The art of the wilderness : a field guide to integrating art + outdoor education

This thesis serves as both a comprehensive review of the fields of art and outdoor education, and as a practical handbook. Through an exploration of the definitions of art and wilderness to the pedagogy of art, outdoor, and experimental education, this thesis endeavors to make evident meaningful ways of learning. Interdisciplinary learning and multiple intelligence theory support a holistic and interconnected approach to education. Place-based and project-based learning emphasize a multidimensional line of inquiry rooted within a meaningful and personal context. The goal of integrating art + outdoor education is to design learning adventures that cultivate: creativity, leadership, problem-solving, collaboration, challenge, and inspiration. Through a comparison of the pedagogy of art and outdoor education, points of intersection, overlap, and difference emerge. Exemplars are provided from singular to broad, showing how the combined power of art + outdoor education has impacted local communities and national institutions, and created lasting social and political effects. Finally, an appendix of lesson plans, workshops, program outlines, and outdoor artist resources is offered as a field guide to applying art + outdoor education in a variety of contexts. Throughout the thesis, hand-drawn illustrations interpret the academic context while digital photographs provide documentation of experiences. The thesis is encased within a map of the John Muir Trail, in honor of the naturalist, environmental philosopher, and early advocate for the preservation of the wilderness within the United States

Relational aggression and adventure-based counselinga critical analysis of the literature

Includes bibliographical references

Mapping Wilderness Character in Adams County, Pennsylvania

The spatial trends in wilderness character in Adams County, Pennsylvania were examined to evaluate how influenced specific areas are impacted by human activity and development. Indicators of wilderness character were selected as natural, untrammelled, undeveloped, along with solitude and unconfined recreation by the Death Valley National Park staff in which a 0-4 ranking system was based upon to portray a range of most degraded to optimal land. This was executed through examination of factors such as abundance of biodiversity and human development within the given area before a Monte Carlo simulation was run to show sensitivity of change. It was found that overall wilderness quality is most optimal along the Michaux Forest boundary and small sections of land on the southwestern and eastern edge of Adams County. Areas that are most sensitive to a change in the weights of wilderness character factors are small sections of land throughout the middle areas of Adams County along the roads while areas of land that are least sensitive to change are mainly the areas associated with the Michaux Forest boundary along the northwestern parts of Adam’s County. It was concluded that an increase in human interaction tends to lead to land that is more degraded and misused for infrastructure purposes

The Literacy Fieldtrip: Using UbiComp to Support Children's Creative Writing

Fieldtrips, traditionally associated with science, history and geography teaching, have long been used to support children’s learning by allowing them to engage with environments first-hand. Recently, ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) has been used to enhance fieldtrips in these educational areas by augmenting environments with a range of instruments, devices and sensors. However, the sorts of interaction design that UbiComp makes possible have the potential not just to enhance the value of educational techniques in known application areas, but also to expand the application of those techniques into new areas of curriculum. We report on a UbiComp-supported fieldtrip to support creative writing, associated with the learning of literacy skills. We discuss how the fieldtrip, designed and run in the grounds of a historic English country house with Year 5 UK schoolchildren, engendered interactions which changed both the processes and products of creative writing, with benefits for both teachers and children

Recreation, tourism and nature in a changing world : proceedings of the fifth international conference on monitoring and management of visitor flows in recreational and protected areas : Wageningen, the Netherlands, May 30-June 3, 2010

Proceedings of the fifth international conference on monitoring and management of visitor flows in recreational and protected areas : Wageningen, the Netherlands, May 30-June 3, 201

Class Notes

News about Linfield alumn

A Community-Engagement-Based Design Project in Introductory Environmental Engineering

