Engineering the Arctic: Building Capacity Through Education

 

Establishing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure in Arctic communities presents unique challenges and requires special skills rarely possessed by southern engineers.

 

By Thomas Ingeman-Nielsen, Associate Professor, Head of Studies of Arctic Civil Engineering

Pernille Erland Jensen, Lead of the UArctic Thematic Network on Arctic WASH, Associate Professor, Technical University of Denmark

 

The extreme climate and geographical factors, such as the prevalence of permafrost and lack of road connections, necessitate specialized approaches to foundations, material selection, construction methods, and planning. Such adaptation is essential to ensure the success and sustainability of infrastructure projects in these demanding environments.

However, Arctic communities often face a shortage of locally trained and qualified workers, leading to a dependence on external labor with a high turnover rate. Outsourcing to southern companies also results in errors due to their unfamiliarity with local Arctic conditions.

Some universities offer specialized Arctic engineering education, aimed at equipping professionals with the necessary knowledge and skills needed in these unique settings. But participation in such programs requires that young people from Arctic communities leave their homes, families, and familiar environments, and adapt to challenging academic pursuits often located in large urban centers with vastly different cultural settings. In Greenland, this transition has discouraged some from seeking education abroad, and among those who do begin an education – most often in Denmark – dropout rates have typically been high. Moreover, those who successfully complete their degree must spend a considerable part of their early adult life in Denmark, potentially starting families there. This reduces their likelihood of returning to and contributing to the Greenlandic society.

To address these challenges and encourage capacity building in Greenland, about twenty years ago the Greenland Government entered into a partnership with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the Kalaallit Nunaanni Teknikimik Ilinniarfik (Tech College Greenland, KTI) to establish and run engineering education with a focus on Arctic building and construction, designed specifically to accommodate Greenlandic students.

The program is a four-year Bachelor of Engineering degree with courses on site investigations, geotechnical engineering and foundation design, building design and indoor climate, as well as general engineering practices and logistics. The first three semesters take place in Greenland, so students can stay relatively close to family and friends in familiar settings. The courses are taught by a mix of visiting professors and local professionals, ensuring a high level of teaching and valuable interaction with local businesses and institutions. After the third semester, students move to Denmark for two semesters to attend the more advanced engineering courses at DTU.

Their studies also include a half-year internship in the industry, most often at an engineering consultancy, a construction company, or a public institution such as a municipal technical department. The internships typically take place in Greenland. Students also have the option to take a semester abroad, for example, in Norway (Svalbard), Canada or Alaska, where they can familiarize themselves with construction practices in other parts of the Arctic.

Finally, students conduct a three-month thesis project on a practical, Arctic engineering-related topic. Many are done in collaboration with Greenlandic companies or institutions, with the possibility of the student being hosted in Greenland during the thesis work. Our students can therefore spend as little as one year of their education in Denmark, with the rest of the time spent in Greenland or in other Arctic regions.

The program is taught primarily in Danish and is open to Greenlandic, Danish and Nordic students. The first intake of students was in 2001, and by December 2024, the program had produced 187 graduates, of whom 75 are Greenlanders. The program is considered a great success. More than 85% of our Greenlandic alumni live and work in Greenland. As several Danish graduates have also ended up staying in Greenland, the education has resulted in more alumni working in Greenland than the number of Greenlandic students taken in. This has contributed to capacity building and increased the qualified workforce in Greenland.

The collaborative educational model of our program has proven effective and is now adopted in other programs as well. In 2019, DTU established a similar program in fisheries technology, and recently the model has been implemented between KTI and the Danish institution Teknika to provide marine engineering education.

International Arctic researchers increasingly struggle with the wish and requirement to contribute to local capacity building and anchoring of research results in Arctic communities which in turn are increasingly overwhelmed by the research interest and resulting research fatigue. We believe that one effective pathway to address this issue is to partner with established formal educational programs in the Arctic, rather than (or in addition to) conveying new knowledge in isolated seminars with (few) local participants.

For the past two decades, we have successfully integrated domain-specific research knowledge into the curriculum of our engineering program in Greenland and provided students with opportunities to be involved in and contribute to ongoing research efforts. We find that this practice helps us create an active and stimulating study environment. It also ensures that research knowledge is transferred to new generations of engineers who are ideally positioned to put this knowledge into practice.

 

Photo: Thomas Ingeman-Nielsen