UAA's Diddy Hitchins organizes Fulbright faculty study tours to Northern Canada

The University of Alaska Anchorage Department of Political Science is proud to announce the appointment of Dr. Diddy Hitchins, MBE, Professor Emerita of Political Science and International Studies, to a Fulbright Senior Specialist. In this role she will work with the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) to design the prototype of a series of far northern Canadian faculty development institutes with study tours.

 

The Fulbright Senior Specialist Program is a short-term complement to the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program.  Fulbright Senior Specialist activities are designed to provide United States scholars and professionals opportunities to collaborate with counterparts at non-United States institutions of higher education on curriculum and faculty development, institutional assessment and planning, and other activities.

Currently serving as president of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS), Professor Emerita Hitchins was responsible for designing the programs for faculty development institutes sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Canadian Studies Consortium (PNWCSC) that focused on the Canadian West in the 1980s and 1990s.  In 2006 she was project leader for a UAA Fulbright Hays Group study abroad program to the Russian Far East.  

Hitchins will be responsible for designing the content, schedule and itinerary for two-week summer faculty development institutes with UQAM to James Bay and Nunavik in Northern Quebec, with the University of Alberta to the Northwest Territories, and with Trent University to Nunavut.  A shorter institute is also envisaged with the Northern Studies Centre at Churchill, Manitoba.  

The North is a vitally important region for Canada for its symbolic, economic, strategic and environmental significance.  This region is increasingly in the news because of the effects of climate change and the potential for mega-resource development projects.  These constantly raise questions about the requirements for sustainable development and the rights and interests of indigenous peoples whose cultures and traditional ways of life are affected by these developments.

Although contemporary public policy issues are increasingly played out in the far north, few people know what the North is like and what public policy issues mean in human terms.  Due to high costs and inaccessibility, few faculty who teach about Canada in the United States have experienced life in the far north.  These faculty development institutes will expose them to the reality about which they teach.

Hitchins hopes that these workshops will serve as a prototype not just for northern Canadian faculty development institutes but for others around the Arctic.  Two organizations are already offering study tour institutes on Newfoundland and Labrador (University of Maine and Orono) and the Yukon (PNWCSC).  Working with UAA, she hopes to develop faculty study tours to the far north of Alaska to ensure that Alaskan faculty are acquainted with the complex public policy issues facing that part of the state.  She also envisions working with the University of the Arctic and other Arctic educational organizations to develop institutes in the northern part of the Russian Far East, in European Russia, in Finno-Scandanavia, in Greenland and in Iceland.  

For more information call (907) 786-4896.