Outdoor leadership conference brings universities together
Students, staff and faculty from four universities take a break before getting in the water for a rafting trip down the Lowe river through historic Keystone Canyon as part of an outdoor leadership conference.
Faculty and staff from four universities in Alaska collaborated to bring together the Alaska Developing Outdoor Leaders Conference for their students.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks worked in partnership with University of Alaska Southeast, Prince William Sound College and Alaska Pacific University to provide the weekend leadership conference on the PWSC campus. The University of Alaska Anchorage was part of the planning and support, but was unable to bring to students.
Student presentations ranged from Leave No Trace discussions, outdoor photography lessons, “Yes Train” and planning techniques. Professional staff spoke about lessons learned from their careers and group development theory.
No outdoor leadership conference is complete without some adventures and stretching of the comfort zone. On Saturday afternoon students could explore Valdez on Fat bikes, go for a Leave No Trace training hike or raft the Lowe river through historic Keystone Canyon.
An outdoor leadership conference, made possible by a grant from the Faculty Initiative Fund, consisting of students, staff and faculty from four universities head out for a rafting trip down the Lowe river.
Each program offered opportunities to look at risk management and human impact on our environment.
Despite it raining most of the weekend, PWSC was an excellent host. Meals were prepared by the Outdoor Studies students and PWSC hosted a trivia night and a movie night, which provided great opportunity for networking across schools.
"It was refreshing to see the different campuses and colleges within UA work in tandem with Alaska Pacific University in order to benefit student development," said Mark Oldmixon, the director of Nanook Recreation. "The professional staff have great hopes of making this an annual event hosted at different campuses."
This program was made possible by a $25,000 grant from the Faculty Initiative Fund, which approved a proposal focused on supporting the growth of the fall 2022 ADOLC. The goals were to alleviate cost related barriers to expand outdoor opportunities for students to attend the fall conference, increase the profile of the conference to advance the growth of the outdoor recreation economy in Alaska, and create a fiscally sustainable high-impact platform for Alaska students and outdoor professionals to learn outdoor recreation knowledge from each other.
The UA Faculty Alliance recently announced calls for proposals for the AY23 Faculty Initiative Fund. Proposals are due by Nov. 7, 2022.