2010 All Arctic Visiting Speaker Tours
If you have any questions regarding these tours, please contact avs@arcus.org.
Showing 5 speaker tours.
2010 Tours
Summary:
Author Charles Wohlforth (The Whale and the Supercomputer; The Fate of Nature), spoke to students of the Ocean Research College Academy (ORCA) on November 10, 2010. ORCA is an early college high school academy found on the campus of Everett Community College, located in Everett, Washington. ORCA uses the local marine environment as the unifying theme to integrate the core academic disciplines. Students at ORCA have been studying Wohlforth's work on arctic science and the importance of culture in environmental issues.
Charles' main talk featured a 40-minute slide lecture on ocean and arctic environmental problems. He focused on how changes in social norms affect the human relationship with nature, and how understanding these are key to addressing issues of climate change, sea ice loss, and ocean acidification. The talk entwined many branches of learning including physical science, economics, anthropology, psychology, and the influence of spirituality.
Along with the presentation, Charles also conducted a question-and-answer session with the 85 ORCA students and the invited Everett Community College students and instructors. Charles states, "The preparation of the students was nothing short of extraordinary. The level of discussion in each of the sessions was at a level as high or higher than I encounter with graduate students and college faculty." Those invited included Global Studies students and the deans of the Math and Science and Social Science divisions.
Following the large group question-and-answer session, Charles hosted smaller break-out sessions with English teacher Josh Searle and the first year ORCA students currently enrolled in a course entitled "Negotiating Nature." The class has been reading excerpts from Charles' latest book, and had the opportunity to discuss with Charles how the human perspective of nature informs how humans value nature.
A faculty luncheon for Charles was hosted by ORCA. Interested Everett Community College faculty were also in attendance.
Summary:
Dr. Robert McGhee visited Cordova, Alaska on 1-3 November 2010. He presented several programs during his visit to community members, students, Native Elders, and Native Corporation staff. His programs compared the perception of the Arctic as seen through the written history of western civilization, to the perception of the Arctic as viewed through the eyes of the native Inuit people over time through the study of archaeology.
Dr. McGhee arrived in Cordova Monday evening. His first scheduled appearance was on Tuesday morning to Cordova Middle and High School students. He then presented his program to the Native Elders and Native Corporation staff during a potluck luncheon.
Following the luncheon, Dr. McGhee went to the U.S. Forest Service local office and gave a presentation to the Cordova community. The community presentation was broadcast live to the Prince William Sound Community College in Valdez, Alaska where attendees had the opportunity to interact and ask questions. Dr. McGhee left Cordova on Wednesday afternoon to return to his home in Canada.
Read Dr. McGhee's description of his lecture:
The Last Imaginary Place
To southerners the Arctic is seen as a region of alien landscapes, a place of dangerous and icy beauty. This perception is filtered through millennia of rumor and travelers' tales that have reached more southerly regions. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, stories of frozen seas, unicorn horns, and endless daylight have gradually accumulated to form the fantastic Arctic that is seen through the window of western culture. Although a century of scientific exploration has yielded a more realistic view of the arctic environment, it has done little to challenge the prevailing perception of arctic peoples as the isolated survivors of an ancient and primitive way of life. Archaeology provides a much different picture of Inuit history, one that is varied, interesting, and driven by the same motives of personal accomplishment and economic advantage as any other people. Southerners, and southern-based governments, should be aware of the consequences of dealing with real people as the products of our historical imagination.
Summary:
In May 2010 Dr. David Klein, Professor Emeritus with the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, visited Sci-Port: Louisiana's Science Center on 7 and 8 May to present several programs on changes taking place on the top of the Earth.
On Friday Dr. Klein met with middle and high school students to discuss arctic ecology as it relates to climate change. That evening he presented 'An Evening in the Arctic' to the community in Sci-Port's SWECPO Demonstration Theater. He discussed changing arctic ecology and compared and contrasted many of the characteristics of Louisiana's ecology to arctic ecology. In addition, Dr. Klein spent some time discussing the recent Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico and some lessons learned from the Exxon Valdez incident in Alaska.
The next morning he offered an Educator Training. Dr. Klein presented hands-on activities, expert training and background information on arctic ecology and the indigenous people of that region. Educators left ready to implement many new activities in their classrooms. In the afternoon visitors of all ages joined Dr. Klein to look, listen and learn about the plants, animals and indigenous peoples of the arctic and subarctic region. Hands-on activities centered on understanding the Arctic were available for all to explore.
