UAF glaciology program returns to McCarthy for eighth summer

The Wrangell Mountains Center in McCarthy will host 28 graduate students and multiple instructors for an intensive 11-day glaciology program in 2026. The National Science Foundation awarded the University of Alaska Fairbanks $29,914 to support the International Summer School in Glaciology under award number 2622477, announced May 26, 2026.

Regine Hock, professor of glaciology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, serves as principal investigator. The NSF award abstract notes a growing gap between the societal need for robust scientific expertise in glaciology and the training of available graduate students. The program addresses that gap directly.

The curriculum covers glacier mass balance, glacier dynamics, ice-ocean interactions, ice-sheet and inverse modeling, subglacial hydrology, and remote sensing. Lectures are followed by quantitative exercises and group projects that engage students with real satellite datasets and open-source modeling tools. Each student will work on a data-based glaciology project and present results in a mini-conference at the end of the course.

The program builds on seven prior summer schools conducted between 2010 and 2024. Those sessions received consistently excellent evaluations and produced multiple peer-reviewed publications arising from student projects. Many alumni now hold faculty, research, and industry positions in the U.S. and abroad. All teaching materials are made publicly available on a dedicated website.

The award period runs from June 1, 2026, through May 31, 2027.