Hull High School Announces International Services Trips for Students

For Immediate Release

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Contact: John Guilfoil
Phone: 617-993-0003
Email: john@jgpr.net

Hull High School Announces International Services Trips for Students

HULL — As Hull High School kicks off the new school year, Principal Nicole Nosek would like to recognize students’ work on previous international trips and announce upcoming opportunities for those interested in studying abroad.

During the summer of 2018, Hull High School Biology teacher Sheila Blair led a team of seven student biologists — Olivia Ball, Shelby Craig, Hannah Duran, Tess Froio, Audrey Lofgren, Christina Murphy, and Jimmy Regan — on a trip to the Galapagos Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Ecuador.

During the 12-day trip, the Hull team worked with other students from Germany, California, Connecticut, and North Carolina to study the islands’ giant tortoise population, a species that is threatened by a wide variety of factors, including natural predators and invasive plant species. Students also had the opportunity to observe and collect data on the diverse oceanic life around the islands, such as fish, sharks, and pacific green turtles.

Blair is now gearing up for her next trip with students — this time to Belize during winter break. The trip is organized through the Ecology Project International in partnership with the Belize-Marine Ecology Program.

Students will spend part of their nine-day trip monitoring dolphin and manatee populations in the Belize Barrier Reef, the world’s second largest coral reef. The team will also study large jungle-dwelling mammals, such as the endangered jaguar. While seeing a jaguar in the wild is a rare experience, students will be staying at a jaguar sanctuary, where they will have the opportunity to observe jaguars being introduced back into their natural habitats.

Project Humanitarian Involvement (PHI), a student-created club led by history teachers Tim MacKenzie and Blythe Cowen, took their second trip to the Dominican Republic last April vacation, and their sixth international service trip overall. The project brought the team to the Mariposa Foundation, an all girls school whose mission is to end generational poverty by educating girls.

During the service trip, students from Hull had many opportunities to interact with the students of the Mariposa School, painting murals and playing soccer together. Students Samantha Collier, Emma Carney, Caitlin Canavan, Melissa Rymaszewski, Kayla Chenette, Siobhan Burke, Alex Gampel, Brenna Conneely, Jenna Canavan and Bella Hendrickson attended the trip.

PHI is currently planning another service trip to Peru later this year.

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