Friday Focus: From believing to achieving

A man with glasses wearing a UAF ballcap, a brown suit jacket, a white button-up shirt, and a blue paisley tie while outside.
UAF photo by Eric Engman
Chancellor Dan White

Jan. 31, 2025

— By Dan White, chancellor

Former president Theodore Roosevelt once said “Believe you can and you're halfway there.” As encouraging (and true!) as those words are, being halfway there can be a difficult place to be. We are in the midst of institutional transformation at UAF. We have big goals at UAF, and I believe they are within reach. Increasing enrollment, establishing a welcoming Main Street, achieving R1, and building the Troth Yeddha’ Indigenous Studies Center. It’s exciting stuff! But it’s going to take hard work, optimism, and creativity to get us past the halfway point – from believing to achieving.

One project we are in the middle of is improving our enrollment process at UAF. Back in 2019, we launched our Strategic Enrollment Planning initiative. The changes made by the passionate and capable individuals involved in this process have transformed our institution. Every day, new ideas and improvements come up that continue to push our enrollment progress forward. However, we still have a ways to go. This week, the UA Board of Regents Ad-Hoc Committee for Recruitment, Retention and Graduation met to discuss the newly released on enrollment at UA. There are several recommendations in the report that will continue to drive us towards our overall enrollment goals. We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go in ensuring a sustainable enrollment future for UAF. But I am confident that the right things are being done to get us there!

We are also in the midst of  physically transforming the campus for decades to come. While there are several different facilities in discussion, each of them has a different process for becoming a reality. We know that to keep pace with modern student needs, we need to build modern dorms. In the coming years, we will work with our Board of Regents to identify the right funding streams to make this possible. In addition, we know that to recruit new students, we need to make a positive first impression. This includes building a hotel on campus, a process that will be completed by entering into a public-private partnership. We are also looking into improving our hockey arena to allow our D1 team to play right here on campus and increase the ice availability in the community. There is a dedicated community group collaborating with the UAA community initiative to advocate for this addition. On the private philanthropy side, we are continuing to make progress towards our fundraising goal to build the Troth Yeddha’ Indigenous Studies Center at the crest of the hill, Troth Yeddha’.

That’s a lot of change! But it is all critical, and importantly, it is all possible. We are part way there, and the next year will see us moving significantly closer to our goals. It can be easy to get lost in the middle of things, but now is the time to make our visions a reality. The light is at the end of the tunnel and it grows brighter every day. Thank you.

Friday Focus is written by a different member of UAF’s leadership team every week.