Ten students are enrolled in this year’s Alaska Research Experience, a two-course, year-long sequence led by Professor of Physics Rhett Herman that culminates in hands-on field research in Utqiagvik, Alaska. The official field season runs from Feb. 21 to March 7, with most students making the trip for either Feb. 21-28 or Feb. 28 to March 7.
“This is an incredibly intense but rewarding experience,” Herman said. “That one-week field window is shockingly tight, but the students are ready because they’ve been building toward this moment since August.”
While most students spend one week in Alaska, those with larger projects may stay two weeks. This year, Lily Backus, the 2025 Artis College/AEP Summer Research Fellow, is doing a two-week field session. Supporting the cohort is Elevate Research student mentor Athena Smith, a participant in the 2023-2024 experience and the 2024 ACSAT/AEP Summer Research Fellow. The Elevate Research effort, run through the office of Associate Provost for Academic Affairs Jeanne Mekolichick, has been especially helpful this year, Herman said.
“Having Athena as a mentor has been invaluable,” Herman said. “She knows exactly what the students are facing because she’s done it herself.”
Travel logistics underscore the remoteness of the work. To arrive on Feb. 21, participants leave the East Coast on Friday, Feb. 20, arriving the following afternoon after multiple flights. Since COVID-10, Utqiagvik has only one main commercial flight in and out each day, Herman said.
Each student designed, proposed and built a microcontroller-based environmental, geophysics or low-Earth-space sensor aligned with their planned career paths. “They work individually with me from topic selection through funding and construction,” Herman said. “By the time they reach Alaska, they know their systems inside and out.”
Radford University
