Treebrook School

Here's a boast about our grandson, Miles, (Erik's son) published in a Baltimore newspaper.

The Baltimore Banner
7/21/24 5:30 a.m. EDT
By Amisha Kumar

These Baltimore high schoolers are traveling somewhere few humans ever go—for science

Miles Spangler got off the phone and ran down the stairs. He circled the 3rd of August on his calendar and applied for a passport.

The 17-year-old was going on the trip of a lifetime.

Spangler is one of 10 Baltimore high school students who will camp under the dancing northern lights, watch beluga whales at lunch and see polar bear cubs splash around streams in the Arctic this summer. He’ll make the journey to one of the most remote parts of the world with other students at the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and The Park School to study climate change in a way that’s usually reserved for graduate students.

“I get to go and do the exact work I’ve always wanted to do, study animals in their natural habitat out in the Arctic,” Spangler said. “I thought I would have to wait until college to do this sort of research.”

The annual science and culture immersion trip has been bringing students to Canada’s Wapusk National Park—a place with no roads and just 150 visitors annually—for 15 years to work on a long-term research project. They’re measuring the Earth’s active layer thickness to determine how fast the permafrost—the ground layer below the Earth’s surface—is melting.

The organization that runs the trip is called International Student-led Arctic Monitoring and Research. It was founded in 2005 by Julie Rogers, a science teacher at the private Park School in Baltimore County. She was inspired by the nonprofit Global Explorers, where she helped design science and service immersion trips to destinations like the Amazon and Costa Rica.