Upper school plans summer Arctic trip

%E2%80%8BGlaciers+in+front+of+mountains.+Photography+students+on+the+trip+will+have+the+opportunity+to+take+photos+of+the+landscape.+

Special to Aquila

​Glaciers in front of mountains. Photography students on the trip will have the opportunity to take photos of the landscape.

Sign-ups began last week for the first summer trip to Iceland, Greenland, and the Svalbard islands for photography and biology expeditions led by teachers Joshua Martinez and Anita Chetty.

The 10 students on the trip will either be studying the impact of climate change or photographing the people, landscape and wildlife of the Arctic, depending on which course they choose. Chetty, who went to the Arctic last summer, will be leading a group of biology students to study cultural, population, and environmental changes. The other course that the students can take on the trip is also the photography course, led by Mr. Martinez, where students will be able to photograph the landscape, people, animals, and research processes.

“Regardless of the discipline chosen, I think that a huge benefit of this trip is that students will be going somewhere that they’ve never seen before,” photography teacher Joshua Martinez said. “Interacting with people who think differently than they do and who have had different life experiences and then bringing that back to their lives here at Harker which, I think, is the ultimate growth for this trip,”

The two-week trip will take place from July 14 to July 29. The students will be travelling on a specialized research ship and will make several stops in countries in the Arctic, going as far north as 700 miles south of the North Pole.

Only 10 students will be chosen to go on the trip, and well over 10 students have already expressed interest. Eventually the list of students will be narrowed down, but no criteria for the picking of students has been given yet.

Many students who are interested mentioned other conflicts and the difficulty of planning so far ahead in advance.

“I think it would be really fun,” Chandler Nelson (11) said. “But I’m doing the Fringe Festival for the musical so I wouldn’t be able to do both.”

Though many people may not be able to go on the trip, the large attendance at an informational meeting for the trip held in Nichols on Tuesday evening reflected student interest in the trip.

“It’s super cool,” said Tong Wu (11). “I haven’t decided whether to do the science or photography part.”

Applications for the trip were due this Tuesday, and with the limited number of people allowed, the specialized and unique experiences that this first-time expedition will provide have made it a popular and exclusive trip.