For more information on this Regional Resilience and Adaptation Graduate
Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, please contact:
Terry Chapin
Institute of Arctic Biology
University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK 99775
Phone: 907-474-7922
Fax: 907-474-6967
Email: terry.chapin [at] uaf.edu
http://www.lter.uaf.edu/~fschapin
or see the web site at: http://www.regional-resilience.uaf.edu
Your help in getting the word out to potential students and to people
who might know of strong applicants for this program is greatly
appreciated.
Graduate Program in Regional Resilience and Adaptation
The Interdisciplinary Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT)
Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks
http://www.regional-resilience.uaf.edu
Target date for applications: 1 February 2002
The University of Alaska Fairbanks offers a graduate training program in
Regional Resilience and Adaptation (RR&A) to train scholars, policy
makers, and managers to address issues of regional sustainability in an
integrated fashion. This program prepares students to address a major
challenge facing humanity: to sustain the desirable features of Earth's
ecosystems and society at a time of rapid changes in all of the major
forces that shape their structure and functioning. The program provides
training at the PhD and Masters level. It integrates the tools and
approaches of ecology, economics, anthropology, climate dynamics,
philosophy, and community and regional development in a systems
framework to understand the functioning of regional systems. Our
underlying assumptions are: The major problems facing the world must be
addressed at the regional scale, and no solution is tenable unless it is
ecologically, economically, and culturally sustainable. The program
emphasizes high-latitude ecosystems, where current management issues
require an application of the integrated understanding of these
disciplines. This approach is, however, equally applicable to all
developing and developed nations, and we welcome students who seek to
apply this training to any region of the globe.
The RR&A program provides training at the PhD and Masters levels. Our
goal is to educate a new generation of scholars, policy makers, and
managers to integrate the perspectives of natural and social sciences in
addressing both the basic understanding of regional systems and the
application of this understanding to management issues. The program
provides training to graduate students from the University of Alaska and
to graduate students at other universities who wish to enroll for one
year of intensive course work in Regional Resilience and Adaptation at
the University of Alaska. We provide course work and a seminar program
that integrates ecology, economics, and anthropology in a
systems-modeling framework. We also provide faculty mentorship and
internships in areas outside each student's parent discipline. The RR&A
program is associated with numerous research programs at the University
of Alaska and in state and federal agencies. These research programs
provide interdisciplinary research opportunities for RR&A students. The
program emphasizes cross-cultural communication through heavy
involvement with the Alaskan Native American community and with
managers, businesses, and conservation groups.
We offer NSF-funded fellowships to PhD candidates entering the program.
Additional funding is available to both PhD and Masters students through
participating departments. A detailed description of the program and
application forms are available at
http://www.regional-resilience.uaf.edu/ or by contacting F. Stuart
(Terry) Chapin, III (terry.chapin [at] uaf.edu) at the Institute of Arctic
Biology, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK 99775. 1 February 2002 is
the target date for reviewing applications to the RR&A program, although
applications received after that date will also receive consideration.
We strongly encourage applications from ethnic minorities and other
under-represented groups.