Developing interdisciplinary permafrost higher education in collaboration with a Greenlandic community

Permafrost higher education is limited in the Arctic overall. The current permafrost education offer does not match the demand from students and professionals that are inquiring about training and internship opportunities within permafrost science and engineering. Meanwhile, thorough understanding of permafrost behaviour and its interactions with climate and human activities is critical to competently and sustainably navigate the ongoing and future changes. Arctic communities are already facing significant challenges and high costs in adapting their livelihoods and operations to thawing permafrost. The EduPermaGR project will develop an interdisciplinary permafrost higher education course disseminating latest scientific and technological knowledge in active collaboration with a local community. The components of the course will be finalized in dialogue with the local stakeholders in Greenland and our geoscience and engineering project partners to ensure relevance and applicability. The course will include the following elements: basic permafrost science, periglacial geomorphology (landforms and their sediments), hydrology of permafrost, ground thermal modelling, geophysics, and geotechnics of permafrost. The course will be taught at the Arctic DTU Sisimiut.