About Kirsten
Kirsten Alburg
Founder & Director, Odyssey Discovery
Co-Host & Executive Producer, Field Notes: Uncovered
Connection is powerful.
Kirsten Alburg spent more than two decades working in education across Alaska, including six years in the Arctic. Today, she is building Odyssey Discovery around a simple idea: people care more deeply about science and discovery when they can meet the people, experience the places and understand the stories behind it.
The journey
01
Alaska
20+ years in education across Alaska
02
Arctic
Six years living and working in Utqiaġvik
03
Education + Design
Instructional design and learning experiences
04
Odyssey Discovery
Connecting scientists, educators and extraordinary places
05
Field Notes: Uncovered
Co-Host & Executive Producer
06
Field Notes: Explorer
Bringing real science into classrooms
The Arctic changed the view.
Kirsten spent more than 20 years working in education across Alaska, including six years in Utqiaġvik above the Arctic Circle. She later worked as an education specialist for an Arctic college, designing learning experiences across remote communities.
Living and working in Alaska put her close to extraordinary science, extraordinary places and the people trying to understand them.
Scientists were asking important questions. Communities carried generations of knowledge. Teachers and students were curious about both.
Kirsten became increasingly interested in the distance between those worlds.
What if we could bring the field into the classroom — and the classroom closer to the field?
Following the questions.
Kirsten has always been drawn to the places where questions are still being answered.
Today, that curiosity is becoming part of Field Notes: Uncovered.
As Co-Host & Executive Producer, Kirsten goes into the field with scientists, researchers and conservation leaders — asking questions, participating where appropriate and helping audiences experience the people and places behind real science.
She isn't there to be the expert. The scientists are. Her job is to take us with her.
Explore Field Notes: UncoveredThe scientists are the experts. Kirsten is our way into their world.
Building the bridge.
Odyssey Discovery grew from a simple belief: the distance between people can be enormous. The distance between their ideas doesn't have to be.
Odyssey creates different ways to close that distance.
Field Notes: Uncovered
Go into the field with scientists and tell the stories behind discovery.
Explore Uncovered →
Field Notes: Explorer
Connect real scientists, research, fieldwork and discoveries with educators and classrooms.
Explore Explorer →
Odyssey Discovery Fellowships
Give educators opportunities to experience extraordinary places and field science firsthand.
Explore Fellowships →
The role Kirsten plays.
Kirsten doesn't need to be the expert in every story.
She wants to create the conditions that allow extraordinary people, places and discoveries to be seen.
- Sometimes that means co-hosting Field Notes: Uncovered and asking the questions an audience would ask.
- Sometimes it means connecting a scientist with a classroom.
- Sometimes it means helping an educator step into the field.
- Sometimes it means bringing partners together to make an expedition, story or opportunity possible.
Her role changes. The purpose doesn't:
Build the bridge.
Background
- M.Ed. in Instructional Design / Online Learning
- B.S. in Education
- 20+ years in Alaska education
- Six years in the Arctic
- Former Arctic college education specialist
- Founder & Director, Odyssey Discovery
- Co-Host & Executive Producer, Field Notes: Uncovered
Built on real relationships.
Odyssey Discovery works with scientists, researchers, conservationists and field professionals who want their work to reach curious audiences and classrooms. Participation by individual professionals does not imply that their employers or institutions endorse or formally partner with Odyssey Discovery.
How we work with scientists & organizations →
Connection creates curiosity.
Curiosity creates discovery.
Discovery can create change.
Go where discovery happens.
— Kirsten Alburg