The THOR Institute is excited to announce that we are now the home of the new website for the Arctic Education Alliance (AEA), a collaboration between Greenlandic and U.S. higher education institutions that was launched by the U.S. Department of State in 2020. The THOR Institute strives to support cross-cultural collaborations and programming in sustainable tourism education and development, such as the work of this collaboration.
Through a partnership involving the University of Southern Maine (Tourism & Hospitality Program), the University of Alaska – Fairbanks (Interior Alaska Campus), the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, and Campus Kujalleq (Service Management & Guide Education), the Arctic Education Alliance focuses on building and sharing educational capacity in Greenland for sustainable tourism and hospitality, as well as land and fisheries management.
Over the past few years, these cross-cultural connections have grown and evolved into interdisciplinary capacity-building efforts that continue to demonstrate the power of collaborative relationships in developing a shared vision for the future. We are grateful to our community partners, including Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness in Maine, who have guided and supported our efforts from the beginning.
The Arctic Education Alliance work will continue in its next iteration with a renewed focus on sustainable tourism and hospitality with continued collaborative efforts between higher education institutions in Greenland, Maine, and Alaska, with new pathways and possibilities involving community partners near and far. Our work is grounded in the spirit of reciprocity, respect, responsibility, sustainability and stewardship that has shaped life in the far north for thousands of years.
We encourage you to visit The Arctic Education Alliance to learn more about the good work that has been done with our partners in the past few years – with more to come! We’ve traced the growth of this collaboration with image galleries, presentations, etc. to demonstrate the evolution of this project and the importance of these collaborations. We hope that you will continue to follow along with this journey as it continues to unfold!