The national need for meaningful and effective science education at all stages of learning and development has long been evident. One of the most urgent challenges facing humanity is to understand how coupled human and natural systems interact to enhance or erode the resilience of regional and global ecosystems, economies, and cultures. The goals of this project are to merge social and natural science knowledge to foster a better understanding of patterns of human activity and environmental change, to address key environmental problems and opportunities unique to high latitudes, and to develop new methods for framing and analyzing them.
Intellectual Merit This undergraduate pilot program, Sustainability and Stewardship in Alaska (SSA), is organized along lines parallel to NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program but focused on undergraduate education and research. SSA builds upon the concepts and much of the operational structure of the University of Alaska's IGERT program, Regional Resilience and Adaptation (RR&A). The project focus is on investigations of environmental, social and cultural impacts of global change in Alaska within the broader context of sustainability and stewardship in the circumpolar North. To leverage the strengths of the IGERT program's institutional foundation at UAF, SSA maintains close connections and interactions with the RR&A program structure and personnel. SSA includes a set of three advanced undergraduate courses, two summers of field research, and UAF-funded research internships. SSA students join IGERT graduate students for a program of seminars, workshops, and mentoring. SSA students also mentor students in related precollege education summer programs at UAF. The program represents an exploratory version of an undergraduate program that, if fully embodied, would be a new degree program. The requirements and feasibility of SSA's full embodiment is a key subject of investigation during the two-year grant period.
Broader Impacts The retention of Alaska Native students in the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF) science departments is not exemplary. However, UAF's Department of Alaska Native and Rural Development (DANRD) has the best record of retention of Alaska Native students on campus. SSA works in close association with DANRD. In addition, the PI and coordinator of the NSF-funded Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP), as well as the local chapter of American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) collaborates to involve Alaska Native students in the project. The latter programs provide tutors, social gatherings, and peer mentoring to a cohort of Alaska Native students majoring in science in the University of Alaska system. SSA has established partnerships with Alaska's Globe program schools, Schoolyard LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research) project, and the Global Change Education Using Western Science and Native Observations program. The education and outreach PI of these K-12 programs, a UAF faculty member, is working with SSA to the mutual advantage of the undergraduate and precollege students in these programs. The partnership reinforces and enriches these programs with the participation of undergraduates who are actively involved in interdisciplinary research - research that is directly related to what the school children are doing in their excellent, science education standards-based programs.
