Chuck Delpier

An environmental education teacher, Delpier wants students to become proficient with modernized land navigation techniques through his proposed program, "The G.P.S. Project: Using Technology to Improve Navigation". His idea includes providing G.P.S. (Global Positioning System) units to eighth-grade students who participate in "The 24-Hour Wilderness Experience" at the end of the January and May semesters each year. Delpier's program is designed to supplement the current outdoor camping trips by adding another degree of safety and by introducing a set of navigational skills widely used by foresters, miners, and wildlife managers, all of which are careers important to Michigan's Upper Peninsula economy. Utilizing sophisticated G.P.S. units to mark and find "waypoints" along the hiking trail will also allow students to simulate a human rescue by retracting the waypoints with their units. Delpier believes that putting these units in students' hands will help them learn new techniques that can make them future experts in the next generation of land navigation techniques. Delpier resides in Marquette.