A roadmap for developing higher permafrost education in Norden

Abstract

We perform a first permafrost higher education curriculum survey in Norden. Permafrost is part of the education within both bio- and geosciences and engineering, and the variation in educational activities reflect this. Five permafrost-specific geoscience and engineering permafrost courses exist, whereas there are 23 bachelor and 25 master courses with a permafrost content ranging from 1% to 50 %. The is large potential and clear needs for closer permafrost teaching collaboration. This could focus on permafrost course development, teaching methods, sharing practical experiences including fieldwork and further developing the educational offer. Such collaboration could establish: 1) An online, joint Nordic specific course on permafrost, sharing the special permafrost competences existing across the universities using digital teaching tools, 2) Nordic collaboration on developing joint, both general but also specific, PhD courses on permafrost, 3) Lifelong education in permafrost, and 4) Internships a part of active permafrost education to better meet the future employers and society’s needs. The Nordic region might also gain largely from establishing an overview-providing interdisciplinary joint Nordic course aiming to characterize the region and its diversity broadly including both natural and social sciences, and naturally covering different topics including permafrost and seasonally frozen ground. The mapping done for this paper will function as a first overall roadmap catalogue providing an overview of all offered courses on permafrost. The overall outcome of our survey shows large potential for increased and deeper inter-university collaboration for further developing joint permafrost higher education both in the form of courses and other educational activities between institutions across Norden, and potentially with ambitions for joint permafrost degrees between several institutions. Based on the presented results and the mapped different future plans for permafrost education across Norden, we discuss the implications of our results, specifically concerning the potential for increased collaboration in Nordic permafrost education. These focus on permafrost course development, teaching methods, sharing practical experiences including fieldwork and further developing the educational offer. In more detail increased collaboration could establish: 1) An online, joint Nordic-specific course on permafrost, sharing the special permafrost competences existing across the universities using digital teaching tools, 2) Nordic collaboration on developing joint PhD courses on permafrost, 3) Lifelong education in permafrost, and 4) Internships as part of active permafrost education to better meet the needs of future employers and society. The Nordic region might also gain largely from establishing an interdisciplinary joint Nordic course, aiming to characterize the region and its diversity broadly and including both natural and social sciences, and naturally covering different topics including permafrost and seasonally frozen ground.