FAIRBANKS — Three weeks since arriving from the warmth of New Zealand, Carol Diebel, the new director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North, said she hasn’t noticed Alaska’s cold.

“It’s warmer than the thermometer says it is. It’s the warmth of the community,” she said.

On Tuesday evening, the Fairbanks community formally welcomed Diebel at a two-hour reception in the museum.

Diebel said her change of job created “my year of winter.”

She left her position as director of natural environment at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington at the end of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter to take the museum directorship here this month.

A native Californian, Diebel has a bachelor’s degree from Humboldt State University and a doctorate in biological oceanography from MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

She spent much of her academic career in New Zealand. She began as a post-doctoral researcher, later served as curator of Marine Biology Collections at the Auckland War Memorial Museum and eventually took a museum directorship in Wellington.

At Te Papa, Diebel led the museum’s natural history research, curatorial and collections team and helped oversee development, exhibits and research.

Diebel replaced Aldona Jonaitis, who has served as director since 1993.

Diebel also will serve as a professor of marine biology in the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

Diebel said she accepted the directorship not so much because Alaska was the destination but because of her interest in the multi-faceted Museum of the North.

“My decision to come here was tipped by the feeling of the community here,” Diebel said. “It was kind of a heart and mind decision.”

The view of the Alaska Range from her office window is a bonus.

“I can’t complain,” she said.