A collaborative, community-based design project was implemented in the upper-division undergraduate technical elective Introduction to Environmental Engineering at Harvey Mudd College. Students worked with multiple stakeholders in order to design a debris flow barrier for a wilderness land parcel acquired by a local conservancy group. The Rosemont Preserve is a wilderness area preserved in 2012 by the Arroyos and Foothills Conservancy. The Conservancy is working to steward the land and to produce programs for the local community. The ecological resource is co-managed by LA County Public Works. After the 2009 brushfires, the County installed concrete K-Rail barriers to protect residential areas from potential debris flows from fire-denuded hillsides. As part of the wilderness land preservation, the Conservancy is interested in the design of a more-aesthetically pleasing debris flow barrier for the Rosemont Preserve. The conservancy board of directors served as liaisons for the design project, provided background material and the project statement to the student team, as well as answered questions and provided guidance during the design process. Local residents (serving as volunteers for the Conservancy) also served as resources for student questions. LA County Public Works oversees the placement, maintenance, and removal of K-Rails. The student team characterized the wilderness site; acquired relevant GIS data; studied the physics of debris flow and examined previous debris flow barrier designs. The team produced alternative designs for the barrier and chose the best design by applying design metrics. The alternative designs and rationale for the chosen design were presented to the board of directors of the Conservancy. The design project included a significant tie to a community involved with stewarding and managing an ecological resource, and engagement of the students with that local community. Most importantly, the resource was co-managed: it involved multiple stakeholders, sharing power and collaboratively engaging in the decision-making process for the ecological resource. Co-managed projects can provide opportunities for a richer, more complex educational experience for undergraduate students, and one that is representative of how natural resources are currently being managed. This paper summarizes previous community-engagement learning, particularly in the context of undergraduate engineering education; argues that co-managed ecological resources provide good opportunities for increased student engagement with communities; describes an undergraduate engineering design project involving a co-managed resource; and presents assessment data on the educational effectiveness of the design process while working with a co-managed resource. In conclusion, the co-managed project provided richer and increased communication between the multiple stakeholders. However, some students expressed frustration with the difficulties of getting a good communication flow with particular stakeholders, and pointed out how this changed their approach to certain aspects of the design process. For future co-managed projects, it is recommended that more work be done beforehand to get all stakeholders on board in order to improve the student experience

Dartmouth Outward Bound Center and the rise of experiential education 1957-1976

Purpose: The article discusses Outward Bound’s participation in the human potential movement through its incorporation of T-group practices and the reform language of experiential education in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Design/methodology/approach: The article reports on original research conducted using materials from Dartmouth College and other Outward Bound collections from 1957-1976. It follows a case study approach to illustrate themes pertaining to Outward Bound’s creation and evolution in the United States, and the establishment of experiential education more broadly. Findings: Building on prior research (Freeman, 2011; Millikan, 2006), the present article elaborates on the conditions under which Outward Bound abandoned muscular Christianity in favor of humanistic psychology. Experiential education provided both a set of practices and a reform language that helped Outward Bound expand into the educational mainstream, which also helped to extend self-expressive pedagogies into formal and nonformal settings. Research implications: The Dartmouth Outward Bound Center’s tenure coincided with and reflected broader cultural changes, from the cold war motif of spiritual warfare, frontier masculinity, and national service to the rise of self-expression in education. Future scholars can situate specific curricular initiatives in the context of these paradigms, particularly in outdoor education. Originality/value: The article draws attention to one of the forms that the human potential movement took in education – experiential education – and the reasons for its adoption. It also reinforces emerging understandings of post-WWII American outdoor education as a product of the cold war and reflective of subsequent changes in the wider culture to a narrower focus on the self

From Endings Come Beginnings: Facilitating the Transition from Ending Student to Beginning Practitioner

This presentation was part of the session : Pedagogy: Theories, Approaches24th National Conference on the Beginning Design StudentThe receipt of a degree is momentous; it is at once the end of an academic career and the beginning of practice life. Terminal coursework thus becomes a critical component in successfully preparing students for the classroom-to-office transition. Essential to student preparedness is the ability to critically analyze, synthesize and apply myriad skills and knowledge. Critical thinking and problem solving require an understanding of the intimate relationship between various aspects of theory, research, applied design, and construction methods, materials, and documentation technologies. Equally as important is the development of student confidence and ownership. The lessons offered within a final studio should therefore integrate these elements into a comprehensive process promoting independent exploration, discovery, and application. This approach allows students to make their own connections between design skills and, in turn, transform abstract knowledge into applied understanding. Armed with a holistic comprehension of core fundamentals, emerging practitioners can effectively, efficiently and creatively address the innumerable challenges of professional practice. This paper discusses the application of these ideals into a graduate level, terminal design studio. The exploration of meaning is used to organize the studio around a variety of in-depth urban design projects. Student work is augmented with a reading and discussion seminar that highlights the need for reading, writing and verbal skills in the design process, as well as promotes the continued use of theory and research within professional practice. In total, student design explorations represent successful theory-to-practice applications related to urban landscapes at scales ranging from 1"=40'-0" to 1/8"=1'-0"