The University of Alaska is a land-grant university founded in 1917 in Fairbanks in the State of Alaska. However, its largest campus by number of students is now in the much-more populous Anchorage area.
The University of Alaska System consists of three main universities, each with several satellite campuses in smaller communities. These are:
- University of Alaska Fairbanks, the first university
- University of Alaska Anchorage, the largest university, and
- University of Alaska Southeast, its third component, located in the capital city of Juneau.
Nearly 33,000 students attend classes at these three campuses and their branches.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) is home to the noted Geophysical Institute, which operates the Poker Flat Research Range presently the only collegiate rocket test range in the U.S. (The California Institute of Technology and other colleges formerly had them. See Jet Propulsion Laboratory-History.) Also, there is the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, the location of the only Cray supercomputer in the Arctic region, and the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences which has facilities and research projects all over Alaska and the Arctic Ocean.
Since the population of Alaska is small, the University of Alaska System is a relatively small one. However, it does have several notable academic departments. At UAF, these are the geology department, the atmospheric sciences department, and the wildlife biology department. Reflecting the state's small population, the amount of Federal land granted to the University of Alaska under the Morrill Act was the second-smallest grant in the country.
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