UAF photo by Ryan Oeste.
GeoFORCE Alaska’s fourth cohort — 31 high school students, 11 staff members, a bus driver and one mentor from Doyon Ltd. — gather at Desert View Lookout in Grand Canyon National Park on June 10, 2025.

By Gracie Banister

Every summer, high school students from rural Alaska communities gather in Fairbanks to begin their summer adventure — GeoFORCE Alaska.

The UAF program takes the students to spectacular geologic sites across the country. But this is more than a tour of local attractions. It’s a chance to understand how time, pressure, and nature’s energy have created the canyons, cliffs, and spectacular landscapes around us.

A teacher in Galena encouraged Camden Cleaver to apply. At first, he was unsure that it would be a good fit. But in the end, the program left him eager to see more of the world.

“The coolest part about the trip was Zion Canyon,” he said, “because we had to hike for about an hour, and when we made it to the top it was so beautiful and it was so worth it.”

He also learned how formations like Balanced Rock near Page, Arizona, developed over time.

GeoFORCE Alaska brings students to the fascinating world of geosciences through the exploration of landforms in different states each year. This past summer, they went to places like Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon in the desert Southwest.

Launched in 2012, GeoFORCE Alaska is a four-year program. Each summer, the same group reunites to attend a two-week academy in a different region of the U.S. By the time they finish, the students will have practiced field geology at destinations such as Dinosaur National Monument and Denali, Grand Canyon, Crater Lake and Yellowstone national parks.

Dennis Aveoganna-Zabala of Wainwright said the chance to travel beyond the North Slope was the main draw for him.

“This experience has got me into traveling,” he said, recalling the fun of the trip and the friendships he made. He even wrote and performed a rap about GeoFORCE, earning cheers from his peers.

GeoFORCE offers students transformative experiences at no cost, thanks to partnerships with Alaska organizations such as Doyon Ltd., Wiseman Metals, Arctic Slope Regional Corp., NANA Regional Corp., Teck Resources Alaska and ConocoPhillips Alaska.

“Doyon has been a long supporter of GeoFORCE and we are very happy to spend the time and financial support,” said Matthew Hansen, resource manager at Doyon, the Fairbanks-based Alaska Native regional corporation for Interior Alaska. “Over the past 12 years, this program has given students from off the road system a unique opportunity to explore the sciences. It’s a fantastic program.”

This support has enabled GeoFORCE to make a sizable impact on high school completion rates. Over 90% of the students from the last three cohorts have graduated from high school, and many have gone to college.

But the program’s impact extends beyond statistics. Students describe new friendships, ambitions and perspectives they might not otherwise have experienced.

For Violet Thomas of Utqiagvik, watching her community’s coast erode each fall and living in the same state as Denali made her curious about the Earth’s processes. Visits to Antelope Canyon and Barringer Meteor Crater deepened her interest in geoscience. 

The experience tied geology to her everyday life.

“Seeing the world is one thing, but seeing it with friends is another,” she said.

Her future plans are to finish high school and attend college at her dream school — UAF.

Camden Cleaver, the student from Galena, said GeoFORCE has brought him beyond an appreciation for the program’s practical benefits to a place of gratitude.

“If I were to say ‘thank you’ to someone,” he said, “it’d probably be my teacher, Ms. Claudette Green, who talked me into this program.”

Gracie Banister is a recruitment and communications specialist with the UAF College of Natural Science and Mathematics. For more information about GeoFORCE, please contact Justine Shmidt at jaschmidt4@alaska.edu or visit GeoFORCE Alaska.