Dean's monthly update
June 2006
Several staff changes took place in the SFOS central office during June. Angela Gies, one of our top notch grant technicians, has moved up to become the fiscal officer for the School of Education. This move was a tremendous promotional opportunity for Angela and we wish her every success. Sharice Walker became the full-time, permanent (hopefully) Assistant to the Dean on June 26. Sharice is a graduate of the UAF journalism program who has worked for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and as anchor and news director of CBS Channel 13 in Fairbanks. Sharice is my third assistant in two years and I hope she will be here (can put up with me?) for a while.
The SFOS budget for fiscal year 2008 (FY08) was finalized by the unit directors on June 12. We established an $8.59M budget for the school with $6.27M provided from UAF general funds. $88,000 will be allocated to debt reduction as the third of five payments on our FY03 budget deficit, further reducing our operating revenues. We did receive an additional $75,000 to partially pay for a new fisheries faculty position. All units received budgets that will require careful planning to meet their mission goals within the established financial constraints.
Mark Johnson and I attended the Alaska Ocean Observing System (AOOS) meeting in Anchorage on June 14. We discussed the redistribution of AOOS funding for next year along with plans for implementing an ocean observing system in Alaska. NOAA has awarded AOOS $1.7M for this year and Mark’s Data Management and Analysis Group (DMAG) is funded to develop numerical models and to implement a Live-Access-Server (LAS) system to distribute real-time data streams.
MAP Leader Paula Cullenberg arranged for me to spend June 26 and 27 in Dillingham to meet with people involved in the fishing industry. We met with Bristol Bay Native Association CEO Ralph Andersen and Molly Chythlook to discuss SFOS plans for improving our undergraduate fisheries program. They have a summer internship program that would be ideally suited for our students. Their program is being run this summer by Valli Peterson, one of our UAF fisheries majors who will be a senior in the fall. Our meeting with Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation members Bryce Edgmon (Chief Operating Officer), Kyle Belleque (Education Director), and Andy Ruby (Regional Fisheries Coordinator) inspired some research ideas. We discussed opportunities for student field work in Bristol Bay and learned about the two-week Salmon Camp they sponsor each year for middle school and high school students.
Paula and I also visited with Tim Sands, the Area Management Biologist for Bristol Bay Westside. Tim received his undergraduate degree in fisheries at UAF and is finishing his M.S. degree. He is the ADF&G employee who decides when to open and close the fishery in Dillingham. We met with Norman Van Vactor at Peter Pan Seafoods, Inc. to discuss potential student internships. The Peter Pan cannery was my first visit to a salmon processing plant. Our visit with Deborah McLean-Nelson (Director of the UAF Bristol Bay Campus) and Todd Radenbaugh (Associate Professor, Environmental Science) provided me the opportunity to learn more about how UAF's rural campuses operate. We also discussed how we could recruit more rural Alaskans to our undergraduate fisheries degree program.
June 30 marked the end of my second year as dean of the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. Having survived two winters in Fairbanks, I no longer qualify as the “new dean” but am probably not yet eligible for "sourdough" status either. After all, I was in balmy Anchorage in January (at one degree below zero) when it was 51 below in Fairbanks. It is hard to remember winter with the beautiful weather we are having in Fairbanks this summer more rain and less smoke that the past two summers.
Denis