Once again, another major change; I’m back in Australia. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 I had to return home. I am currently on day 8 of 14 days in quarantine. Two weeks ago, everything rapidly began to change. WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic and countries began closing their borders as the virus spread rapidly and many people were dying. Norway first closed their borders to all non-Scandinavian countries then soon after closed it borders to everyone. Schools, fitness centres and sports and recreational events, were all closed overnight. UNIS initially said they were closing for 2 weeks. Over the next week […]
Practical experience as biologist in the Arctic – here you can find student blog-posts and other documentation about their experience from internships in Arctic Longyearbyen, Svalbard as part of the AB-208 Internship course at The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS)
Student culture versus employee cultures Even thought the employee culture at UNIS seems informal, being a student, I haven`t mingled that much with the employees more than during the lunch a couple of times. Still, my impression is that the environment is friendly and casual between the staff. On the other hand, the student culture is perhaps more family oriented since we live together, eat together, study together and socialize together. As many students have left their family and friends behind, strong bonds between the students have formed. How do you utilize your biological knowledge? When I, during my internship, […]
The situation for the past few weeks has been heavily influenced by Covid-19, and with all lectures cancelled it was uncertain whether the students could proceed with the internships. As measures were taken to avoid contact and potential contamination risks, the students were advised to work from home, something that could easily be facilitated by LL. They have provided a PC and all communication goes through emails and Teams, something that has worked really well. Throughout the last couple of weeks we have been working on a project description for the recipient survey (mentioned in the last blog post), and […]
Unfortunately, I had to leave Longyearbyen last Friday the 20th of March. I was supposed to have stayed here for another two months, but we were all asked to leave if we could. Now I´m sitting at home in Kragerø, Norway, looking at the green grass and trees, feeling a bit sad. My work at Polar Permaculture will continue, but I´ll be doing all the work from home, obviously. There is plenty of tasks I can do from my computer, and I think it will be just as meaningful as the work I´ve been doing In Longyearbyen. It won´t be […]
It is currently a beautiful time in the Arctic. The sky is bursting with pastel colours as it transitions from the polar night to the midnight sun. Each day the sun rays light up the surrounding mountains a little more as the sun hangs above the horizon for a little longer. However unfortunately, due to my lack of Norwegian (absolutely nothing) I have swapped internships. I had to leave the Longyearbyen local government and have now started a new internship at bioCEED. I’m a little disappointed that I will not be able to continue to work on improving reuse in […]
Two months have past, and I am almost half way through the semester. So far I have only touched on some of the tasks that a lab technician conducts. I have spent several hours calibrating pipets, cleaning labs, setting up new instruments and transferring some samples from one container to another. I am quite familiar at the lab already, and that feels good. I am happy to have started the work, but feel I am lagging a bit behind schedule, since I want to be done with my workload by May 15th when the class ends. My lecture schedule and […]
The past few weeks have been spent gaining a thorough understanding of waste water management systems, Adventfjorden as a recipient, and possible solutions to the challenges of waste water pollution. This post will explain the conditions in Adventfjorden and summarize the conclusions from earlier seabed studies. Adventfjorden is a 7 km long and 3–5 km wide fjord on the southern side of Isfjorden, Svalbard’s largest fjord system. The two largest rivers, Adventelva and Longyearelva, plus numerous of other streams contribute a substantial amount of melt water from the surrounding glaciers and as well as a large amount of inorganic sediments […]
Daily operations The last weeks I ́ve been part of the daily operations at Polar Permaculture. That includes sowing microgreens and basil, tending the plants, some deliveries and other types of miscellaneous work. A few weeks ago I started setting up a new grow room, where I had to remove a small biogas system that no longer was being used and I had to insulate parts of the room. Íll be using the room for test growing different types of plants. At the moment we ́re waiting for a delivery of parts needed to make the grow room fully operational, […]
Me and my background My name is Ola, and I´m from a small town in the south-east of Norway. I study Ecology and Wildlife Management at the University of South-Eastern Norway, USN, in a town called Bø. I´ve been working as a marine engineer onboard different types of ships for quite a few years, but two years ago I decided to do something completely different. I´ve always had an interest in nature, so I decided to start studying natural sciences. My Bachelor program mainly consists of biology, but also other subjects such as geology and climate studies are part of […]
My name is Sine, and this semester I will be living in Longyearbyen, studying Arctic Biology at Svalbard University Center (UNIS). Just arriving in Longyearbyen, I am really surprised how much I like the complete darkness, and I feel amazed by even the smallest signs of light on the sky that highlights the surrounding mountains. Longyearbyen is really beautiful, and the arctic conditions suits me perfect. Being a person who absolutely love hiking, I am really looking forward to the spring when the arctic nature reveals itself, and the sun starts rising. My previous semesters at the University of South-Eastern […]
Lina Lettau is following the AB-208 course “Internship in Arctic Biology” at UNIS. She will be working at SIOS – an international observing system for long-term measurements in and around the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard addressing Earth System Science questions. Besides the internship period, the other main part of the course is documentation and reflection of experiences made, as well as learning outcomes achieved. This video is the first part of this documentation.
