The Center is happy to announce a new Arctic Studies minor, Haleh Mawson! Haleh is an Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology major who is expected to graduate Spring Quarter 2021.
My interest in the Arctic Studies minor was piqued after I picked up a brochure on the program in the Honors lobby. I had just read an article discussing how recently polar bears have evolved from their southern cousins, the grizzlies, and how much at risk polar bears are of being subsumed again into the grizzly population due to disappearing ice, and so I was automatically interested in the polar bear on the cover. From there, it just seemed like a culmination of my interests – the western and northern Canadian coastlines, the rights and histories of First Nations, and, above all, a wilderness being broken by humans hundreds of miles away.
Arctic & International Relations (Arctic Studies Minor) is a Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies (JSIS)-wide initiative, led by the Canadian Studies Center since 2008, to address the Arctic as an emerging global region and actor on the world stage. JSIS and the Center are working in partnership with a parallel initiative, Future of Ice – a College of the Environment, College of Arts and Sciences, and Applied Physics Laboratory initiative – to enhance the University of Washington’s (UW) profile in research, education and public engagement about the polar regions.