Dr. David Klein retired as Senior Scientist and Professor Emeritus at the Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). He had been with the Coop Unit and a faculty member in the Biology and Wildlife program at UAF since 1962. He is now Professor Emeritus with the Institute of Arctic Biology, UAF. His research interests are in arctic ecology, plant-animal interactions, adaptations of arctic terrestrial mammals, arctic grazing systems (reindeer and caribou habitat relations, indigenous people relationships), northern development and associated environmental impacts and their mitigation, and winter ecology in the Arctic and Subarctic. He has made significant contributions to understanding the ecology, management, and conservation of large mammals and arctic and subarctic ecosystems, working primarily in Alaska, but also Canada, Siberia, Greenland, Svalbard, and Scandinavia.
Sci-Port: Louisiana's Science Center is a 92,000 square-foot science and entertainment center featuring 290 hands-on exhibits, a Space Dome Planetarium, IMAX Dome Theatre, demonstration theater, daily changing programs, gift shop and cafe.
Summary:
In April 2010 Allen Marquette, the Community Education Program Coordinator for the Prince William Sound Science Center traveled via ferry from Cordova, Alaska to Valdez, Alaska with his crate full of skulls, bones, and teeth in preparation for his lectures in Valdez. These artifacts helped demonstrate Allen's interests in the plants, animals, and climate of Alaska during the Pleistocene epoch.
Allen spent the morning of 23 April at the Hermon Hutchens Elementary School talking with the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders about the plants and animals of Pleistocene Alaska. During their lunch, Allen met with 1st through 3rd graders to talk about the animals that roamed Alaska during the same epoch.
In the afternoon Allen went to the George H. Gilson Junior High School Life Science 7th grade class to discuss some of the more unique adaptations, animal behaviors and relationships that Ice Age animals had during the Pleistocene Epoch.
Allen also had the opportunity to speak to the general public at the Maxine and Jesse Whitney Museum. The Maxine and Jesse Whitney Museum contains one of the largest collections of Native Alaskan art and artifacts in the world. The collection was donated by Ms. Whitney to Prince William Sound Community College in 1998. Please see below for the advertisement for the lecture being held at the museum:
2.5 million to 12,000 years ago strange creatures roamed this land – huge and powerful beasts with amazing adaptations. Glaciers and permafrost still dominated much of the land. What was Alaska like then? Steppe horses roamed North America, as did giant ground sloths, woolly mammoths, mastodons and bears standing twice as large as the coastal brown bears of modern day Alaska! Come learn more about them. See and touch actual fossils and reproductions.
Allen Marquette has been the Community Education Program Coordinator for the Prince William Sound Science Center for the last seven years. This includes managing a Discovery Room program set up for K-6 graders. He also runs a community education program that provides science lectures to the community of Cordova on a weekly basis. He states, "I love science and the ability to share my passion with others... To share the wow factor in science... Especially with kids!"
Summary:
In April 2010 Orville Huntington travelled to Charleston, Illinois to present at Eastern Illinois University. Orville spoke with EIU students enrolled in the class Hunters and Gatherers. His two articles, "The Significance of Context in Community-Based Research" and "They're here – I can feel them: the epistemic spaces of Indigenous and Western Knowledge" will be the basis for his lecture to the EIU students. Orville's research interests include: impacts of subsistence on fish, animals, and plants of northern ecosystems; the evaluation of current policy and regulations and their affects on the subsistence methods and means of harvesting fish, wildlife, and plants; and the use of Native American Traditional Ecological Knowledge to better understand how global climate change is affecting the subsistence resources in northern areas. Orville's public lecture was titled, "Coping with Climate Change in Native Alaska, presented at the Doudna Fine Arts Center Lecture Hall on 21 April. Orville also had the opportunity to visit Carl Sandburg Elementary School where he talked with the third graders about climate change and the effects in his community. The third graders have been immersed in a unit about Native American culture and history. The hope of the tour is to broaden EIU student's cultural horizons, as EIU is composed of less than 1% Native American/Alaskan Eskimo students. Orville's main focus is on the preservation of Native subsistence hunting, fishing, and trapping opportunities and the cultural significance of these events.