You could go to Madagascar to help save threatened wildlife, rain forest and people. You could help improve captive primate care and animal welfare in Washington, plumb the depths of animal intelligence in California, survey Puerto Rico's endangered coral reefs, study dinosaurs in Montana, wolves in India, or fossil forests in Australia. You work with other volunteers under the direction of experienced scientists on real world environmental and scientific quests. Volunteers have to share the cost of the expedition. Earthwatch does offer a certain number of grants for high school students and teachers.
College students can often get credit for their work.
For more information write to EarthWatch, PO Box 9104, Watertown, MA 02272-9104. If you want to explore on your own in the most fertile area of the world for historic scientific sites you want to visit the British Isles. Here you can visit the home and study of giants like Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton and see where scientists like Edmund Halley, Edward Jenner, Michael Faraday, John Dalton, Alexander Fleming, William Herschell, James Clerk Maxwell, Joseph Priestley, James Watt, James Hutton, Ernest Rutherford, James Watson and Francis Crick did their revolutionary work. Sadly, many of these names are not nearly as well known among the public as literary giants like Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Dickens, even though the scientists have each been of more long term significance to the human race than our literacy heroes. 10-110 Cambridge, MA 02139.