Application period opens for Inspiring Girls Expeditions

January 25, 2019

Photo by Erin Pettit. The first Girls in Icy Fjords team gathers for a photo in 2017.

Inspiring Girls Expeditions is now accepting applications for 2019 expeditions. Applications to join this summer's tuition-free, no-experience-necessary wilderness science education programs must be started by Friday, Feb. 1.

The expeditions are open to 16- and 17-year-old girls passionate about science, art or wilderness exploration. Alaska-based applicants are encouraged to apply, as are girls who may not otherwise receive such an opportunity. Participants are selected through a competitive process.

The program is run through the College of Natural Science and Mathematics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Alaska expeditions will explore the Gulkana Glacier and kayak in Kachemak Bay or Resurrection Bay. Additional expeditions will investigate other places in Alaska, Washington, Colorado, Canada and Switzerland.

Inspiring Girls Expeditions empowers young women to lead and succeed through science, art and wilderness exploration. Young women engage in scientific fieldwork with a team of peers and professional scientists, mountain guides and artists. They work with an all-female team in a wilderness setting. Girls connect with each other and the natural world to foster critical thinking, self-confidence and advocacy for Earth science.

Expeditions of eight to nine teenage girls and three instructors spend 12 days exploring and doing scientific field studies in an alpine landscape or fjord. Girls develop their own scientific experiments, practice art and learn wilderness travel skills while building lifelong relationships. They learn to use observation and inference to recognize the processes that create the natural world.

For more information or to learn more about the application process, please visit inspiringgirls.org.

CONTACT: Sarah Clement at sjclement@alaska.edu or 907-474-7759

ON THE WEB: http://www.inspiringgirls.org/