From Fire and Ice: SIUE Students Explore Sustainability Through Iceland Study Abroad Pilot Program

From Fire and Ice: SIUE Students Explore Sustainability Through Iceland Study Abroad Pilot Program

On a glacier in southeast Iceland, Ethan Welch, a senior at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, stopped at a rock marked "June 17, 2022." Their guide explained that Breiðamerkurjökull had reached that point only four years earlier. The present edge of the glacier was now roughly a 20-minute walk away.

For Welch, an environmental sciences major with an emphasis in environmental management, the distance transformed an abstract lesson about climate change into something immediate.

"That taught me more than any textbook ever has or ever could," said Welch.

Welch was one of 10 Southern Illinois University Edwardsville students who traveled to Iceland this summer as part of a 12-day interdisciplinary study abroad course led by Sharon Locke, PhD, director of the Center for STEM Research, Education and Outreach and professor of Environmental Sciences, and Adriana Martinez, PhD, professor and chair of Environmental Sciences.

Known as the "Land of Fire and Ice," Iceland offered students a living laboratory for examining sustainability through the complementary lenses of geology and geography. Situated along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the island's volcanoes, geothermal systems and glaciers have shaped everything from settlement patterns and infrastructure to energy production and food security.

The course was designed as a pilot for the Sustainability pathway within SIUE's Changemakers initiative. The program explores thematic pathways through SIUE's general education program, connecting coursework and co-curricular experiences. The initiative aims to solve problems through interdisciplinary, project-based and experiential learning.

Before and during the trip, students studied Iceland's environmental, historical and cultural development through readings that included medieval Icelandic sagas and contemporary works on the country's social history and gender equity. During the field excursion, pairs of students also served as "Study Research Teams," researching destinations in advance and helping the group connect information from speakers, museums and field experiences to their academic studies.

Those experiences took students across Iceland's southern coast to geysers, historic lava flows, waterfalls, geothermal sites and glaciers. Students met with people in Iceland to learn how communities have adapted to the island's changing landscape and how the country approaches environmental protection and resource use.

For Emma Prott, a first-year graduate student studying environmental technology and assessment, the trip was her first major opportunity to travel outside the United States.

"The trip in general has been life-changing," Prott said. "Visiting Iceland has given me a better outlook on sustainability."

The experience also showed students how quickly the landscapes they were studying can change. At Breiðamerkurjökull, Welch connected the glacier's retreat with an earlier stop at the memorial to Okjökull, Iceland's first glacier lost to climate change.

For Welch, Iceland's lesson was not that other countries should simply copy its solutions. Instead, he said the experience demonstrated the value of long-term, systems-level thinking and deliberate action when confronting environmental challenges.

The course also created connections among students who began the trip as classmates and, in some cases, strangers. Together they hiked trails, explored a caldera, crossed a glacier and navigated the inevitable surprises of travel.

Welch is now turning those experiences into a documentary about the trip, which organizers plan to screen at SIUE during the coming academic year.

Long after students left the glacial wonderland, the pilot program gave Locke and Martinez a model for how future Changemakers courses might connect academic study with the places and people at the center of the questions students are being asked to solve.

Photo: SIUE students study abroad in Iceland. Photo courtesy of Ethan Welch.