I have been married to my beautiful wife
for over 12 years, and we have 3 great kids Jack (8 and into dinosaurs, all
things oceans, and art), Van (5 all about Karate, Power Rangers, and being a
Marine one day like Uncle O’sh), and Nell (5, yes twins, who is a girly girl
into ballet, dolls, and being a sassy princess). We keep busy with kid’s sports, play dates,
after school programs, and all sorts of activities that seem to never end! Both of my USNA roommates and a great group
of other classmates all live within a mile from us, and we all seem to have
growing families in the same age range, so it really is a perfect world for us
around Annapolis.
The Polar Science Program was born when I
realized I would be able to complete my career here at USNA. I was fortunate to get up to the Arctic for
the first time in 2009, when we participated in a US Navy Ice Camp 200 miles
NORTH of Alaska. Yes, NORTH of our
Northern Most State! It was a great
experience, and really solidified my fascination with this extraordinary
environment. Jackie, one of my MANY
polar mentors, once told me that “The Arctic is a place that draws you in, and
once you go there, you just want to keep going back”. Well I really got that bug, and have been
fortunate enough to go back each year since, and have brought students along
with me each time. We got to go to Thule
Air Force Base in Greenland, and fly in a NASA P-3s within site of the
North Pole, and for the past two years,
have been in one of the ‘coolest’ towns in the US, Barrow, AK. Barrow is the Northern Most city in the US,
and the people here are some of the nicest, warmest I have ever come
across. My goal our program is to get as
many midshipmen, and future Naval Officers to experience the Arctic
Environment, and to use this experience to help them later on in their careers,
because I truly believe that the US Navy will have to deal with the rapidly
changing conditions up here in their careers.
The PSP is constantly changing students and the Science and Engineering
projects that we bring up here are new and varied each year. These projects culminate the midshipmen’s 4
years of book work, and let them experience and test ‘in the field’, much more
exciting than ‘in the classroom’.
I have so much more to share, and am
excited for you all to follow along!
Please check in regularly, and I would love to begin a conversation with
anyone who is interested to discuss any topics at all! Just get in touch with us via comments or
email at woods@usna.edu. Will stay in touch! LCDR John Woods, USNA Polar Science Program
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