What does it mean to be JIRP Faculty?

Faculty are the experts who turn JIRP from a cool mountaineering expedition into a full-blown research program. JIRP could not function without them.

There are two different faculty roles within the JIRP Expedition: Teaching Faculty and Research Faculty. Both groups of faculty work on the Icefield, interact with JIRP students, and do research, but they have different foci and different expectations from a programmatic perspective. Please review the position descriptions and application process below to decide which role better fits your goals and resources.

Prospective Faculty Webinar

Watch the Webinar

View the Slides

If you’re interested in being faculty or doing research with JIRP, watch our webinar for prospective faculty from December 2024. The 1-hour webinar goes through the basics such as teaching vs research faculty, curriculum, schedule, and the application process.

Teaching Faculty

Primary goals

Teaching faculty come to JIRP to teach JIRP students. We expect people in this role to lead academically-focused field activities and give a series of exercises, workshops, and/or lectures. Content should emphasize place-based learning, build experience with field methods, and explore both fundamental concepts and broader implications. While the number of exercises, lectures, workshops, and field trips will vary depending on your time with the expedition, you can expect to lead either a full-day or half-day academic exercise roughly every few days while you’re in the field. Our Academic Council will set the curriculum in advance of the summer. Depending on when you join the Expedition, the academic material we ask you to cover may be either introductory and very general or intermediate/advanced and within your area of expertise. Regardless of the topic, we ask you to pitch your lessons to the actual audience, which may require some tweaking (math-heavy advanced undergraduate material, for instance, may not be appropriate in the second week).

In addition to teaching academic material, we expect faculty to be contributing members of the JIRP Expedition. This includes participating in either the full student Safety Week or a modified faculty safety training, pitching in around camp during morning chores, informal student mentoring during free time/meals/etc., assisting with expedition logistics as needed, and adapting to the dynamic needs of the Expedition as they arise. The JIRP Expedition is small, and as such, every member ends up helping out in unexpected ways at some point.

Funding

JIRP strongly encourages every participant (student, staff, and faculty) to seek out funding for their time on the Icefield. This is especially true of faculty who rely on helicopter transportation to join the program for only a week or two at a time. That said, we expect to use the JIRP operating funds to cover many of the costs of the teaching faculty. Barring grant support, the responsibilities will be as follows:

JIRP covers:

• Helicopter transportation to/from the Icefield

• Food, lodging, and transportation in Juneau

• Food and lodging on the Icefield

Research

Teaching faculty will support short student research projects. One of the primary goals of the teaching faculty will be to guide JIRP students through background research, formulating an appropriate research question, collecting data, analyzing results, and discussing conclusions.

Teaching faculty are encouraged to bring small research questions and auxiliary projects up to the Icefield if they support students learning goals. We are eager to give students field experience in a wide array of topics, and we welcome one- to three-day investigations that can be worked into the schedule. This is not an appropriate avenue, however, for collecting significant datasets for publications or larger projects.

Application Process

Please visit the Application Overview page for information on application timelines, evaluation criteria, and to complete your application.

JIRP selects faculty based on feasibility of teaching/research plans, ability to teach in a variety of formats, alignment with JIRP curriculum, emphasis of place-based learning, and balancing the expertise of the JIRP faculty cohort.

If you have questions about being faculty on JIRP, please email the JIRP Office and we can connect you with a member of JIRP’s Academic Council.

Research Faculty

Goals

We invite research faculty to join the JIRP expedition primarily to do research on the Juneau Icefield. We do not provide research funding. However, we can provide tremendous infrastructure support for one- to four- week field campaigns: permanent field camps with generator power, dedicated camp management staff familiar with JIRP protocols, tent camp support, snow machine transportation, portable generators, and significant person power. Scheduling will be somewhat dependent on the JIRP Expedition schedule, but we’re eager to work with research teams to be as flexible as possible.

Funding

Research faculty are responsible for all their own funding. This includes:

JIRP provides (for a per diem fee):

• Transportation, food, and lodging in Juneau

• Helicopter transportation to and from the Icefield

• Permanent field camps at strategic locations

• Snow machines and mechanic support

• Tent camping gear: tents and stoves

• Food (we accommodate dietary restrictions at cost)

• Glacier safety training

• Camp and logistical staff support

• Glacier travel and safety staff support

• Communication with in-town logistic support

Teaching Responsibilities

The JIRP Expedition is primarily an education program. As such, we require that all activity through JIRP has an educational component. We expect research faculty to contribute to this mission through two avenues. First, we will ask you to give one or two lectures to students. The first will be about your project, delivered when you pass through a major JIRP field camp on your way onto the Icefield. The second will be about your findings, how the data collection went, or anything unexpected you found, to be delivered when you pass through a JIRP camp on your way off the Icefield. These lectures are meant to be 30-60 minutes and are aimed at giving our undergraduate students a perspective on what current glacier science research involves.

The second educational avenue is involving small groups of students in your fieldwork whenever possible. This will vary from project to project, but we hope you will make every reasonable effort to accommodate students at your research camp, to teach them how to use the equipment, and to support their inquiry. All JIRP student groups will be accompanied by a JIRP field staffer to manage their travel, room and board, and safety needs.

Application Process

JIRP does not currently have a Research Faculty application. If you are interested in doing research on JIRP, please reach out to JIRP’s Director of Research, Dr. Seth Campbell (scampb64@maine.edu) and the JIRP office email (office@juneauicefield.org) for more information. Please include a brief description of your research objectives and desired timeline.