Chukchi Campus is a rural division of the University of Alaska statewide system.  The University of Alaska Fairbanks is Chukchi's main urban campus.  Chukchi Campus is based in Kotzebue, a remote Inupiat Eskimo settlement that lies some 26 miles above the Arctic Circle in northwest Alaska and about 175 miles northeast of the easternmost tip of Russia.  Kotzebue is the trade and transportation hub for Northwest Arctic Alaska, a region with 11 villages dotting mountain and tundra wilderness in an area the same size as the state of Indiana, or more than 36,000 square miles.  The region is about 90 percent Inupiat Eskimo.
        The region has no roads connecting it to the outside world and is accessible only by aircraft, snowmobile and dog team during the winter months.  During the brief, ice-free summer season, cargo barges bring Kotzebue and the surrounding villages supplies for the winter season.  The region's economy includes the Red Dog Mine, one of the world's largest known deposits of lead and zinc.  Red Dog operates under a joint venture between NANA, the local Native regional corporation set up by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, and Cominco, a Canadian mining firm.  Regional residents also operate a small commercial fishery each summer, and Tour Arctic, a NANA subsidiary, has hosted as many as 12,000 visitors to the region during the summer tourist season.  Many if not most regional residents continue to follow a traditional subsistence way of life: hunting, fishing and gathering of other wild foods.
        Most students of Chukchi Campus do not live in Kotzebue.  Rather, students "attend" classes from the villages where they live, via satellite-assisted audioconference, with fax machines and electronic mail sending written assignments between instructor and students, who live in communities scattered across rural Alaska, from the Aleutian Islands in the southwest, to Tok near the border of Canada, to Barrow in the north, and scores of communities in between.  Along with its sister rural campuses in Nome, Bethel, Dillingham, Sitka and other rural communities, Chukchi both "imports" and "exports" postsecondary education throughout rural Alaska while offering certificates, two- and four-year degrees in many academic disciplines including teacher certification, rural development, health, social work, computers, and other fields.