Our Mission

Understanding complexity in a rapidly changing world.

Our Vision

Located in a region that provides a premier showcase of biophysical evolution, where Earth system and ecological processes are strikingly evident, we cultivate an inclusive learning community intensively engaged in connecting with, and studying, the Wrangell Mountains region.  Our program has an emphasis on academic process and context, and on interdisciplinary methodologies, including field research design and hypothesis-testing within biological, geological, and social sciences.  We teach and learn via hands-on, on-site experience with examples and cases in the field, through a combination of faculty-led field exercises and lectures; seminars engaging the primary literature; field journal entries; and small group student projects involving peer review, oral and written presentations.  We immerse students in a setting in which focused attention to the systems at play in the Wrangells is a sustained practice, with written and visual arts approaches supporting training in deep observation.  We are rooted in a human-scale community, in which people experience interdependence and collaboration at multiple levels -- academic, personal, and social -- in the context of a challenging physical environment where students and staff live and work together.  We live simply and deliberately for extended periods of time in the wilderness, which is experienced both viscerally and intellectually.  Opportunities abound for personal transformation through the experience of interpersonal trust, collaboration, and support in technical backcountry scenarios, where physical, social, and academic demands garner life-altering challenges and moments of growth. 

The Wrangell Mountains Field Studies Program is Operated and Hosted by

The Wrangell Mountains Center

The Wrangell Mountains Center is a non-profit research, humanities and education institute located in McCarthy in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve. The Center hosts programs promoting understanding, appreciation, and stewardship of the land and its communities. We create opportunities for personal transformation through direct experience with this extraordinary place, increasing understanding of complex natural processes, changing views of the human role in the natural environment, and developing skills for taking effective action. In the process of helping people come to know the Wrangell Mountains, we build local, national, and international constituencies for the protection of wildlands and the enhancement of mountain cultures in Alaska and beyond.

The Center has hosted college field studies over four decades. The 2024 program continues this tradition.

Community, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Creating an inclusive, interdependent, and collaborative community between students, instructors, and our partners is a core value of our program.  Our program and our research are made stronger and more meaningful when all participants are able to bring their whole selves to the community we co-create over the course of our time together in the Wrangells.  We value differences in background, culture, experience, place of origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, race, ethnicity, age, ability, and more.  Field research programs can and should do more to confront the unjust barriers to access and inclusion that have existed throughout the history of scientific research; we are committed to actively seeking and welcoming people from historically marginalized and underrepresented groups, such as women, people of color, people with disabilities, people who identify as LGBTQIA+, and people at the intersections of these identities and others.  We strive to facilitate a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture within the program, such that everyone involved experiences a deep sense of belonging and of being a valued and supported member of the Field Studies community.