About the Program

Providing participants the opportunity to expand their knowledge of Earth’s climate record through analysis of paleo-climate records in ice cores collected by the U.S. Ice Drilling Program.

2025 School of Ice

Applications will be available fall 2024

WHEN?
  • TBD
WHERE?
  • Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

To be added to receive an email notification when the application becomes available or if you have questions, contact Louise Huffman.

Who?
You are eligible to attend if:

  • Your institution is on one of the following U.S. Department of Education lists:
  • Historically Black Colleges and Universities
  • Hispanic Serving Institutions
  • Tribal Colleges and Universities
  • Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions
  • AP High School teachers from high schools with large minority and underserved populations
  • Or your accredited post-secondary institution can document a minority enrollment of at least 25%

Participants will be provided airfare and travel support, four nights’ lodging, meals, and class materials.

Why?
Our nation faces serious challenges when attracting young people to science and its related careers. This is particularly true for members of groups under-represented in STEM and for minority college students majoring in the geosciences.

To address these issues, School of Ice partners have created a rigorous professional development workshop for faculty from minority-serving institutions (MSIs). This program will provide cutting-edge paleo-climate evidence derived from ice cores and provide resources necessary to bring this exciting inquiry into new and existing Earth and environmental science classes on their campuses.

The experiential nature of this workshop will build background knowledge of cutting edge research and empower participants to communicate authentic paleo-climate research practices, ice core data, and results to their students.

Program Commitments
Within two weeks of workshop completion, participants will be expected to:

  • Write a summary of how they have professionally benefited from participation in this workshop.

Within a semester of workshop completion, participants will be expected to:

  • Write a plan of action to begin or expand paleo-climate study and research opportunities for their undergraduate students.
  • Demonstrate how they will integrate workshop information and climate change curriculum within new or existing geoscience courses by creating two written curriculum pieces dealing with the topic accompanied by an explanation of how the curriculum will be used.

Program Evaluation

The School of Ice uses an outside evaluator to conduct evaluations of our workshops. A combination of participant pre and post surveys for each workshop is employed. In 2017 and 2024, past SOI participants were invited to take part in virtual or phone interviews to identify how the workshop over time has impacted both the educators and their teaching, as well as their students.

Downloads:

Scientists, engineers, logistics specialists, and educators that make the School of Ice possible

Meet the School of Ice Experts

TESTIMONIALS

  • If it was not a workshop like this, I would not feel comfortable teaching my advanced Climatology class and offer the labs for the class full of hands-on exercises conveniently available for the students. Every minute of my time was worth this workshop!

    Rose Ozbay
    School of Ice Participant
  • The School of Ice has been a wonderfully rewarding teacher experience. I walked away with an appreciation for all of the work that not only goes into the efforts of research scientists about the evidence of climate change, but how to really teach it using best practices.

    Matt Thomas
    Science Teacher, Alameda International High School
  • I teach earth science and environmental science to non-science majors. Sometimes it is difficult to make them understand the concepts of science. The lab activities presented in the workshop helped to formalize such concepts. From the workshop I gained knowledge about past climate, and proxy data analysis through the wonderful presentations of Prof. Erich Osterberg, Bess Koffman, Meredith Kelly and Bob Howley.

    Paramita Sen
    School of Ice Participant
  • The workshop was successful in terms of education, diversity, collaboration, and knowledge exchangeable. It provided me ways and methods to demonstrate scientific facts over climate change using ice cores and paleodate. This workshop gave opportunities to all participants to learn and pass the knowledge to recent and future generation about climate change.

    Khaldoun Ahmad, Ph.D.
    Environmental Science Instructor Biogeochemistry, Hydro-biogeochemistry, Paleoenvironment Liberal Arts & Sciences Saint Cloud Technical & Community College