academia – Alaska Voices

Field log: A full career of fundamental boreal forestry

January 12, 2026

A woman and man in smile in a selfie in front of a photoshopped background of blueberry bushes and mountains int he distance.

“I remember his frustration as budgets were being cut. Now most of us experienced a mixture of apprehension and anger. The anger from the injustice of it and apprehension from how is this going to affect what matters to me? Not just my job, although that’s there, but also the things that I’m doing that I think are important And as near as I could tell, he experienced only anger. He was pissed.” – Dave Valentine

Partnerships

September 21, 2020

Erin and Joanna smile in front of a blueberry bush.

“As a leader you’re not there to tell people what to do. You’re there to support them succeeding at what they already can do best or helping them learn to do something better.”

Making spaces for varied voices

September 14, 2020

Scott and Bob smile in front of smokey trees.

“It’s easy to be satisfied with incremental change when the incremental change is not affecting you.”

Loud, critical, ambitious: sexism in science

September 3, 2020

Jessica and Jessie smile in front of a bed of lichen and leaves.

” I have to be able to be on my toes and defend all of the work that my team has done, and yet if I question any of the work any of the other teams have done, immediately I’m called in the office.”

Grad school files

August 31, 2020

Rachel and Jill smile in front of an aerial view of a forest.

“I thought environmental science was a really good way to connect people’s problems and Earth’s problems and learn about the physical world yet the social science world, too.”

Engineering healthy early-career boundaries

August 27, 2020

Carrie and Tristan lean together and look at the camera with snowy trees behind them.

“A lot of the male engineers were invited to go out golfing, and shooting, and I was never invited to do those things even though I was also an engineer and actually a pretty great shot.”

Uneven ground: permafrost thaw and burnout

August 24, 2020

Jessiea nd Kristin smile at the camera, a field of grain behind them.

“The more positive side of people’s brains would say oh, no, no, no, these are learning opportunities or whatever, but at some point it’s actually just failure.”

A day in the life of a university scientist

June 29, 2020

Audrey and Shannon, two women who look similar with dark brown hair have their arms around eachother in front of snowy trees.

“There’s a culture here of women, working moms, who are wanting to, outdoing each other, like, ‘Well I put the baby down at 8 but I still had to stay up until 2 in the morning to finish this grant.'”

Reflecting after a Commencement handshake

June 25, 2020

Dan and Diane, the chancellor and a student, smile at the camera in front of a photoshopped background of the University of Alaska campus.

“We currently are the world leader in Arctic research. No other university, and really no other federal government around the world, does more research on the Arctic than University of Alaska Fairbanks.”

Bringing global experiences back home

June 22, 2020

Krista, a woman with pulled-back dark hair, and Arlo, a man with two lip piercings wearing a beanie, smile in front of a blueberry bush background.

“We were in Georgia, the Republic of Georgia, when they were being bombed. And all we had to eat for like six weeks straight was kasha, buckwheat.”