L&C Outdoor Professional Development Program

This site hosts teaching and learning opportunities offered by the Lewis & Clark College Outdoor Pursuits Living-Learning Community, which coordinates with the Lewis & Clark College Outdoors professional development opportunities. It is not, however, owned, operated, or managed in any way by Lewis & Clark College or College Outdoors.

Feel free to browse our site for more information. You’ll be able to find collections of articles, references to books, videos of sessions we teach, schedules, and more.

There are some basic principles to how we are running this that are worth knowing. Check them out here:

 

We want to respect your time. Life as an LC student is busy. If a session is schedule for an hour, we will cut it off at an hour and let people leave. You’ll know what you are getting into, time-wise, before every session.

We want you to teach. You can set up a session to teach on our calendar. If only 2-3 people show up, that is fine. We’ll send out weekly blurbs letting people know what to expect that week, and you can plan accordingly. There is no limit on sessions, even if that means some of what we do is one-on-one.

We can teach you to teach. Our first two sessions (this upcoming week, Tuesday and Wednesday at 8pm) will be the same: teaching basic teaching skills. We will also help coach you in ways to make your session the best it can be, and provide feedback at the end.

Expect feedback. A big part of this is gaining self-awareness of where you excel and where you need more practice. Every session will include feedback, not only on how you did, but on how the teaching was, what worked, and what didn’t.

It is online too! We are building a website where we can put videos of sessions that you might miss, collect articles and readings, or more – don’t worry about falling behind, because we can help things fit your schedule.

Your commitment is your call. If you want to show up for a few skill-shares, that is fine. If you want a full-on, personalized professional development plan and support for getting jobs in outdoor industries, you can do that too. Just contact us and let us know what you want.

If you want to work for College Outdoors, attending these sessions is a great way to pick up skills and gain training. College Outdoorswill know who is attending these sessions and showing a dedication to getting better at leadership. Even if you don’t get trips, you can come here and stay on track to be a Trip Leader down the line.