PolarTrec program brings teachers to Arctic

"I learned that 40 below zero is the same in Celsius as in Fahrenheit," Wilkening said recently from her classroom in Tucson, Ariz.

The seventh-grade science teacher spent three weeks in Barrow last summer through PolarTrec, a program run by the Fairbanks-based Arctic Research Consortium of the United States.

PolarTrec, funded by the National Science Foundation, has sent about 50 mostly middle and high school teachers from across the United States on research trips to the Arctic and Antarctic in its three- year life.

"The polar regions are one of the regions that are changing the quickest in the world," Wilkening said. "The desert southwest is being affected by climate change too, and people don't really make that connection. I wanted to help my students make that connection."

The program exposes teachers to arctic research to spread knowledge and awareness to students and the broader education community.

Program administrators pair science teachers with researchers on projects stretching from archaeology to permafrost monitoring to tundra ecology.

Teachers and researchers apply for the program in the fall, administrators narrow the candidates and then let scientists make the picks before the field season -- July through March. Both teachers and researchers describe how valuable -- and fun -- the field experiences have been and how they've disseminated the knowledge gathered in the Arctic.

Wilkening, who has a background in chemical engineering, was on a project sampling snow for nitrates, soluble chemicals, organics and reflectivity. Other scientists in her group measured organic pollutants, which bioaccumulate in the food chain, in the snow.

Josh Dugat, a science teacher from New Orleans, called his classes from his field station in Barrow during the first week of school. He traveled around the Arctic, from the Brooks Range to Deadhorse to Barrow, studying the active layer of permafrost (the layer that thaws during the summer) with a group of geographers.

To relate his arctic research to students at home, Dugat will focus on the concept of subsidence. The earth is subsiding in the Gulf of Mexico as coastal land is sinking under the weight of sediment, deposited there by the Mississippi River across thousands of years. In Alaska, when active permafrost melts in the summer, it can cause buildings and other structures to shift. In both cases, engineers and builders need to take the active layer into account in their designs, Dugat said.

He is already incorporating the experience into lessons. His first day back, he asked students to use observation and inference to figure out where specimens, like a caribou jaw and antlers, had come from. He also tied it into lab safety.

"We carried 12-gauge shotguns to protect ourselves from polar bears. That gave a little water to putting goggles on in lab," Dugat said.