SIT: Program Assistant opening
About SIT
SIT (the School for International Training) is an accredited university-level institution in Vermont, USA, which has specialized in offering study-abroad programs in partnership with foreign institutions. SIT has multiple locations in many countries and offers courses during the summer as well as the fall and spring semesters.
SIT Study Abroad Programs
Each year since 2007 the University Centre of the Westfjords welcomes Study Abroad students from the School for International Training, Vermont USA.What started small with a summer course has grown in to a successful all year round partnership. Meanwhile 3 different SIT programs are visiting Ísafjörður throughout the year.
Summer Program in Renewable Energy, Technology, and Resource Economics
Every summer, SIT offers a Study Abroad Summer Program on Renewable Energy, Technology, and Resource Economics in Iceland. During the seven week long program, students from universities across the United States learn about Iceland’s energy policy and resource economics through coursework, engagement with local stakeholders, and individual research projects that they design themselves.
Three weeks of the program are spent in the Westfjords region. With its welcoming, tight-knit, and easily accessible communities and unique resource and energy needs, the Westfjords present students with the perfect opportunity to get hands-on in their learning experience. Classes in Energy Technology are thought at the University Center of the Westfjords where students learn about renewable energy and sustainability, with a focus on applying principles learned in the classroom on a small town scale.
While in Ísafjörður students stay with local host families, where they are able to learn what it is like to live in a typical Icelandic family. The family living experience is a perfect complement to students’ Icelandic lessons, providing them the chance to express themselves in an everyday setting. Host families are generally enthusiastic about the homestay arrangement and by now more than 70 families have opened their homes to SIT students. The University Centre is indeed grateful to all these families.
Semester Program on Climate Change in the Arctic
The program Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and the Arctic was launched in 2016. The field based, semester-long program is taught on bachelor level and is offered both fall and spring semesters. The students get to see various parts of Iceland and they also do a two-week tour to Greenland. Approximately three weeks of the program students spend in Ísafjörður in local host-families. Ísafjörður resident Daniel Govoni has taken on the role as Program Director, assisted by Jennifer Smith and Alexandra Tyas, both graduates of the Coastal and Marine Management master’s program.
The newest addition – The SIT master’s program Climate Change and Global Sustainability
With this graduate program, students travel around the globe to improve their expertise on fighting climate change. The first SIT Master students arrived in August 2018 to stay for 3 month in Ísafjörður. While in Iceland students are introduced to climate science, assessment methods, and energy and climate policy. In the spring semester, students travel to the Zanzibar archipelago to explore the effects of climate change on ecosystems and human communities in the Indian Ocean region and the challenges of balancing natural resource management with the need to promote sustainable livelihoods.