University of Alaska

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I am from the East coast of Canada, and I want to apply for fall 2012 to the University of Alaska Fairbanks for the wildlife biology and conservation masters program. I have been to Alaska before and I am absolutely in love with it. I am still going to find the transition difficult though, especially since I am 27 and still live at home. I wonder if anyone has any experience with or know of UAF? How autism-friendly is the school? Are there other ASD students and perhaps a support group there? What about accommodations for ASD students--does UAF readily offer those?

I know of UAF. I spent hours upon hours browsing their online catalogues for courses I could do online or by correspondence. I am very interested in their Inuit/other Native languages programs. They have one of the largest and best selections of distance learning classes I have found in any North American university (and believe me I was researching this for months on end tryingto find classes I could take from the non-overwhelming comfort of my home) and I also noticed they had a great selection of in-person classes too. Their prices are low as well if I remember. Anyway that's all I can say but I have HIGH regard for this university and I imagine a place with so many distance learning options would also be accomodative in the realm of disability.

As a matter of fact, I am a UAF student.

However, I did not declare my disability to my school, so I'm afraid I don't have first-hand experience. They do, however, provide accommodations with proper disability documentation, and I think autism is included in there. I think they have some other programs to help students with disabilities. But I have yet to hear of support groups, or at least not one within the school. I don't really know any other kids with ASD, or at least not any that admit it.

I think there are some things within town, but I haven't checked them out, so I don't know exactly what they do, though some things happen on occasion.

I am planning to talk to a counselor fairly soon, and I'll probably bring up my autism to them and ask some questions. I could come back to this thread after that. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help.

Also, UAF is a good choice for wildlife biology and conservation. I'm not majoring in it, but it's one of the school's major themes.

I may be transferring to UAF in fall 2012 as well Solei. I would love to know about the job market in fairbanks, cost of food (basics like milk, meat, fruits, etc) and the avg rental cost of an apt outside the univ (to see if its cheaper than student housing... it usually is).

I'm going for the Bachelors of Science in Anthropology (aka their archeology focus degree) and my interest is in paleoarcheology, marine archeology (not shipwrecks) and applied anthropology. UAF has really strong programs for paleoarcheology and ive been told they also have a marine archeology program starting up.

That's awesome. I have a BA in anthropology, the focus was bioanthropology but the archaeology component was what brought me to Alaska. I dug on an island called Sitkalidak (sp?) that was outside of Kodiak for 6 weeks, it was the best experience of my life.

Archaeology's real hard on the back I'd love to do archaeology grunt work but it's pretty hard nosed to do long term.