Credit for the Wrangell Mountains Field Studies is transferrable from the University of Maine. On the successful completion of the program, students receive eight upper-division semester units for “Field Experience in Earth and Climate Sciences (ERS 499).” Our faculty is available to support the transfer of these credits to students’ home universities or colleges.

Our curriculum integrates studying geophysical, biological, and cultural processes in a complex landscape rapidly responding to climate change, understood from field experience and the perspectives of faculty in sciences, art, humanities and public policy. A focus is on energy and material flow through glacial and periglacial systems, including sediment covered ice and processes of ice surface melt. These topics are introduced accessible to undergraduate students.

Students study with faculty for seven weeks in the country’s largest national park, basing in the historic headquarters of the Wrangell Mountains Center in McCarthy, hiking and camping up the proximal glacier and adjacent alpine terrain. Topics in ecology, evolution, geology, glaciology, and sedimentology are addressed by hypothesis-testing science and the other classic methods of the field naturalist, including daily field journaling, scientific illustration, and visual art and creative writing. Seminars include discussion of primary literature. Group projects culminate in oral presentations and written reports, with faculty and peer evaluation of drafts.

Participants learn to hike and camp on ice and to navigate trailless Alaska mountain terrain. The program is physically and academically rigorous, yet within the capacity of participants without previous academic or backpacking experience willing to undertake the challenge.

Emphasis is on developing skills of focused attention using tools from multiple disciplines, undertaking a project from conception to completion, working collaboratively, and understanding complex processes. In this context, we look at the place from diverse cultural perspectives, including Native Athabascan, mining, nature appreciation, recreation and tourism.    

Use of telecommunications technology during the program is limited both by its location and by conscious decision regarding timing and purpose, giving opportunity to be off the network for periods, promoting attention to on-site place and community.

Students graduate from the program with skills applicable in future careers, increased understanding of processes of evolution in complex systems, and what is often a profound experience of Alaska wilderness. While individuals emphasize different components, students and faculty engage the entire curriculum collaboratively. This experience of mutually supportive community in challenging physical and academic circumstance can be life-altering.

We recognize that participants face the challenge of living well with instability and potentially catastrophic climate change and its consequences. In addition to academic and professional studies, staff and students together address how to live affirmatively in the present circumstance. This question is central to the mission of the Wrangell Mountains Center and its community.