The Institute of Arctic Studies at the Dickey Center has awarded three Stefansson Fellowships to Dartmouth undergraduate students for Summer 2009 research projects in Alaska and Newfoundland.

Ore Koren '12 is working with Dr. Thomas Douglass from the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory collecting water samples and ice cores near Toolik Lake, Alaska. Dr. Douglass is investigating permafrost biogeochemistry in the Arctic, and Ore will be a member of his field team.

Elizabeth Parker '12 is working at the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) facility in Juneau, Alaska. She's studying how selection pressures related to lattitude affect the lipid allocation strategy used by capelin fish.

Hanul Kim '12 is excavating artifacts as a member of the Smithsonian Institution Arctic Studies Center's St. Lawrence Gateways Project , led by Dr. William Fitzhugh, in Newfoundland. She is studying the cooperative relationship between Basque whalers and Inuit inhabitants. She is also   pursuing archival research of the project's 2001-2008 excavation artifacts at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. 

Whitney Coombs '09 is attending the Xth SCAR International Biology Symposium in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan,  this summer.  She will be presenting information about her work with microbial cultures taken from Blood Falls, a feature of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica, a rare site where subglacial brine is released to the surface from benearth the glacier.

The Stefansson Fellowship is an undergraduate award made possible through the generosity of Evelyn Stefansson Nef, an arctic expert and wife of arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Applications are accepted year-round but should be submitted at least one term before the start of the project. 

In addition to the three Stefansson Fellowhips, IAS has awaded a Harp Fellowship  to Lauren Culler, a Dartmouth PhD student in ecology and evolutionary biology, for work in Greenland this summer.  Lauren is studying freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem services in Greenland in order to predict how freshwater organisms respond to climate change. She is also part of the first cohort of graduate students to be awarded an IGERT Fellowship in Polar Environmental Change , an interdisciplinary program funded by the National Science Foundation starting Fall '09.

The Harp Fellowship is a periodic award given to an undergraduate or graduate student, a faculty member, or an alumnae whose research requires work in the Circumpolar North. The award is named in honor of Elmer Harp, Jr., a Dartmouth Professor of Anthropology Emeritus.