Summer snapshots: From Madison to Alaska

July 27th 2012 Simon Kuran
Natural & Physical Sciences
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Cathy Middlecamp, an associate professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, stands on the shoreline of the Arctic Ocean. (Photos courtesy Cathy Middlecamp)

Most of the students in the College of Letters & Science may be away for the summer, but that doesn’t mean the action has stopped on campus. Our faculty and staff are still living out the Wisconsin Idea, both in Madison and all over the world. This is a story in our Summer Snapshots series.

Considering it was mid-July, Cathy Middlecamp was faced with a fairly unusual question.

Would she be interested in going on an ATV ride in search of polar bears?

Middlecamp, you see, was in Barrow, Alaska – the northernmost city in the United States – to help lead a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education camp on climate change.

“I could think of no reason that I wanted to be near a polar bear, given that they hunt humans,” said Middlecamp, an associate professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

That’s not to say Middlecamp isn’t up for an adventure. The fact that she spent four days of her summer living out the Wisconsin Idea above the Arctic Circle, where the sun doesn’t set this time of year, says otherwise. Middlecamp had been to Alaska about a half dozen times, but never up to barren Barrow.

She came to introduce climate change to students from Barrow and the Native Alaskan villages along the northern coast, focusing on the carbon cycle and greenhouse gases. She team-taught sessions with Larry Duffy, a longtime colleague from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and with instructors at Iḷisaġvik College, a tribal community college in Barrow.

Buildings on the campus of Iḷisaġvik College in Barrow.

“Together, we led the students in chasing carbon around the planet, tracing its pathways from fossil fuels into the atmosphere and then to a variety of places, including the oceans,” said Middlecamp, whose trip was sponsored by UAF and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). “As one student exclaimed after completing her carbon journey, ‘I started in the ocean and I ended back up in the ocean.’”

Middlecamp said icebergs were always in view from their classroom window, which “seemed fitting, as climate change was the topic that had brought us together.” That there was a heat wave in Barrow – temperatures were in the 60s, compared to the usual 40s, on several days during her stay – was apt as well.

But Middlecamp said she learned Barrow residents’ chief concern about climate change centered on the erosion of their shoreline, since the city is a mere 10 feet above sea level.

Middlecamp served as an instructor for only the first week of the camp, but was pleased to make a contribution alongside scientists from throughout the country.

“I think I met the students where they were and helped set a tone of inquiry that would carry throughout the rest of the camp,” she said.

Barrow, Alaska, as seen from the air.