Hi! My name is Dom, I am from Australia. I am currently studying a Bachelor of Biology, majoring in Marine Science at the University of Queensland. This will be my last semester of my undergrad degree. I am extremely excited and grateful to be here studying at UNIS. When I left home, I was originally going to study in Bergen. A week before the semester was going to start, I got an email from UNIS informing me a spot had opened up. I jumped on the opportunity and I’m so glad that I did! I was drawn to Svalbard as […]
My name is Stina, and I am a biology student finishing the final semester of my bachelor’s degree at UNIS this spring. This semester I’ll be undertaking AB-203 Arctic Environmental Management and AB-208 Internship in Arctic Biology, in addition to writing a bachelor thesis on the possible effects microplastics on wildlife in the Arctic. My internship host is the environmental department at Longyearbyen Lokalstyre which is a part of the local government. They are responsible for monitoring the pollution from Longyearbyen, including two landfills and waste water from the city. The target is to reduce the anthropogenic impact on the […]
My internship at UNIS and bioCEED has come to an end. The last semester has been different from what I’m used to. And if I didn’t do a course alongside the internship, it would have felt like I was done studying and a working man. I think doing an internship at the end of a bachelor is something to recommend, as at this time you must evaluate where you want to go after you’ve completed the bachelor. The main thing I, and I think the rest of the interns, have seen is that the field of biology is flexible and […]
My internship is slowly coming to an end. There is no doubt that it has been a valuable experience, and I have gained a lot of new knowledge. When it comes to the biology, I think my main learning outcome has been in molecular biology. This is a field of biology that I didn’t really know too much about, and to be honest I never really thought it would be very relevant for me as my main interest is within terrestrial ecology. But as I’ve seen from some of the research in UNIS, being able to do molecular work opens […]
I am now done with my internship work. It is a bit sad because I have really enjoyed it. I have felt very included in the Knowledge Centre while working there. I have learned a lot and am very grateful to the personnel at SIOS for guiding me through this internship. Especially during my data management work I have utilized my biological knowledge. Both with the understanding of a data set and with working within excel. I have done work on biological data sets in excel before, so I think this have helped me understanding the data set I have […]
This is my final blog about my time at Polar Permaculture which I thoroughly enjoyed. Since I started a lot has changed, and the circle is complete as I began as a student and finished as a mentor for the new interns. We finished preparing the dome for the season and got the hole patched up, so it is now fully operational. We planted a lot of beans and moved some chillies and other plants out, hoping they will cope with their new environment. The other day temperatures almost reached 38C, so we had to make sure plants didn’t dry […]
Hi! It is now time for the last blog post for this internship period! I still have some more work hours at the school, but it is getting towards the end. Last week, we had some presentations where we tried to reflect over what we have learned this semester, and I will in this blog post try to communicate some of the thoughts we discussed, and what I think about this semester as an “teacher”. Expectations Before I started this internship, my main goal was to improve my teaching skills, learn how to work in a team, and utilise my […]
I’m closing in on the actual end of my internship, and the last ~2 weeks I’ve been working on various projects. First, as explained in the previous blog, me and Tina from bioCEED have been creating a plant family classification game, that hopefully can be used to better teach students the difference between the plant families we have here in Svalbard. To explain the game briefly, we have made several cards that contain a trait and a picture illustrating that trait (see top picture). The traits are divided into a flower, leaf, stem or general trait. Then, using these trait-cards, […]
Hiatus from internship After a hiatus from my internship period to focus on a different course, I’m now back at the Arctic Biology department working for bioCEED. The weeks of no internship was maybe a little long, and I got a bit “out of the loop”, but that’s how it goes when scheduling must work for several people. Anyway, this week we had our “end” of the internship course, but all of us still have more hours to burn, so the period is still not done. Presentations The end of AB-208 Internship in Arctic Biology was marked with a presentation […]
As we agreed on our midterm appraisal talk, Stuart has lately been teaching me a little more about molecular biology. So far, I’ve been doing DNA extractions, PCR and gel electrophoresis, and making glycerol stocks of e.coli cultures. Stuart is a good teacher, and lets me do everything myself. This is a good example of how well learning by doing works. Although it is a little frustrating in the beginning when I have no clue what I am doing, Stuart has been very patient and explains everything very well. Instead of just being told what to do, I have to […]
I have now finished the other course I had at UNIS, so I only have internship working every day now. I am really enjoying just working from nine till four every day, with every evening completely off. I fully appreciate not having something school-related that should be done hanging over me at all times. Especially after an intense exam period it is very nice to be able to relax without a bad conscience all the time. Since the exam, I have started my data management block work for SIOS. I have started working with a data set on phytoplankton now. […]
Hey there! The internship is soon in its final stage, and now as the month of May has just started, you can notice that the beginning of the end is here. The students at Longyearbyen school is approaching the end of this semester, and in the classrooms we are slowly starting to summarise and recap curriculum and think about the upcoming finals and exams. For the older students, the exams are approaching rapidly, and May is going to be a busy month for them. As “russetiden” has just begun, the students are balancing exams and partying, and it still impresses […]