lifetime.
Plucker was eleven years old when his family moved to Haines, Alaska from LaConner,
Wash. His mother taught classical piano and his dad was a high school and college
choir teacher before retiring and moving to Haines. Because his parents were both
music teachers, he didn’t have much of a choice when it came to piano lessons, the
music he listened to growing up or his parents’ desire for him to continue with his
music. He did have a choice about the instrument he’d play and he knew he liked the
horn. First he tried the trumpet, but ultimately found his passion in his second choice""the
French horn.
After graduating as valedictorian and a year early from Haines High School, he planned
to go on a foreign exchange to France, but when that fell through his second choice
was clear.ξ He applied to UAF, where he could use his UA Scholarship, which provide
$11,000 to Alaska students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their class.
Plucker made the most of his experience and was afforded the opportunity to travel
to New Zealand through the university’s foreign exchange program. He has been accepted
on scholarship to attend graduate school at the Norwegian State Academy of Music in
Oslo. He was one of only three horn players selected from applicants all over the
world.
UAF’s top cop sets the standard
University of Alaska Fairbanks Police Chief Terry Vrabec will be leaving UAF this
spring to pursue a new career opportunity as executive director of the Alaska Police
Standards Council, and he’ll be taking his master’s degree from UAF in justice administration
with him. The online degree program has been offered at UAF since 2002.
Vrabec’s master’s thesis, "Increased Police Activity During Full Lunar Cycles: Misperceptions
and Reality,"? tracks minor police incidents and their relationship to the phases
of the moon, attempting to document the long-held belief that there’s an increase
in odd calls to police departments during a full moon.
This will be Vrabec’s second degree from UAF. He received his bachelor’s degree in
criminal justice in 1985, and after attending the Department of Public Safety Police
Academy in Sitka, he worked as a police officer in Soldotna. In 1990 Vrabec moved
to the Chicago area and worked as a crime prevention specialist in Evanston, Ill.
Vrabec then returned to Fairbanks to take a position with the university police department
in 1991 and was promoted to police chief in 1997.
Graduate student clicks with program
For Melissa Robinson the University of Alaska Fairbanks Resilience and Adaptation
program has been a perfect match.
At the University of Montana, she majored in wildlife biology and minored in Native
American studies. Her senior thesis looked at how Native elders of the Flathead Reservation
applied traditional values to natural resource management.
"During my senior year I figured out that I wanted to work with local folks and bridge
the gap between their knowledge and Western scientific knowledge so one could inform
the other,"? Robinson said.
Robinson’s experience led to a second project involving whitefish and the Native Alaskan
community of Northway in Alaska’s Tetlin Wildlife Refuge, with the stipulation that
the project be part of a master’s degree program. Finding a graduate program that
matched Robinson and her project was only a few clicks away.
She was searching the Internet when she came across the name of Biology and Wildlife
Professor Terry Chapin with UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology. Robinson quickly enrolled
in UAF’s Resilience and Adaptation, or RAP, program.
"RAP has given me the opportunity to challenge myself and to collaborate with others
across disciplines and, in my case, across cultures. When I think of RAP I really
see it as a bridge between people which allows them to address complex social and
ecological challenges which can only be effectively addressed by combining a broad
range of experts,"? Robinson said.
Robinson’s master’s project, "Linking Local Knowledge and Fisheries Science: The Case
with Humpback Whitefish (Coregonus pidschian) in Interior Alaska,"? is a case study that bridges the cross-cultural and disciplinary
boundaries of researchers and community members. After graduate Robinson will take
a position with the Koyukuk Nowitna National Wildlife Refuge Complex based in Galena,
Alaska.
