Our curriculum explores climate-related changes to landscape processes (e.g. glacial retreat, altered animal migration patterns, Arctic “greening,” permafrost thaw, and shifts in seasonal cycles).  We conceptualize these as complex systems difficult to model or predict, linked by the flow of material and energy across wide temporal and spatial scales.  Areas of focus include local ecology, geophysical processes, glaciology, complex system modeling, and land management in changing historical contexts.  Local narratives and stories are an important part of the course, as is our yearly course reader. 

Students receive six (6) upper-division semester units for “Field Research Experience in Earth and Climate Sciences (ERS 499) from the University of Maine. Our faculty is available to support the transfer of these credits to students’ home colleges or universities.

When in McCarthy, we learn alongside guest and visiting instructors from around the region, and take part in community events and workshops.  In the backcountry we use natural history field journaling and sketching techniques as ways to notice landscape processes occurring from momentary to geologic timescales.  We travel across glaciers and through boreal forest into high mountain tundra, taking routes through striking terrain to reach sites for student projects.  Climate change impacts to local landscape structures and processes, and to related social-ecological systems, are unifying themes we return to throughout the course. 

Our surroundings are characterized by dynamic biophysical evolution, where ecosystem and Earth system processes are evident.  We learn through direct experience with the land and from observations “in the field,” through a combination of faculty-led exercises and site-talks; natural history field journaling and sketching; and small-group student projects over the course of the three-week backcountry trip.  These final projects are presented in McCarthy during the end of the program.

We build a collaborative learning community together, in which observation is a daily practice and critical thinking is supported.  Academic emphasis is placed on research process and context, and on the value of viewing systems through multiple ways of knowing.  Engagement with faculty and guest instructors who hold intimate knowledge of these lands through personal connection, participation in regional stewardship and climate adaptation planning, and involvement in community governance are a boon to our program.

We are nested in a small and remote community, in which people value and rely on interdependence and collaboration at many levels.  Personal growth can be achieved in places like this through building trust, dialogue, and mutual support with peers.