Brown Environmental Leadership Lab: Alaska

Course Description

Study with Brown University in Alaska!

Brown Environmental Leadership Labs (BELL) combines concepts in environmental studies, ecology, and leadership, with a mission of developing socially responsible leaders. Students develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to create positive change on environmental issues facing their local communities and the planet as a whole.

In this course, students will travel to southern Alaska to experience, first-hand, the beauty and complexities of present-day Alaska. Learning will be fast-paced, experiential, and include widely diverse perspectives.

Over the course of 2-weeks, students will explore the issues Alaskan Natives face when trying to balance cultural and environmental preservation with economic growth. Our life choices, world-wide, have a direct impact on trade-offs between conservation and consumption that play out on the Alaskan stage.

We will specifically focus our learning around:
-Alaska Native history and cultural preservation
-Arctic marine and terrestrial ecosytems
-Oil exploration and extraction
-Socially-responsible leadership
-Sustainable harvests of salmon

For more information, please see the program website: BELL: Alaska

*Although the BELL program is co-educational, students will spend 2 nights in yurts while the group is on the Kenai Peninsula. Yurts are separated by gender identity, therefore it is critical that we track registrations by gender identity in order to accommodate the overnight lodgings. If you have questions about this designation, please contact us at 401-863-7900.

Prerequisites: None