Intent to Plan approved for new Climate Change and Culture degree

l'anse aux meadows 8-00
Members of the Climate Change Institute at L'Anse aux Meadows viking settlement, Newfoundland. The coastline now is significantly different than it was when the vikings arrived.
The University of Maine System has approved an Intent to Plan for a new Climate Change and Culture degree, offering a B.S. or B.A. This degree, offered through collaboration between the Departments of Earth Science and Anthropology, seeks to provide an undergraduate degree related to Climate Change, one of the leading environmental and human problems facing the world today. The Departments argue that solutions to this problem will be found by combining analysis of cultural and environmental change through time with an understanding of modern climate and human impact and that successful policy decisions surrounding climate change will contain solid science and social science informed by cultural understanding.

A complete plan will be delivered to the System by mid-October, with the goal that students matriculating in Fall 2010 can choose to complete a degree in Climate Change and Culture in four years.