UAA Life Hacks 2012: This back-to-campus blog features serialized fiction written by UAA student Joe Selmont, about the misadventures of student Lamont Harpe, who just recently fell in love. Find it at uaalifehacks2012.blogspot.com.Almost 16,000 students go to school at UAA's campus in Anchorage. That number jumps to 20,000 if you roll in the community campuses in Kenai, Kodiak, Mat-Su and Valdez.
All those campuses are considered UAA. Other branches of the UA system exist in Southeast (UAS) and Fairbanks (UAF). Here's an "about UAA"page you might find helpful.
That many people and the amount of energy and passion they bring generates a ton of events of interest to the larger Anchorage community. Many of these events are free and open to the public. Events with a fee, like performance arts or comedians and cultural icons, or the planetarium, do charge, and their announcements will let you know how much.
Get straight on parking policies
If you want to come visiting over at UAA, one thing to get clear in your head is parking. Monday through Thursday, this very busy campus enforces parking at $2 an hour or $10 all day, 7:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m. You can use a credit card in the easy-to-find parking kiosks. Parking is free every Friday all day everywhere on campus because the bulk of classes run on Mon-Wed and Tues-Thurs cycles. There are still some classes on Fridays, but not nearly as many as on other days. All UAA Campus Bookstore events also feature free parking in the lot near the bookstore.
One crowded parking lot: Meant to amuse. (Photo credit:liquidnight, used under Creative Commons from Flickr)
To see how UAA handles parking compared with other universities, the director of parking services wrote a recent blog post that described ratios per permits sold and parking prices.
Here's a short excerpt:
UAA's is somewhat of a hybrid model and we have a very student-centered parking policy. We sell permits at roughly a 2.3:1 ratio, meaning 2.3 permits are sold for every parking space on campus. We can do this because not all permitted vehicles are on campus at any given time. The goal is to keep the lots full—if we build more parking spaces than we need, we are wasting valuable land that could be better used for classrooms, labs and academic research. It’s a delicate balancing act.
Some schools sell permits up to a 24:1 ratio—that’s more than 10 times as many cars fighting over one space on campus. At UAA, your permit allows you to park in nearly any lot at any time (with a few exceptions). Other than the five percent of spaces reserved for UAA fleet vehicles, UAA doesn’t reserve parking for individual staff or faculty,so students have the same chance to park as employees do, which is not the norm in the world of higher education; it’s practically unheard of.
Students, staff and faculty all have the option of riding the People Mover buses free using their Wolf Card-- all in the interest of inviting fewer cars onto campus and into the very busy U-Med District.
Subscribe to free electronic newsletters
Once you get parking straight, you can keep up on campus events through our Master Calendar or by subscribing to Seawolf Weekly. Self-subscribe here.
Seawolf Weekly: Publishes electronically every Wednesday. You can self-subscribe. It includes news, event listings and recent podcasts available for downloading.
If that's not enough, you can subscribe to a Monday through Friday newsletter, called Green & Gold Daily Digest. Self-subscribe here.
Green & Gold Daily Digest: Publishes electronically M-F mornings and includes a Today and Tomorrow listing of UAA events.
Social media channels
UAA also maintains an institutional Facebook page; LIKE us and you'll get our updates. Follow us on Twitter, too. Our You Tube channel is here.
Come on over!
EVENTS THIS WEEK AT UAA:
>>>> John Morgan, Eva Saulitas and Arlitia Jones at UAA Campus Bookstore, 5 pm Monday
>>>> Frank Warren: PostSecret: Art, Stories and Freedom of Speech, 7:30 pm Wed
>>>> Unleashing Plato's Pleasure Principle, 5 pm Thurs FREE PARKING
