North-Country Challenge

The reputation of the main speaker was known throughout the territory. It was no surprise to the University of Alaska's commencement audience last year that he should choose as his theme: "Be Bold." Ernest Newton Patty had been one of the original 1922 faculty at the struggling new campus. He had been dean of the college, had built up the mining school into one of the best in North America. After 19 prosperous years as a Seattle mining engineer, he was back at his old school to urge more "bold planning in the years ahead to develop this university to the point where it is giving maximum service to Alaska." After he finished speaking, the university's regents decided that Patty was just the man to succeed retiring President Terris Moore (TIME, July 18, 1949)

Alaska has not regretted the regents' decision. Last week, as the new school year began, the university announced that its enrollment had hit a record 500. A $6,000,000 building program was under way, and the university's prestige had never been higher. In a sense, it had become the center of the territory's hopes for the future--the producer, as Ernest Patty had said, of "courageous young men and women who will go out and accept the challenge of the north country."

Moose & Caribou. When Patty first went to the new campus 90 miles south of the Arctic Circle, it hardly seemed the sort of place to accept any type of challenge. It was called the Alaska College of Agriculture and School of Mines. It had six professors, six students, one building. Moose and caribou wandered freely about; foxes raided the garbage pails; the desks were made of packing cases. But somehow, under the leadership of President Charles Bunnell, the campus grew. One reason: Ernest Patty's School of Mines.

Patty's school would make a name for itself. It was located near some of Alaska's biggest gold, coal and copper mines, and Patty and his students spent as much time underground as in the classroom. They were at first a rough lot. They got into so many tavern brawls that President Bunnell once exclaimed: "They'll be the ruination of us all." Patty replied: "Don't worry, Doctor. You'll be proud of those boys some day." By the time he left to start his own business in 1935 ("I want to practice what I've been teaching"), his graduates were among Alaska's top engineers.

Bison & Oxen. The fame of the school of mines soon spread to the whole institution. The university's 13-building campus is uniquely equipped to give special training. Its geologists have studied the chemistry of the arctic's soil and the effect of frost and thaw. Its Geophysical Institute has become a center for research into the upper atmosphere and the aurora. Last year some 30,000 visitors trooped through its museum to examine 100,000 Indian and Eskimo exhibits as well as the skeletons of the hairy mammoth, super bison, musk ox, Pleistocene horse and saber-toothed tiger. Meanwhile, the university has spread its influence far beyond its own borders. Last year 1,000 adults took its special nine-week mining course; 1,000 students are now enrolled at its branch community colleges in Anchorage and Ketchikan; 1,100 study at its military branches at Eielson, Ladd and Elmendorf air bases.

President Patty hopes to have a third community college in Juneau. He has built a $600,000 student union, will soon open a new dormitory for married students, a new library, new research and classroom buildings. He has strengthened his department of education to help Alaska overcome its teacher shortage, is expanding the department of business administration. Eventually, says Patty, the campus will be such that no visitor to the territory will ever be able to get away without some proud Alaskan saying: "Be sure to visit our university."

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