News Release

High school teacher explores South Pole

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Texas A&M University

COLLEGE STATION, November 1 – Marietta Cleckley is the kind of teacher who would go to the ends of the earth to help her students learn biology – and in November, she'll be doing just that. Cleckley will spend the month doing research at McMurdo Station, the largest and oldest U.S. base in Antarctica.

Along with a Texas A&M University research team, Cleckley will study the impact of human habitation on the area around McMurdo. The Uniondale, N.Y., high school biology teacher is one of 16 public school teachers to participate this season in the National Science Foundation's Teachers Experiencing Antarctica and the Artic.

"We're very excited to be taking Marietta with us to Antarctica," said Mahlon C. "Chuck" Kennicutt II, who heads Texas A&M's Geochemical and Environmental Research Group (GERG), which journeys to the region to conduct research each year. "She spent a week here in College Station this summer, getting acquainted with our team, learning field work techniques and finalizing Web-based teaching units for use with students while she's at McMurdo."

Cleckley, who teaches 9th and 10th-grade biology, was selected for the TEA on the basis of a national competition. Her students in New York, as well as those at Cypress Grove Intermediate, GERG'S adopted school in College Station, will be able to follow her field activities and complete educational activities related to the team's Antarctic research via the World Wide Web.

"I heard about TEA at a teachers' convention, when I attended a presentation by a teacher who had participated in the program last year," Cleckley said. "I had to submit an extensive application, with eight documents detailing my view of teaching, the reason for my interest in TEA, my teaching style and my background. Competition was pretty fierce for the 16 spots. Eight of us will be going to the Antarctic, and the other eight will be involved with projects in Artic regions."

Cleckley will leave for Antarctica on Nov. 11, arriving four days later, and remain there until Dec. 19. She will be assisting Texas A&M scientists with collection of soil and water samples to be analyzed to assess the extent of human impact around McMurdo Station.

"My work at McMurdo will fit in well with New York state's 9th and 10th grade biology curriculum," Cleckley said. "We study ecology, food webs and food chains, and while I'm at McMurdo, I'll be emphasizing how the unique environment and human influence interact on food webs in the Antarctic. I'll also be constructing activities that can be used with ArcView GIS, a computer mapping program that students use.

"Before I leave for Antarctica, I will collaborate with fellow teachers at Uniondale to adapt my research activities to fit into the fall curriculum," she continued. "I'll have a Web site with activities and questions for the students, and they'll be able to e- mail me while I'm at McMurdo. The Web site will have plenty of photographs, and we're planning at least one audio streaming voice transmission session from Antarctica."

After she returns from Antarctica, in addition to resuming her teaching schedule, Cleckley will spend the next three years giving presentations as part of TEA's outreach efforts and writing and revising biology curricula in light of her experience.

TEA, which is supported by a grant to the American Museum of New York, N.Y., and the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory of Hanover, N.H., from NSF's Division of Elementary, Secondary and Informal Education (Directorate for Education and Human Resources) and its Office of Polar Programs, is not Cleckley's first national research experience. For two summers, she also participated in the Summer Research Program for Science Teachers, sponsored by Columbia University, as a research assistant on a project to synthesize bioflavinoids. That project involved working with an organic chemist at Hofstra University, near Cleckley's home in New York.

Teaching is the South Carolina native's second career. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Hofstra University and her master's from Long Island University, both in biology, she worked for 13 years at Manufacturers Hanover, then a large New York bank. But her own and her daughter's school experiences made her want to contribute to increasing the number of minorities entering science, and she became a teacher in the Uniondale system in 1992.

"Uniondale is a diverse working class community with a rich history," Cleckley said. "I look forward to sharing this unbelievable experience with my students."

"GERG is studying the historical impact on the Antarctic environment of the presence of McMurdo Station, which was founded in 1955," Kennicutt said. "The team's activities, coordinated by co-principal investigators Andrew Klein of Texas A&M and Paul Montagna of the University of Texas, will involve sampling soil and marine sediments and analyzing aerial photographs with an eye to improving management of human effects on the fragile Antarctic environment.

"Marietta will be working alongside seasoned earth science researchers," he observed. "And, thanks to virtual reality, so will her students."

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Contact: Judith White, 979-845-4664, jw@univrel.tamu.edu;
Marietta Cleckley, mscleck@aol.com and
http://tea.rice.edu/tea_cleckleyfrontpage.html;
NSF's TEA program, http://tea.rice.edu;
Chuck Kennicutt, 979-862-2323, ext. 111, mck2@gerg.tamu.edu


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