By Cindy Kranz
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Kerry Olthaus will go on expedition to Namibia in August. With her are Sahara, a cheetah and Alexa, an Anatolian shepherd. Both are in the zoo Cat Ambassador Program. The Cincinnati Enquirer/SARAH CONRAD

AVONDALE - Call it a learning safari or a really big field trip. Sixty educators, including 27 from the Tristate, are about to embark on the international excursion of a lifetime.

The educators were chosen from more than 200 applicants nationwide to participate in Earth Expeditions, a partnership between the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and Miami University's Project Dragonfly, which promotes children's science investigations.

Twenty teachers each will travel to Trinidad, Costa Rica and Namibia to join the zoo staff's field research and conservation efforts for 10 to 12 days.

Mary Pat Harris, a 51-year-old third-grade teacher at McCormick Elementary in Milford, leaves today for Trinidad, where she will be part of a group releasing eight blue-and-gold macaws back into the wild.

Macaws were nearly wiped out on the island, off the coast of Venezuela, by illegal trapping and habitat loss from logging and agriculture.

"I have so much that I'm going to learn from this, even the cultural experience," Harris said. "People are people. We all have some of the same hopes for our kids. I hope I can bring back that sense that the world is a smaller place."

Harris, who has taught 30 years, has a menagerie of animals in her classroom, including two rats, two guinea pigs, 40 Madagascar hissing cockroaches and a corn snake. It's her way of planting seeds with children about the wonder of life and the importance of protecting animals - even those that seem kind of icky.

Earth Expeditions is thought to be the first-of-a-kind collaboration between a zoo and a university, said Chris Meyers, professor of interdisciplinary studies at Miami and director of Project Dragonfly.

The program promotes inquiry-based education, combined with the conservation efforts of the zoo. Inquiry-based education allows individuals to seek information by questioning. The process begins with gathering information through the senses: smell, sound, touch, taste and sight.

"Learning is not a spectator sport," Meyers said. "There's so much more that can happen in the classroom when you're out there working and seeing how the real world operates."

"Why do you think around eighth grade, people start turning off science?" asked Dave Jenike, director of education at the zoo. "Because it's dry and boring."

With these expeditions, Jenike said, it's an opportunity for teachers to do some science inquiries of their own, while learning about conservation efforts and meeting with educators from the country they're visiting. Teachers will carry what they learn about inquiry-based education back into the classroom, allowing kids to take a more active role in scientific investigations.

Kerry Olthaus, a 37-year-old kindergarten teacher from Mount Washington Elementary, jumped at the chance. She leaves July 28 for Namibia, where she will work with the zoo's cat conservation program.

The 16-year teaching veteran nearly grew up at the zoo, where she was a junior zoologist and teen volunteer at the Children's Zoo; taught children's classes during college; and was trained to raise wild, abandoned animals and release them.

"This seemed like an adventure with a purpose, not only for myself, but I can learn things to bring back about the culture there and how we can help with the conservation of the cheetah. ... The two big things in my life have been animals and education."

E-mail ckranz@enquirer.com