University Business - February 2007 - (Page 30)

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Another NRPA-accredited institution is Green Mountain College, which bills itself as “Vermont’s Environmental Liberal Arts College.” Nestled in the mountains, the college features niche programs in the growing ﬁelds of adventure recreation and ski resort management. Green Mountain is also a member of The Eco League, which provides student exchange opportunities with ﬁve other outdoor colleges: Antioch College Ohio , Prescott College Ariz. , the College of the Atlantic Maine , Alaska Paciﬁc University, and Northland College Wisc. . Next up is Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks, a campus of 14,200 acres on the shores of Lower St. Regis Lake in New York. Paul Smith’s oﬀers programs in a full range of green programs, including forestry, surveying, and natural resource management with a focus on hands-on training. President John Mills sums up the college’s unique mission: “The real value of a PSC education is in the emphasis on not just learning something, but in actually doing it.” Heading west, our next stop is Earlham College Ind. . Earlham oﬀers students an interesting array of oﬀ-campus wilderness learning experiences, including rock climbing, kayaking, and backpacking, interspersed with ﬁeld practica in the wild. These practica typically involve semesterlong experiential learning in the desert Southwest, as well as month-long courses in Utah and Canada called the August Wilderness. Nelson Bingham, Earlham’s provost, sums it up this way: “Outdoor education at Earlham uses the outdoors as a learning laboratory for students to engage environmental issues, biology, philosophy, history, and group dynamics.” Traveling north to Wisconsin, Northland College is on the shores of Lake Superior. With majors in adventure education, natural history, and therapeutic design, the college also home to an environmental institute, dedicated to the solution of environ- Northland programs focus on “understanding how nature and culture shape and define each other.” —Rick Fairbanks, Northland College mental problems through research, education, and civic involvement. In the words of Provost Rick Fairbanks: “At Northland, ‘environmental liberal arts’ means that we provide an education shaped by place—an education focused on understanding how nature and culture shape and deﬁne each other. This love of place found expression this summer when our president, Karen Halbersleben, volunteered as a lighthouse keeper on Michigan Island in the nearby Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.” Our last destination is Western State College of Colorado, set in the spectacular crown of the Colorado Mountains near Crested Butte. Western’s courses and programs have a special focus on snow, land, and water environmental impact with experimental ﬁeld education in western Colorado and Utah. Western’s unique setting oﬀers students the opportunity to complement their classroom work with hands-on experiences in the outdoors to provide what Western terms “the extreme learning experience.” President Jay Helman, provides this context for the Western State learning experience: “With 1.7 million acres of Gunnison River territory at the front door, the Outdoor Recreation program is an interdisciplinary, hands-on experience where students travel to several Western states for an outdoor recreation experience, join a mountaineering and service learning project in Argentina, and learn ski resort management.” A NATURAL BACKDROP Each of these institutions in the wild— though diﬀerent in size, makeup, and geographic location—recognizes the demand for a truly authentic, nitty-gritty outdoor learning experience—all in a wilderness environment that provides a natural backdrop for its students and faculty. From the Allagash Wilderness to the snowy peaks of Colorado’s majestic mountains, these colleges and universities take advantage of their unique setting in the wild to provide Generation Y and beyond with rare opportunities to learn more about their natural environment. Caring and engaged students are learning about new threats to our ecosystem and, importantly, new real-world solutions— solutions that just might help save our planet for future generations. Resources August Wilderness at Earlham College Ind. , www.earlham.edu/~outdoor /august The Eco League, www.ecoleague.org National Recreation and Park Association, www.nrpa.org Northeast Passage at University of New Hampshire, www.nepassage.org Recreation Program at Western State College of Colorado, www.western .edu/recreation Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute at Northland College Wisc. , www .northland.edu/Northland/Soei 30 | February 2007 universitybusiness.com FuShck_207.indd 30 1/22/07 10:49:50 AM Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct /var/lib/php/session in Unknown on line 0 http://www.earlham.edu/~outdoor/august http://www.earlham.edu/~outdoor/august http://www.ecoleague.org http://www.nrpa.org http://www.nepassage.org http://www.western.edu/recreation http://www.western.edu/recreation http://www.northland.edu/Northland/Soei http://www.northland.edu/Northland/Soei http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - February 2007

Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Stats Watch
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Admissions
On The Hill
Future Shock
Facilities Focus
Independent Outlook
Flu Pandemic Prep
Advancing the Brand
The Picture’s Getting Clearer
Groundbreaking Ideas
Gotta Get a Message to You
Internet Technology
What's New
calendar of Events
Direct Connect
End Note

University Business - February 2007