6 science educators picked to participate in Antarctica immersion program

Six science educators from four nations have been chosen to participate in the 2006-07 ANDRILL Research Immersion for Science Educators program.

ARISE will provide an immersion experience for the educators in ANDRILL (ANtarctic DRILLing), a multinational collaboration involving 150 scientists from Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the United States. Its purpose is to recover sediment core samples from the McMurdo Sound region of Antarctica to develop a detailed history of the Antarctic climate and the expansion and contraction of the Ross Sea area's ice sheets and ice shelves over the past 20 million years.

Operations and logistics for ANDRILL are managed by Antarctica New Zealand. The scientific research is administered and coordinated through the ANDRILL Science Management Office, located at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For more information, visit http://andrill.org.

The educators, chosen by independent selection committees in their respective countries, are: * Matteo Cattadori, Trento, Italy; * LuAnn Dahlman, Mesa, Ariz., United States; * Vanessa Miller, New York, N.Y., United States; * Alexander Siegmund, Heidelberg, Germany; * Julian Thomson, Belmont, Lower Hutt, New Zealand; and * Betty Trummel, Crystal Lake, Ill., United States

The ARISE educators will travel to Antarctica in October for a two-month stay during the first of ANDRILL's two drilling seasons (a second group of six educators will travel to Antarctica in October 2007 for the second drilling season). They will be full participants with ANDRILL's scientists. Each educator will be a member of a science discipline team and contribute to the scientific investigation of the core samples. Once back in their home communities, they will maintain communication and collaboration with their science team members and utilize their expertise as educators to develop and implement innovative approaches to geosciences education and public outreach.

Their efforts will be coordinated by John Jackson, who this month was named education and public outreach coordinator for the ANDRILL Science Management Office. Jackson came to ANDRILL from the National Science Foundation, where he was an Einstein fellow in the Division of Elementary, Secondary and Informal Education. Previously Jackson taught in the Alhambra (Calif.) School District, served as a consultant for USAID and worked as a park ranger in Yosemite National Park. He earned a bachelor's degree in sociology at California State University, Los Angeles, and a master's degree in education from the University of Southern California.

Information about the 2006-07 ARISE participants and their projects follows. All plan to collaborate with each other on their individual projects.

Matteo Cattadori, who has 15 years of teaching experience, will develop Smilla.it, a Web-based project targeted at 13- to 16-year-old students, but also possibly students up to 18 years old, and their teachers. Smilla.it will be designed to explain the influence of Antarctica on the global climate system; consolidate the term "global climate change" and its evolution through natural or man-made influences; provide an in-depth understanding of the patterns of Antarctic climate changes and concurrent global climate change; demonstrate how the geologic record contains evidence of climate change; and demonstrate scientific techniques for the study of those records. During his time in Antarctica, he will produce weekly newsletters for students and educators in Italy and provide a blog for interactive participation. Cattadori will also provide on-line video streaming from Antarctica about research, the environment and daily life in Antarctica, including a weekly video report about ANDRILL's progress.

LuAnn Dahlman is a professional developer of Earth and space science educational materials affiliated with TERC, a nonprofit educational research and development firm based in Cambridge, Mass. Her goal is to raise public awareness about scientific drilling in Antarctica (including the engineering aspects) by producing and promoting print, hands-on, outdoor and Web-based learning activities that generally focus on polar geosciences content, and specifically on ANDRILL's goals and accomplishments. She will accomplish that through her ongoing projects, including the Earth Exploration Toolbook and a recently funded NOAA Environmental Literacy project. Her primary audience in developing her materials will be teachers, with the main end-users being middle school, high school and undergraduate students in Earth and environmental science courses.

Vanessa Miller, who has taught fourth- through sixth-graders at Central Park East 2 School in New York City since 2000, plans to combine her Antarctica experience with research opportunities for her students Earth sciences. She has created a Web site and blog to communicate with her students while she's in Antarctica and afterward create an I-movie to present to her students. Her blog will be used to document daily conditions, give students assignments that coordinate with ANDRILL's progress, update students on what the Earth looked like at each drilling stopping point, and give students the opportunity to interview scientists. Each student will be expected to be an expert in one area of the ANDRILL study. The main goal of her project is to expose minority students from low socio-economic backgrounds to opportunities available in the field of scientific study and to the processes of environmental change. Her students' first laboratory will be only steps away in Central Park, where they can see glacial scars on the park's rocks. Miller will also use the American Museum of Natural History, the geology lab at Queens College and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University as teaching and research resources.

Alexander Siegmund is a professor of physical geography at the University of Education Heidelberg and head of the institution's department of geography. He has arranged projects with school classes to follow the progress of ANDRILL scientists in Antarctica and organized articles for national newspapers and public journals in Germany to publicize the importance of scientific research on climate history during the International Polar Year in 2007-08. During his time in Antarctica, he will provide a live chat with partner schools, provide reports for German television about ANDRILL activities and produce and online diary about the work of a research station in the Antarctic. After his return to Germany, he will continue to provide reports for German media, produce articles and materials for use in education about ANDRILL and general scientific research in the Antarctic, and make public presentations about the need for scientific research in Antarctica.

Julian Thomson has been a teacher of Earth sciences and outdoor activities in New Zealand since 1994 and will make his second trip to Antarctica (he was a field assistant in the 2005 ANDRILL seismic survey in preparation for this year's start of drilling). During his pre-trip activities, he will visit schools in New Zealand to give presentations about Antarctica and ANDRILL, prepare for the creation of a video about and Antarctica and ANDRILL, and prepare written drafts for inclusion in the book "The ABCs of ANDRILL and Antarctica." On-ice, he will continue to work on the ABC publication, assist with journal updates about the progress of ANDRILL and gather material and video footage for the creation of a DVD educational resource for school and Web use. After his return to New Zealand, he will continue development of educational materials for schools, edit and publish the DVD, and take the experience of working with ANDRILL to schools and community groups through newspaper articles, other media and presentations.

Betty Trummel will make her second trip to Antarctica after participation in 1998 in the Cape Roberts Project, ANDRILL's predecessor drilling project in the Antarctic. Her major project with ANDRILL, in collaboration with other ARISE participants, will be to write (pre-ice), revise (on-ice) and publish (post-ice) a book, "The ABCs of ANDRILL and Antarctica," which will provide background information for educators and students who will follow the work of ANDRILL scientists and include suggestions for integration into all curriculum areas. The book will be revised and distributed in subsequent years of the ANDRILL program. Other goals include maintaining an interactive online journal for students, educators and the public; establishing and maintaining a national and international network of teachers to follow the work of ANDRILL scientists; documenting how immersion in hands-on science benefits both teachers and students (part of her doctoral research at Northern Illinois University); providing participating teachers and students with a wide variety of resources, materials and inquiry-based lessons that can be implemented in classrooms around the world; and carrying the work of ANDRILL scientists to a broad audience through post-ice presentations and polar education workshops.

CONTACT: John Jackson, Education & Public Outreach Coordinator, ANDRILL, (402) 472-6723