Spotlight

November 9 , 2000

National Science Foundation Awards Brooklyn College $400,000 Grant

Alice Newcomb-Doyle (718) 951-5882

Brooklyn, N.Y. -- Select Brooklyn College students will travel to Iceland this summer to help excavate a ninth-century Viking chieftain's farm and study local ecology and geology as a result of a major $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the college's anthropology and archaeology department.

      The competitive grant, to be used as part of the Research Experience for Undergraduates program (REU) in the fields of anthropology and archaeology, will provide funds for ten Brooklyn College undergraduates to travel to Iceland beginning this summer. Funding for the program will continue through the summer of 2003.

     "This grant will provide a rare opportunity to our gifted students to work with scholars and researchers," said Dr. Sophia Perdikaris, assistant professor in the anthropology and archaeology department at Brooklyn College. "City kids will learn about things like eiderdown, what it was like to be a Viking fisherman or farmer, and how people used nature for their own needs."

     The grants purpose is to support research concerning the human impact on terrestrial and marine ecosystems; the effects of climate change on the cultural and natural environments; and inter-cultural interactions within the North Atlantic.

     The northern science education grant is the fourth REU to be held by a CUNY archaeology program. Dr. Perdikaris and Dr. Thomas H. McGovern of Hunter College, will oversee the selection of participants and accompany the students to Iceland. Dr. Perdikaris was a recipient of one of the first of these grants while in the Hunter BA/MA program in 1990.

      "Iceland is an exquisite place to study these topics," Dr. Perdikaris said. "It gives amazingly good signatures in history and archaeology and environmental changes are well monitored there." Situated on the Arctic Circle, Iceland is a volcanic island whose frozen soil provides good preservation for bones, fossils, and other materials. Previous grant recipients took part in the excavation of a medieval churchyard, helped to document Viking ruins, and learned to decipher stratified midden deposits.

       The program is open to students of all majors who have a minimum Grade Point Average of 3.0 and a Grade Point Average of 3.5 in their major courses. To apply, students must write a statement of purpose for wanting to participate in the program and submit a copy of their transcripts, two letters of recommendations, and their resume.

      Brooklyn College, founded in 1930, is one of the eleven senior colleges of the City University of New York. Located on a twenty-six acre tree-lined campus in Flatbush, it enrolls 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students who are representative of the diverse population of Brooklyn and New York City. The college is nationally known for its core curriculum, which has been hailed as one of the "bright spots" in American higher education. Visit the college Web site at: www.brooklyn.cuny.edu.


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