Normally Mars is 33.9 million miles from Earth.  But for a few days this past January, Mars got a whole lot closer.

After the success of Guardian Adventures founder, Meghan Gardner’s work on the Mission to Mars STEM summer camps in Seoul, Korea last summer, ST Unitas (the parent company of The Princeton Review and the largest Tech Ed company in all of Asia), decided to send their campers to the USA this winter that would take educational adventures to a whole new level.

Students from Seoul, Korea joined The STEM Initiative, a collaboration between ST Unitas, professors and staff from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Guard Up’s Guardian Adventures. This first of its kind collaboration integrates traditional STEM-based learning principles with informal education — experiential and student-driven processes that foster learning through hands-on activity.