Thank You!!! Options

[Robert_Oddo]

Tomorrow I will be leaving Longyearbyen and returning back home. The experience I have had over the last 6 weeks in the Arctic has been phenomenal. I have worked with a lot of great people, learned a lot about working in the Arctic and come back with ideas and information that will be invaluable in the classroom. I consider myself very lucky in that I got to work on 7 different projects that gave me experiences with all sorts of ways to collect and analyze data!!!! Over the next couple of months, as I enter for the coming school year, the true impact of this experience will become evident. I cannot thank Steve Roof from Hampshire College and Mike Retelle from Bates College enough for including me in so much of the research that is going on up here and helping me understand the processes that are occurring here. They have made this experience very special and I look forward to working with them in the future as I develop activities involving this experience. I would also like to thank the REU students, Carlos Szembek, Emily Gercke, Nora Mattell, Fran Moore, Lauren Perreault, Brian Yellen, and Brooks Motley for all their input and allowing me to help out with their projects. They all made the daily treks out and back from our field sites always fun and full of surprises!!! I would also like to thank Hanne Christiansen and Ole Humlum from UNIS- The University Centre in Svalbard for their hospitality and informative talks about the geology of Svalbard. And I cannot forget Mette and Morton for cooking those great meals for us at Isfjord Radio.

Then there are the people and organizations behind the scenes that made this whole experience possible. Thanks go to the National Science Foundation. The impact that these experiences have on teachers and their students have implications that are far reaching. Experiences such as this one would not be possible without the support of the NSF. Thanks also goes to the people at ARCUS/TREC: Helen Wiggins, ARCUS Program Coordinator, Janet Warburton, ARCUS Project Manager, Ben Wade , Web Developer and others who have answered all of our questions, set up the web sites, provided gear, solved problems and worked to set up these projects with the primary investigators. This experience would not be possible without you and the VECO people that provide the gear.

Finally thank you to all the people that followed along with this adventure. It was always nice to see how many people were viewing the journal and photos. The questions were great and thanks for all the emails. This has really been a special summer for me and thank you to everyone that made it possible.

Bob Oddo

[Janet_Warburton]

Hi Bob.

It's been great following your adventure this summer. I can't believe that six weeks has passed! Thanks for posting very informative journal entries so we could all understand the research!

Have a safe trip home! I look forward to working with you more this school year.

Janet