The JASON Learning Nevada Team spent a week near the Great Basin Desert learning about caterpillars and climate change. They hit the slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, visited the University of Nevada Reno Museum with Santiago Villamarin, learned about arthropods and fire from Fire Ecologist, Dr. Jane Dell, spent an afternoon with Dr. Chris Jeffrey and Alex English in a lab located in the Center for Chemical Ecology, worked with Dr. Lora Richards creating bioassays.

The JASON Learning Arizona Team spent a week at the Southwestern Research Station in Arizona. They learned how to set up mist nets, went on hikes, sampled trees, trapped owls, and caught a Mexican long nosed bat. The team learned how to catch owls by playing various calls of the owls with 90 seconds of silence in between. If an owl answered, the mist net is put up and then more calls are played. The team was very lucky to catch the world’s smallest owl – the ELF OWL! They learned so much about tree species, owls, and many new skills.

The JASON Learning Bahamas Team spent a week at the Kenyon Research Center on Abaco Island in the Bahamas. They learn how to snorkel and duck dive. The teams helped to deploy an experiment called The Cassiopeia Jelly experiment. The Argo team caught a total of 48 turtles! These turtles were measured, weighed, tagged and and sent back to the water after being processed. The Argos got to name the turtles they caught some of those being: “Jason” the turtle, Bruce, Niko, Kenda, Tucker, Duce, Tokyo Drift, and Cookie. The team celebrated their adventure with some fun swimming and volleyball on the beach.

The JASON Learning Costa Rica Team spent a week on the CIEE Monteverde campus to learn about bees and other pollinators. They spent time in the field deploying traps and collecting pollinators in hikes and through local farms. They visited a hummingbird gallery and had amazing up-close experiences with these unique birds, toured a sugar cane farm, crossed rivers, hiked to high elevations, and hiked at night too.

The JASON Learning Amazon Team spent a week in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest where they went on boat rides, were greeted by spiders, and hung out with The Bug Chicks. They learned about the incredible range of plant, animal, and insect biodiversity and even caught a Piranha in the river. The Argos caught the sunrise at The Canopy Walkway where they stood over 115 feet off the ground on a 500 meter bridge.

The JASON Learning Design Thinking team went to the San Francisco Bay Area and visited several locations. They started off with meeting with the founder of HireClub, followed with a visit to IDEO where the Argos learned first hand about the design thinking process by designing a game for future space travelers. The team went to All Power Labs where each person got to climb into one of the resident submersibles. They then went to the d.school at Stanford University where they met with Professor Melissa Miranda. The Argo Team had the chance to meet with Argonaut Alumni, Marshall Hartung where he got to speak about his experience as an Argo and with college. The team also visited Google Headquarters, Kindred Robotics, 360Labs, and Nybll.