The success from last year continues and today the application web opened for the second IPY Field School at UNIS, which will be arranged from June 21 through July 9. Undergraduate and early graduate level students can apply for admission. Application deadline is April 8, 2010.

Text: Eva Therese Jenssen

The international and interdisciplinary IPY Field School is for undergraduate and early graduate level students. The course will focus on environmental change in the Polar areas based upon past, present and future research being done in the Arctic during and after the IPY. The field school will take place at UNIS in Longyearbyen June 21 through July 9.

Resounding success continues
The IPY Field School started up in 2009 with great success. A total of 297 students from 50 countries applied for this interdisciplinary course held in the high Arctic. Only 24 students from 11 different countries were admitted. The students in 2009 came from Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, Germany, U.S.A., the Netherlands, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Ecuador and Russia.

These students had a fabulous three weeks course in Svalbard, including lectures concerning IPY and the Arctic and the Antarctic, field work and excursions, project work with poster presentation, career development lectures – and perhaps most important of all: getting to know students with different nationality and educational background within nature sciences.

- The IPY Field School was meant to be a one-time only project, however, due to funding from IPY Norway and The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and with UNIS contribution, the IPY Field School will be held in 2010 and 2011 as well, explains Elise Strømseng, field school coordinator at UNIS.

This year there are 26 student places available for the course. Professor Ólafur Ingólfsson (University of Iceland and UNIS) will be the course responsible, but there will be several guest lecturers as well, teaching everything from Oceanography, Geology and Geography to Biology and Geophysics in the Polar areas.

Application deadline: 8.april

The IPY Field School includes not only theoretical lectures, but also exciting field work opportunities. This picture is from last year's field school, where Professor Hanne Christiansen shows students the permafrost instruments in Adventdalen.