Teachers, Researchers, and Students Collaborating in Arctic Climate Change Research: The Partnership Between the Svalbard REU and ARCUS PolarTREC programs

Since 2004, the Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS) "TREC" program (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating, now "PolarTREC") has sent four K-12 teachers to Svalbard, Norway to work alongside researchers and undergraduate students conducting climate change research as part of the Svalbard Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program. The benefits of this scientist/educator/student partnership are many. Researchers benefit from teacher participation as it increases their understanding of student learning and the roles and responsibilities of K-12 teachers. The TREC teacher contributes to the research by making observations, analyzing data, and carrying heavy loads of equipment. In collaborating with K- 12 teachers, undergraduate student participants discover the importance of teamwork in science and the need for effective communication of scientific results to a broad audience. The questions that K-12 teachers ask require the scientists and students in our program to explain their work in terms that non-specialists can understand and appreciate. The K-12 teacher provides a positive career role model and several Svalbard REU undergraduate students have pursued K-12 teaching careers after graduating. TREC teachers benefit from working alongside the researchers and by experiencing the adventures of real scientific research in a remote arctic environment. They return to their schools with a heightened status that allows them to share the excitement and importance of scientific research with their students. Together, all parties contribute to greatly enhance public outreach. With ARCUS logistical support, TREC teachers and researchers do live web conferences from the field, reaching hundreds of students and dozens of school administrators and even local politicians. Teachers maintain web journals, describing the daily activities and progress of the researcher team. Online readers from around the world write in to ask questions, which the TREC teacher answers after consulting the research team. TREC teachers have developed and distributed teaching modules using real questions and data from the research program. Our collaboration is successful in part because the teachers are well prepared by ARCUS in advance of the field experience and the Svalbard REU leaders treat the TREC teacher as a senior member of the research team. Reliable telephone and internet communication from the field site is also important because it greatly facilitates the daily outreach. Our success is measured by the hundreds of K-12 students exposed to arctic climate change research (some of which are now going to college to pursue geoscience studies!) and the mutual desire for continued collaboration between the Svalbard REU Program and the ARCUS PolarTREC Program.