For a number of years the University Centre of the Westfjords and the School for International Training in Vermont, USA, have had a fruitful collaboration. Since 2007 SIT has had a field school in the Westfjords on renewable energy during the summer time. Now the collaboration between the two institutions has been furthered as SIT has now set up a new semester long field school Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and the Arctic based in Ísafjörður. The duration of the field school is 15 weeks which amounts to a whole semester. It is taught on bachelor level and will be offered both during fall and spring semester. Students will stay in Ísafjörður for at least 4 week but will otherwise travel around Iceland and Greenland for study trips.  The first group to join the field school has already began their studies and has mostly stayed in Greenland but will arrive in Ísafjörður tomorrow, Wednesday  14.

With this new fields school two new positions in the field of higher education teaching and research are created in the Westfjords. A Program Director, that oversees the program, has been appointed as well as a Program Assistant. Both of these people are already affiliated with the University Centre, the Program Director M. Ragnar Honeth has taught at the Coastal and Marine Management master’s program for a few years and the Program Assistant, Jennifer Smith graduated from the program in 2014.

The students will no doubt bond with Ísafjörður during their stay as they will live with host families. The host family arrangement has already proven very successful for the SIT summer field school. The University Centre is very grateful to all the families that have opened their homes to students for a few weeks period.

As already mention the group will arrive in Ísafjörður tomorrow, Wednesday September 14, and from that day we can say that the number of students based in the University Centre will have doubled.

We look forward to the weeks ahead!