Jean Colvin is one lucky administrator. Not only does she promote the dream of field research in exotic places to the public, the director of the University Research Expeditions Program gets out into the field herself, driving a Land Rover over torturous muddy roads in the Ecuadorian highlands each year. But it's moving to not-quite-so-exotic UC Davis that Colvin expects will create a new synergy for her 22-year-old systemwide program. "We've always had a lot of researchers from Davis participate. I was also interested because the campus has so much interest in field research and outreach," Colvin says. "That's part of the reason we moved here." Colvin administers a program of research expeditions around the world in which volunteers join university researchers and provide support for the work by paying part of the research costs as well as for their own meals, lodging and ground transportation. The contributions, which vary by project, qualify as tax-deductible charitable donations. Now that she's fully ensconced in Temporary Building 206 after making the transition from the Berkeley campus over the fall, Colvin is ready to dovetail her outreach, teaching and research program with Davis programs. She's already brainstormed with faculty members from the Division of Education to see how her program can help with campus goals of enhancing K-12 education. Colvin has just learned that her program is one of the first two recipients of a grant from the new EBay Foundation, a philanthropic foundation founded by an Internet auction house that has made a mint from its skyrocketing stock price. The $10,000 grant will provide partial subsidies for up to 20 teachers to go on expeditions next summer. The teachers will also develop classroom activities and materials based on their research experiences, Colvin said. More than 500 elementary and secondary teachers have gone on program expeditions with the help of National Science Foundation grants that ended a few years ago. The new grant will allow Colvin to double the number of teachers who have been able to participate with more restricted funding in the most recent years. Strong Ties in Ecuador Colvin has also been chatting with Native American studies faculty members and others in the academic community on collaborative projects through which the expedition program can bring resources and connections to foreign places and people. "For instance, I have strong ties with indigenous communities in Ecuador," Colvin said. "In the past I arranged for Hopi, Zuni and Navajo teachers to Ecuador to participate in an environmental education project with the Indian communities." Typically each year, Colvin must coordinate up to 50 faculty members and graduate students throughout the UC system to lead two dozen or so expeditions. Many times, graduate students are the expedition leaders. The program also has a number of program-leader alumni from Davis, including Dan Anderson from wildlife, fish and conservation biology; Eliska Rejmankova from environmental science and policy, and plant biology professor emeritus Grady Webster, who, Colvin says, has led the most expeditions in the program's history. Colvin said she finds expedition leaders are a self-selected group of faculty and graduate students who like meeting new people and are comfortable with the idea of field research as a group experience. The public can pay anywhere from $695 for an expedition to the central California coast to study the impact of cattle grazing on wildflowers to $1,695 for unearthing Horace's villa in the Licenza River Valley in Italy. Off the Beaten Path Colvin herself leads a special expedition, called "Ecuador: Off the Beaten Path," often for first-time program participants. This trip offers a journey through the cultural and biological diversity of the Andean country and visits some of the other finished and ongoing expedition research projects there. The expedition serves as a fund-raiser for the program's scholarship fund. The trips generally last a week to two weeks, although some adventures have a few sessions, so that people can participate for longer periods of time. It takes a hardy breed of volunteers who are expecting to work, Colvin has learned. "Most who apply do get placed since we try to be as realistic as possible about the project descriptions," she said. "People have a strong sense of what they are getting into." This year, for instance, while some research participants will be living in private homes and hotels in Spain while assisting anthropologists looking at prehistoric paintings or in a comfortable house in the Aran Islands of Ireland while excavating artifacts from medieval churches, others will be roughing it in sleeping bags while collecting fossils in the Utah wilderness or counting small mammals in a Chilean national park in the Andes. Colvin reports the program has created a loyal group of returning participants, including a contingent of happily married people (most often women) who take separate vacations from their spouse so that they can go on a research expedition. Some of the expeditions require special skills, such as snorkeling to do research among the coral reefs in the Virgin Islands or speaking German and knowing how to map for a study of reindeer hunters and early farmers in southern Germany. The size of the research crews ranges from four to 15. "Often, whether the group fits in a Land Rover is the determining factor," Colvin said. The next research proposal deadline will be April 6. For proposal information, faculty or graduate students should contact Colvin at 752-0692 or at urep@ucdavis.edu.