Earlier this year Global Field Program (GFP) graduate and science teacher Sam Wheeler '12 of Durham, North Carolina, led a group of 23 students (and 6 adults) to Australia to learn about the biodiversity there and the Great Barrier Reef, and the local television station did a story on Wheeler's group. Watch here 

"Every year, I take a group of students to different places around the world -- my own version of what I experienced in the GFP program. We snorkeled off the coast of Townsville on the John Brewer Reef and we were led by two marine biologists from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority," said Wheeler.

During the trip out to the reef I had a chance to get to know both of them and to talk with them and they mentioned they routinely work with a program from the U.S. that brings teachers and science educators to the same places we visited. I asked what that program was and they said the Earth Expeditions program! The scientists—Julie Spencer and Craig McGrogan—who took us out were top notch."

"I can't help but smile at the irony, I had wanted to do the Australia trip when it was first offered in 2011 but it filled up too quickly so I went to Guyana for my third trip."

As a student in Miami's biology department, Wheeler earned a Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) in the Biological Sciences through Project Dragonfly's GFP while working as a physics instructor at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.