The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding will house the new Institute on Applied Circumpolar Policy, which aims to address issues caused by rapid climate change and educate students on how government policy affects environmental problems in polar regions. The College joined with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and Urbana University in Ohio to sponsor the Institute, which officially opened in New York on Friday, College Provost Barry Scherr said.
As the Institute examines the specific issues facing the northern polar region, it will work in conjunction with Dartmouth's preexisting Institute of Arctic Studies to press upon students the larger importance of preserving global ecosystems.
"We want to get students at Dartmouth to become more informed about the climate issues that directly affect them," Scherr said. "We'd like to get individual students working on these direct problems through internships and studies."
The Institute on Applied Circumpolar Policy also seeks to connect the academic facets of climate-change issues with the governmental policies that affect global weather disturbances, Ross Virginia, director of the Dickey Center's Institute of Arctic Studies and an environmental studies professor, said.
"Just as we all share one atmosphere, we're all subjected to the new climate we've created," Virginia said. "We just want to provide an example to policy-makers to reduce climate change in the future."
The Institute is currently planning various activities geared toward students, like a conference at the Dickey Center that "will deal with various policies relating to the North, such as climate change, the homelands of indigenous people and shipping laws," Scherr said.
The Tuck School of Business will also partner with the Institute for a series of seminars aimed at helping indigenous people in northern polar regions "gain economic self-sufficiency," he added.
Virginia also stressed the importance of educating inhabitants of the region about its environmental problems.
"As the climate changes and as globalization occurs we want to develop programs that are useful in helping people deal with these changing conditions," Virginia said.
The Dickey Center was selected as the Institute's headquarters because of Dartmouth's involvement with the University of the Arctic, its established Institute of Arctic Studies and its long history of faculty and student research in polar studies and global ecosystems, Virginia said. Dartmouth was one of the first two American higher-education institutions to join UArctic, a cooperative of organizations from the eight countries that have territory in the circumpolar region. UArctic is committed to research and education in the northern polar regions and to protecting the rights of northern indigenous people, according to Scherr, a member of the International Board of Governors of UArctic.
"We really are one of the world's great locations for polar studies," Scherr added.
Dartmouth has been eager to contribute to UArctic, Virginia said, "since we have such resources here."
Rauner Library houses "the finest collection of Arctic studies" papers from the 19th century to World War II, Virginia noted, referring in part to papers from the eminent Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a visiting professor at the College during the 1950s.
The Institute on Applied Circumpolar Policy celebrated its opening at the American-Scandinavian Foundation's Scandinavia House in New York City during a meeting with the UArctic's Board of Governors last Friday. The ceremony featured speeches by Andrew Revkin, a reporter for The New York Times who writes about climate change, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who addressed attendees via a video message.
