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Wesley College Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Dr. Stephanie Stotts participated in “The School of Ice: Ice Cores and Climate Change,” an advanced professional development program for geoscience faculty at minority-serving institutions. The program took place June 25-28, 2017 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.
The workshop was developed by the U.S. Ice Drilling Program Office, an NSF-funded organization providing oversight of US scientific drilling efforts in both the Arctic and Antarctic.
The four-day residential course was designed to expand professors’ knowledge of the role of proxy records in our current understanding of Earth’s climate, with a special focus on the very important role of ice core data. Researchers with expertise in ice science from Dartmouth College and the nearby Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) contributed to a packed agenda highlighting the importance of ice cores in telling the story of the Earth’s past and future climate.
The workshop placed professors in the role of research scientists and ice core drillers as they processed ice cores at the cold laboratory located at Dartmouth, toured CRREL to understand the important relationship between scientists and engineers, and participated in a geological field trip exploring the remnants of the last glacial maximum.
“We received support for future introduction of ice core data and information into our classes through in-person and virtual interactions with leading ice core scientists and education specialists,” said Dr. Stotts. “I will be able to devise paleoclimate investigations using ice core data for use in my environmental and geoscience classes and will share my experiences and knowledge with my colleagues.”
Financial support was provided through the Delaware EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) program funded by the National Science Foundation program under grant number IIA 1301765 and the State of Delaware.