Climate Scholars Program at UAF

 
 
Study climate change in the Last Frontier, working alongside the top climate scientists in the world. Focusing on actionable science and community engagement, the Climate Scholars Program at UAF’s Honors College offers unique opportunities for field-based, hands-on learning and research.

The Climate Scholars Experience

Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. Meeting its many challenges will require innovative solutions and well-planned action — at both a local and global level. The Climate Scholars Program at UAF offers the first opportunity of its kind in the nation for undergraduates to get involved and make a meaningful impact.

As a Climate Scholar at UAF, you’ll engage in a highly interdisciplinary academic experience that connects the arts, humanities and sciences. You’ll also have the chance to work with top climate science experts who are engaged in cutting-edge research on climate and the Arctic.

Opt-in to the Climate Scholars Program today!

What is a Climate Intensive?

Climate Scholars Program Intensives are opportunities to study with expert faculty in some of Alaska’s most unique ecosystems. We invite you to the remote places in Alaska where you will integrate theoretical knowledge with practical experiences to gain new skills in environmental data analysis, visualization, and effective advocacy while gaining a new perspective and context for Earth Systems. 

Current Intensives

Experience climate change field research at ground zero. In Alaska, rapidly warming ocean temperatures, changing algae and vegetation, and increasing glacial melt are impacting Alaska's coastlines at unprecedented rates. This 8-day research program immerses students in original research on the impacts of climate change the coastal and marine ecosystem. Students will gain experience in ecological fieldwork, lab procedures, data analysis and science communication while designing their own field research projects alongside professional climate change scientists. This intensive is a collaboration between Bonanza Creek and Northern Gulf of Alaska Long Term Ecological Research Programs. The 2025 intensive will be at the Kasitsna Bay Lab remote marine field station near Homer and Seldovia, with epic tides, octopus, sea stars, kelp, plankton, otters, coastal rainforest and more!
As the fourth largest waterway in North America, the Yukon River is an ecologically critical artery through Alaska, home to multiple Indigenous nations. It is a landscape alive with history, roiled by present change. This course is an environmental history of the Yukon, focused on how natural systems intersect with and shaped human lives. With an emphasis on storytelling and thinking with modes past and contemporary, students will travel from Eagle to Circle by canoe, visiting communities and sites key to understanding human-river relationships. The course will be led by Dr. Bathsheba Demuth, an environmental historian at Brown University currently researching a history of the Yukon River watershed, in conjunction with faculty from UAF and local and Indigenous experts along the river.
With integrated wind and hydropower systems, Kodiak Island receives over 99% of its electricity from renewable energy sources. In this Intensive, students travel to Kodiak to meet with local stakeholders and organizations that have helped the island transition to fossil-fuel free energy production, while reducing the cost of electricity. Participants in this incredible Intensive opportunity spend six days exploring Kodiak Island while learning about renewable energy sources and the application of microgrid technology.

Adina Preston Photography

From 2019 to 2020, vlog researchers were involved in one of the largest international polar research expeditions in history: the MOSAiC Expedition. These scientists spent the year on a research vessel, frozen and drifting throughout the Arctic Ocean ice, for the primary purpose of collecting ice core samples to better understand the changing Arctic. 

During this Climate Scholars Intensive, planned for spring semester 2025, students will work with scientists from the MOSAiC expedition to learn techniques for ice research on Interior Alaska’s frozen ponds, work with sea ice samples and data collected from the Arctic, and design their own research projects with mentoring from professional cryosphere (ice and snow) scientists. Students who complete this Intensive, spread over the span of several weekends throughout spring semester, will gain firsthand research experience, ask and answer questions about our frozen environment, and be better equipped to talk about our changing sea ice and the Arctic. 

This Climate Scholars Program Intensive is located in Juneau, Alaska and will focus on best practices, strategies, and processes for individuals and small groups to impact climate policy through the Alaska State Government.

In this course, students will learn how to build the power, influence, and momentum required to impact climate policy and compare different approaches to making change in climate policy at the state level (legal, activist, lobbyist, etc.) Students will prepare and lead meetings with state officials, climate advocacy organizations, and local activists. Students should expect to walk away from experience with a greater understanding of how to have an impact on Alaska State climate policy.
Gath & K'iyh, a series of workshops organized by , , , and the UAF Climate Scholars program, uses “Listen to Heal” as a framework to understand the experiences of the Gath and K’iyh* due to climate impacts, address climate grief, and come to a place of hope and action.

