Media Stories

For our recent report to NSF, we compiled this list of media stories about the NGA LTER:

• An April 7, 2018, news report on our collaboration with Michele Hoffman Trotter, reported by Sara Tewksbury and broadcast on Channel 11, our Fairbanks, Alaska, NBC affiliate
• A March 22, 2018, interview of Michele Hoffman Trotter by Mike Nowak, broadcast on 1590 WCGO AM, a Chicago radio station, and recorded as a podcast
• Gulf Watch Alaska website stories on Dr. Russ Hopcroft (April 27, 2018) and Dr. Seth Danielson (May 3, 2018):

  GWA Scientist Embarks for 48th Year of Ocean Sampling in the Gulf of Alaska

  Seth Danielson Studies the ‘Motion of the Ocean’ on Gulf of Alaska LTER Cruise

• The University of Alaska Fairbanks press release that was picked up for an article in the Alaska Business Magazine.

Education

When Michele Hoffman Trotter, Columbia College, participated in our April-May cruise, educators and home school parents were invited to enroll in her educational series, Expedition Gulf of Alaska! The learning modules were geared for grades 5-12. They were titled:

1. Changing Climate Changing World
2. Biodiversity: Our Lives Depend on It, and
3. Plankton to Whales: How Energy Flows in the Environment.

Enrollees received a PowerPoint presentation on the topic, teaching activities, a supplemental reading list, links to the daily video uploads, and access to a forum where students could post questions to the science team and receive answers.

Schools in Alaska (Chugiak and Seward), California (1 school), Chicago (4 schools), and Canada (1 school) participated in this pilot shipboard education program aboard the R/V Sikuliaq. Her audience also included 24 homeschooling families in California and 32 adult participants. In Michele’s outreach team, Carlee Belt served as a media and education specialist and Katherine Brennan served as the cinematographer. All together, the team provided 15 daily dispatches from the ship – videos of ship operations and sampling equipment and interviews of scientists and crew. Additionally, they collected footage for the on-going Microcosm film project that will feature the diversity and roles of microscopic life in the ocean.

Alaskan teachers were a special focus of this educational outreach. Therefore, we recruited a middle school teacher in Seward (the port the Sikuliaq departed from), a high school marine biology teacher in Chugiak, and a middle school teacher from a Fairbanks watershed-themed school. These teachers were asked to pilot at least one module and will provide feedback that will help develop virtual field trip products.