UAF plans to name campus West Ridge area ‘Arctic Research Park’

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTUU/KTVF) - The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) plans to rename the West Ridge area of its campus to UAF Arctic Research Park as a recognition of the research that happens there.

According to Interim Chancellor Mike Sfraga, this name came about because much of the campus’ science and technology research is centered in that area.

It is also meant to attract investment from the federal and state government, as well as from industry.

“If you want to build a lab somewhere, you build it up here. You co-locate them, because I can’t replicate Silicon Valley, but I can replicate the idea of a research park,” Sfraga said in a Friday morning presentation to the University of Alaska Board of Regents.

This renaming, Sfraga hopes, will also attract undergrad and research students to the university.

The park area will include the university’s Geophysical Institute, Arctic Health Research Building and Museum of the North, as well as a planetarium currently under construction next to the museum, running to the Reichardt Building on its east end.

Sfraga said he plans to sign a memo effectively creating the research park on his own authority, and a ribbon-cutting or some other kind of unveiling for the project is planned for the future.

These changes come as Sfraga emphasized the increasing importance of the arctic in geopolitics and national security.

“It feels almost like a gradual epiphany, that this has been rolling for some time, and now the world has discovered the North,” he said. “You cannot hide the fact that we are in the middle of a great power competition, the shifting power structures, and also just the rules-based order.”

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