News Center reports on UMaine training future Arctic scientists

News Center Maine reported on the University of Maine’s plans to train future Arctic scientists using a nearly $3 million award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The new UMaine initiative, Systems Approaches to Understanding and Navigating the New Arctic, will train 60 master’s and Ph.D. students in the interdisciplinary field of Arctic systems science. Their training will include an interdisciplinary curriculum, Arctic field experience, and research focused on changes in Maine, southwest Greenland and the Arctic–North Atlantic. “I think a lot of students who pursue this really want to make a change,” said Jasmine Saros, the associate director of the Climate Change Institute and a professor of lake ecology at UMaine. Saros will lead the new program. “They’re very interested in the science, but they also definitely want to see that science applied in a way that could help us to be better problem solvers.”