The Annual General Meeting of University Centre of the Westfjords was held on Friday 5th of May. Apart from traditional objectives of the Annual Meeting, a new board was elected as well as chair of the representitives' council. Very few changes were made, Dóra Hlín Gísladóttir was re-elected as chair of the council and the UW board remains the same except for a new secretary, as Stefán B. Sigurðsson left the board and Martha Lilja Martensdóttir was voted in to replace him.

Canada's Ambassador to Iceland, Jeannette Menzies, visited the University Centre of the Westfjords today and spoke to both staff and students about continuing, and possibly increasing, collaboration with Canadian institutes. The weather in Ísafjörður was really welcoming so the ambassador joined the students of From Extraction to Attraction: Coastal Communities in an Era of Leisure and Tourism on a walk around town.

The new Grimsson Fellowship is now open for applications, until 1 July. The Fellowship is a collaboration between the University of Iceland, University of Akureyri, Reykjavík University, the University Center of the Westfjords and the biotechnology company Kerecis, which originates in Ísafjörður.

A group of UW students is travelling to Latvia and Lithuania to take part in a two week Nordplus course on de-populating smaller regions. The course is a 5 ECST international course where students focus on development of regions around the Baltic Sea.

The remaining, modules for the new Students Housing buildings arrived at the harbour yesterday. The new buildings are prefabricated from construction company Seve in Estonia from where the flock of builders also came from earlier this month.

Students on the course Pollution in the Coastal Arctic had a beach clean up on the First Day of Summer last week, not the least to celebrate Earth Day which was on 22 April. The clean up was a collaboration with students from MÍ College; UW students organised the day and the college students participated in the project, hand in results at MÍ and get their work evaluated there.

One of the results from UW participating in NOCCA is a new, exciting workshop on rising sea level which will likely be offered next year. This week, our academic directors attended the 6th NOCCA conference (Nordic Conference on Climate Change Adaptation) in Reykjavík.

Many people have noticed that the new students housing is taking shape by Fjarðarstræti. There will be two buildings and currently work is being carried out on one of them, as it's supposed to be ready for move-in on 15 September.

In the coming weeks, UW master's students will defend their master's theses at the University Center of the Westfjords. The subjects are varied and the students are from both master's programs, Coastal Marine Management and Coastal Communities and Regional Development. The defenses are accessible to everyone through links that can be found in the schedule below. Detailed information about each defense can also be found in our events calendar.

Head of the Icelandic Climate Council, Halldór Þorgeirsson, visited students taking the Marine Protected Area Management course this morning, for an informal talk. Halldór was attending a conference by the Icelandic Forest Service held in Ísafjörður yesterday and took the opportunity to visit UW before heading back.