As our understanding of the complexities of climate change improves, and as rapid changes in Arctic climate continue, it is becoming increasingly critical to effectively communicate these findings with the general public. Bringing science to the classroom is possibly one of the most powerful tools for initiating change by creating awareness, exciting students about scientific inquiry, and highlighting the need for a healthy planet.

Outreach and collaborative teacher-research programs often prove to be a successful vehicle for creating such a bridge between science and the classroom. PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating), in which school teachers assist in field-based investigations, links researchers with classrooms countrywide. Based on one such experience during five weeks of fieldwork in Svalbard, Norway (Svalbard NSF-REU), we (teacher and researchers), highlight the successes, challenges and gaps in these crucial “broader impact” efforts. Based on our experiences of taking research and results from our Arctic field site to the classroom and trying to build climate change curriculum (Figure 1), we offer suggestions for how each partner in this collaborative effort can maximize their impact without taxing already demanding workloads.

Our field site, a proglacial lake system, serves as a rich resource for classroom and community based inquiry. The use of daily blogs and in-the-field live webinars (now archived), has inspired active participation during the field component that still continues today. Similar to the ongoing nature of scientific investigations, student projects, curriculum development, talks in the community and media coverage continue to link and incorporate the Svalbard REU’s new findings with the broader community. Despite this successful collaboration, the impact of our outreach needs improvement. Among these gaps is the relative inaccessibility of both the experience and the datasets to teachers after the experience and to other classrooms and communities. We have identified the need for an online “depository” for organized data and ideas for teachers and community members. Using examples of how we bring the northern latitudes to classrooms in the southwest U.S., this poster explores a three-part model that outlines how the roles of both researchers and teachers can fit into creating long-lasting, effective broader impacts.