The blue-green waters at St. Kinga’s Chapel in the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland, as photographed by Julianna Olguin during her trip to Poland last year.
Photo courtesy of NMHU media arts graduate Julianna Olguin
A cohort of scientists, media arts specialists and a university professor have traveled to Eastern Europe to study the landscape, soak up the culture and share the experience with others across the globe.
This is the sixth year that a group of New Mexico Highlands University students and graduates will travel to Eastern Europe as part of the International Research Experience for Students grant. The grant has allowed for NMHU geology as well as media arts students to travel to the Czech Republic and Poland for several weeks during the summer. This year, the IRES grant cohort took off for Europe on May 21. Some members of the group will return towards the end of June; others in early July.
While geology students conduct field research into how continents formed, media arts students document the findings through photos, video and by maintaining a website. All who go on the trip will get to experience the culture and history of Eastern Europe by exploring cultural sites, all while gaining knowledge in their respective fields.
“It’s an international experience,” said Dr. Michael Petronis, professor of geology at Highlands. He has led a group to Eastern Europe through the IRES grant every summer since 2018. “It’s really to open doors for the students that they didn’t even know were closed.”
IRES also aims to make science accessible and fun, Petronis said. For IRES participant Julianna Olguin, the experience has not only allowed her to sharpen skills in media arts – she recently completed a bachelor’s of fine arts in the subject – but also exposed her to geology.
“I had absolutely no background in geology before,” Olguin said. “It was a new experience.”
This will be the second summer that Olguin travels to Eastern Europe through the IRES grant. Last year, she helped document field research with photographs, illustrations and videos. She also got to experience St. Kinga’s Chapel in the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland – an architectural feat carved completely out of salt.
“Everything was made of salt,” Olguin said, “even the things that didn’t look like it.” This included religious figures carved into the walls, she said.
Olguin also noted the salt chapel’s pools of water.
“There’s so much concentrated salt that not all of it evaporates in the water,” Olguin said. “It makes (the water) a really pretty blue-green color.”
Olguin said she looks forward to learning more about the area’s history during the summer, as well as help maintain a website that documents the IRES group’s visit.
This year, Olguin traveled to Eastern Europe with fellow media arts graduate Josh Ortega, who will help her document the trip; Isaiah Archuleta, a recent NMHU graduate who just completed his degree in environmental geology and who plans to return to NMHU in the fall to pursue graduate studies in geology; NMHU geology instructor Luke Romero; geology student Laquisha Montaño.
Romero started with the IRES grant in 2019, while still an undergraduate in geology at Highlands. He has since completed a master’s in environmental science and traveled to Eastern Europe with the IRES grant in 2019, 2022 and 2024.
“I found it really intriguing and really interesting,” Romero said. Over the years, he has taken on a mentorship role with the program, as has his colleague Terence Garcia.
Garcia did not go to the IRES trip this year, but has been involved with the project since he was an undergraduate student at NMHU in 2018. At that time, an internship coordinator asked Garcia if he was interested in traveling halfway across the world to help IRES document their findings in Eastern Europe.
“I was overwhelmed by the culture change,” he recalled. “I learned a lot, not only about the culture of the Czech Republic and central Europe, but also geology and its role in society.”
Garcia completed an undergraduate degree in media arts at Highlands, then went on to earn a master’s degree in media arts with a focus on video production at NMHU in 2021. He went on several IRES trips over the years, gaining more experience in documenting the research as well as leading other students.
“Every year I went back I was more in a leadership role until I graduated into the mentorship position I have now,” Garcia said.
Archuleta got to go on this year’s excursion thanks to previous field experience working with Petronis and Romero in California.
“I made a good first impression, I showed that I was able to prove myself in the field,” Archuleta said. He went on to give a presentation about his findings at the Rocky Mountain Geological Society’s national conference in Albuquerque May 18-20. Olguin also presented at the event.
Depending on funding, Petronis said, this might be the last IRES trip for NMHU students.
The IRES trips are part of a competitive grant given through the National Science Foundation, Petronis said. Every grant award provides enough funding for three years of travel, and the second award is coming to an end this year, he said.
The grant pays for a group of students and graduates to travel to Eastern Europe and also provides a living stipend.
“It’s a competitive award,” Petronis said. “There’s no guarantee that the funding will be available.”
The grant is usually about $275,000 for three years, Petronis said.
“It’s not a lot of money, but it’s a lot of impact,” Petronis said of the IRES experience.
To find out more about the IRES grant trips, visit www.nmhugeology.com/ires