By Rebecca Nussbaum

Xochi Maberry-Gaulke ’12 will take a two-week driving tour of Iceland as the winner of the Junior Summer Fellowship, learning about plate tectonics and how locals cope with the threat of natural disasters. She will also film and photograph Icelandic landscapes that she will incorporate into “visual field trips” in her senior independent study next year. The multimedia presentations, which may later be shown to geology students, may allow them to experience the land that they learn about, Visual Arts Department Head Cheri Gaulke (Marka and Xochi ’12) said.

“She’s never been a huge science fan, but when she took geology in the 10th grade, she totally fell in love with it,” Gaulke said. “I think she really loves the way you can look out on the landscape and really read its story visually. She’s a very visual person, so I see it very connected to her kind of visual sensibility.”

President Thomas C. Hudnut found MaberryGaulke’s proposal to be quite thoughtful, he said.

“Xochi’s won because it was most closely related to course work here at Harvard-Westlake,” he said.

“Geology is a field I am considering studying and pursuing as a future career, and this program will help me in that goal,” Maberry-Gaulke said. “I can’t imagine anything more interesting than a study trip to Iceland.”