Have you considered studying abroad? Are you looking to enhance your leadership abilities? Have you fantasized of embarking on a wild outdoor adventure, but you lack the necessary skills and equipment?
Well, open your eyes! All three of those life-changing opportunities are packed within one Adventure Leadership Course, offered by the Campus Recreation Services’ Maryland Adventure Program.
For this past winter and the last three summers, the Maryland Adventure Program (MAP), formerly known as the Outdoor Recreation Center, has offered trips to Costa Rica and Panama, Norway, Scotland and Fiji. Each trip is a two-week adventure where anywhere from eight to 16 students and incoming freshmen will not only submerge themselves in another culture and completely unfamiliar territory, but will also have a chance to backpack, kayak, snorkel and interact with the local communities.
Although the activities and interactions are tailored to each trip, every expedition focuses on leadership and adventure education. MAP Director and instructor Amanda Even said, “We take the Social Change Model of Leadership and put it into the adventure setting.”
MAP also offers shorter weekend trips for more local adventures throughout the semester, but sophomore bioengineering major Becky Selle said, “All of the trips in MAP are meant to allow students to challenge themselves away from what they’re used to, but these bigger trips are doing that to much more extent.”
Selle is a trip leader for MAP and will be the teaching assistant and co-leader for the trip to Costa Rica and Panama in January. She looks forward to acting as a “removed leader” this January because—unlike the weekend trips—she can let the students function more independently, “which will allow them to get more out of the trip by acting on their own and displaying their developed leadership abilities.”
“[The students] aren’t always signing up for the leadership experience,” said Even. “But they end up experiencing a lot of growth in the leadership aspect, so they get more for what they sign up for.” She explained that all skills the participants learn in the adventure setting are transferable to everyday life, such as communication.
Any student is eligible to sign up for one of these trips. Ryan Hall, a junior physics major and assistant leader for this winter’s trip to Fiji, stressed that “Anything that is MAP related does not require any experience.”
However, Even suggested that students signing up should be in decent physical shape and willing to accept a challenge, considering the fact that those going to Costa Rica and Panama will be hiking around 11 miles.
“Some people definitely struggle,” said Even. “But on these longer emersion programs, the students are sort of stuck figuring out how to handle their physical and emotional struggles, and they learn to grow from it instead of coming back with a sour taste in their mouth.”
But it’s more than just a physical challenge. Selle, Hall and Even all agree that these trips will teach students to expand their comfort zone and challenge themselves. “It’s a chance to get off of campus and, because of the setting they’re in—something they’re not used to—really learn something more about themselves, who they are and who they want to be,” said Even.
Hall said that the trips “are supposed to invoke different ways of relating to different people and cultures while [the students] try to put themselves in a new leadership role.”
Want a chance be in Selle or Hall’s shoes? Interested in becoming a MAP trip leader? There’s a course for that.
Even teaches EDCP318T: Foundations & Applications of Adventure Leadership Instruction, which is the required course for students who plan to apply to a MAP trip leader position. The class meets once a week and goes on four weekend field sessions each semester.
Senior environmental engineering major Jake Steinberg took the course as a sophomore and has been leading trips since. Although the course has changed a bit over the years, Steinberg remembers using The Backpacker’s Field Manual as the textbook, occasionally meeting at the climbing wall behind the Eppley Recreation Center, but writing a few papers and taking a final just like any normal class.
In the classroom, the course teaches technical and leadership skills; but in the field, the course teaches students not just what to do, but how to figure out what to do.
For example, Steinberg’s favorite memory of the course is when the class was hiking Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park, where the students were expected to reach the summit and watch the sunrise. After dinner the evening before, Steinberg said, “The leaders left and said, ‘We’ll see you at the top,’ so we had to deal with it ourselves, figure it out and get to the top by a certain time.”
For those students considering a MAP trip leading position, Steinberg suggests they should be comfortable teaching, enjoy recreating in the outdoors and come in with an open mind. “Don’t look at your position as a job, look at it as a lifestyle,” he said. “It’s your obligation to practice what you preach.”
For more information, visit: http://www.crs.umd.edu/cms/Mar…