This Intensive approaches the goal of climate healing using multiple artistic mediums (such as birch bark and tanned salmon skin), traditional stories from Indigenous Elders, research from UAF climate scientists, experiential exercises, musical exploration, and personal reflections from participants.

*Gath is King Salmon and K’iyh is Birch in Benhti Kokhut’ana Kenaga dialect
Venture north to Alaska's Arctic to study some of the most remote landscapes and ecosystems in the world, where the climate is warming at a rate outpacing the lower latitudes of the planet. This course takes a naturalist's approach to understanding our environment, including its past and the ever-changing present.
 
Observation is the core of a naturalist way of understanding. In this Intensive, students will observe, identify and document the ecosystems and species of the Arctic on a road journey from vlog to Toolik Field Station; spending several days studying the area's rich and varied terrain from the Arctic Ocean and Arctic Coastal Plane to the Brooks Range mountains. Surrounded by the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Gates of the Arctic National Park, students will see birds that are migrating to the Arctic from as far away as Antarctica, search for fossils, identify tundra plants and have the chance to see mammal species including caribou, wolves, foxes, muskox, grizzly bears, ground squirrels and more. 
 
Students will interact and learn from experts and learn to document and record their naturalist observations with notes, photography, and illustrations in traditional natural journals, as well as through digital citizen science applications, including iNaturalist and GLOBE observer. 

The way climate change research in the Arctic is conducted across all fields is rapidly transforming. In the past, the colonial methods of "helicopter researchers" observing and interpreting the Arctic system in short bursts without consent or consultation of Indigenous Arctic community members. Today, we strive for community-centered and co-produced research where local consent and Indigenous knowledge is valued and essential.

This Intensive introduces students to methods for this type of research. You will spend the week learning from Alaska Native Elders, artists and scientists and other experts in the field of co-production of knowledge. You will leave with concrete examples of good collaborations that span Indigenous and Western science, a piece of traditional art that you make, and a spirit of self reflection and determination for a just and equitable future for Arctic climate research. 

Upcoming Intensives

Farming in Alaska? In a state where winter lasts for nearly six months of the year, growing vegetables isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. However, agricultural in Alaska is on the rise. This intensive offers a deeper understanding of expanding regenerative agriculture practices in the state, accompanied by a hands-on harvesting experience at the only commercial farm in Western Alaska. At Meyers Farm in Bethel, Tim and Lisa Meyers have spent the past twenty years honing their ability to grow thousands of pounds of organic vegetables, shipping them to villages down the Kuskokwim River and alleviating food insecurity in the region one produce box at a time. Students will be asked to reimagine how agriculture is currently conceptualized in Alaska and in the lower 48, analyzing how farming can be approached sustainably in their own home communities.

The NASA and NSF-sponsored National Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) immerses teams from a wide range of higher education institutions in an innovative NASA-mission-like adventure in data acquisition and analysis through scientific ballooning.

The University of Alaska team, comprised of engineering students and Climate Scholars, travels to eclipse viewing sites across the country, makes frequent observations by launching hourly radiosondes on helium-filled weather balloons, works with atmospheric science experts throughout the project, and publishes results in peer-reviewed academic journals.

Art has been used throughout millennia as a powerful tool for activism. For a subject that is deeply politically divisive like climate change, art too can be used as a tool to reach across the partisan divide and communicate how rising global temperatures will impact shared important cultural events. This intensive offers student participants an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and communicating how climate change is impacting one of the largest trademark events in the state: the Iditarod. Over the course of a week, students will use an ethnographic and interview-based approach to learn about community perceptions of the Iditarod in a warming world. Students will hone their ability to communicate climate change through various artistic mediums while building their toolkit to engage in arts activism.

Find your voice in the climate movement with this summer intensive focused on climate change communication and advocacy. The serene and rugged  provides an unparalleled setting for students to learn about and reflect on the societal and cultural transformations that are needed to address the climate crisis. Students engage in living within a smaller ecological personal footprint, exploring what’s possible in micro renewable energy, wild foods gathering, and small-scale agricultural and composting systems. Students who complete this intensive will be better equipped to actively participate in climate action, communication, and advocacy.
Explore undergraduate research opportunities at UAF

UAF is a world leader in climate and Arctic research. We produce more publications and citations related to Arctic study than any university in the world, and are home to the International Arctic Research Center and other major research units that bring in leading scientists from across the globe.

Find information for prospective Honors students

UAF’s Honors College welcomes students from all majors and backgrounds. Guided by mentors and advisors who are here to support you every step, you can tailor a course of study that aligns with your unique vision and goals.