Beginning in 2020, Sarah Johnson, of Wild Rose Education began her journey as a Polar educator. Through the NSF funded program, PolarTREC, she was paired with the International Arctic Buoy Program as an outreach officer focusing on the Arctic Ocean sea ice, circulation and climate.. This relationship expanded to include many nationally reaching broader impacts and international education outreach activities.

In 2022, Sarah joined the IABP AK Spring 22 Deployment led by the University of Washington Polar Science Center and the Office of Naval Research International Cooperative Engagement Program for Polar Research in the northern most town in the United States, Utqiaġvik, Alaska for 2 weeks around the spring solstice.  She also presented the Float Your Boat project at the 2022 American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in Chicago. 
 

In 2023, Sarah contributed to the IABP AK Spring 23 Deployment with the same team (and a few additional collaborators) also around the spring solstice buoy deployment campaign in Utqiaġvik, on Alaska's North Slope. Sarah was supported logistically by NSF and PolarTREC funding for this campaign.

The science team deploys drifting buoys that collect real-time environmental conditions data (weather, geographic position, and time) and in coordination with the International Arctic Buoy Programme, that maintains a network of drifting buoys in the Arctic Ocean providing meteorological and oceanographic data for real-time operational requirements and research purposes including support to the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the World Weather Watch (WWW) Programme. 

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2026 and Beyond

• Instructing Beyond the Ice: The Interconnected Arctic Mosaic, a virtual course

• Advising curriculum and program design for sub-Arctic education program in Chugach School District; an ONR funded project: Local Ecological Knowledge+Data=Action ​

• Coordinating the Float Your Boat program (volunteer as of July 2025, due to inadequate funding)

• Contributing to building community with the Arctic Science Education Network created by ARCUS​

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