Press Release: SFS Spring Program started

2020 spring semester of the School for Field Studies (SFS)- Bhutan Program has been started from January 27 with 24 undergraduate students from various colleges/universities of the US. The SFS-Bhutan is a joint program hosted by three organizations– the Ugyen Wangchuck Institute for Conservation and Environmental Research (UWICER) of the Department of Forests and Park Services, MoAF, the Bhutan Ecological Society (BES), and the School for Field Studies (www.fieldstudies.org) with its head office based in Massachusetts, US.

SFS-Bhutan focuses on Himalayan Environment and Society in Transition with three main disciplinary courses: i) Mountain Ecology (ME); ii) Land Use, Natural Resources, & Conservation (LUNRC); and iii) Political & Socioeconomic Dimensions of Environment (PSEDE). The program also contains a small component on religion and culture of Bhutan.

During the three and half month program, students attend rigorous academic sessions of interdisciplinary curriculum designed to help students actively discover and understand the complexities of environmental, social, and economic issues in Bhutan. The program also provides the students to carry out a Directed Research (DR) where they not only learn basic research skills, but also get an opportunity to interact with an array of people including grassroot level community involved in agriculture farming.

Currently the SFS program is operated in 10 countries over the globe and Bhutan is the first country in Asia to start the program in 2010.