JoAnna Allen

JoAnna discovered her passion for experiential education relatively late in her teaching career through her children’s Camp Adventure rec and parks program at their elementary school.   She was already a teacher of the homebound (ill and expelled) in the Baltimore County Public Schools system from which she retired in 2007.  She attended her first AEE conference in 1986 in Moodus CN, found an amazing array of connections, the “home” for the philosophy she already lived and taught by, and became active by attending and offering workshops at AEE conferences over the next 22 years.   Three favorite workshops were Did John Dewey Say Outdoors?,  Eureka! A Yurt, and Toward a Spiritual Paradigm: Defining Experiential Education.

She sees herself as an unconventional “outlier” in both her public system and within AEE (being classroom and non-outdoor focused).  With masters from Harvard and Johns Hopkins already in hand, she decided to do a PhD in Experiential Education through Union Institute, finishing it in 1992.  She had the luxury of pursuing a passion but with no ambition to leave a unique and rewarding position at Home and Hospital School.  She taught physics, chemistry and higher math via telephone and computer (real time) for her last ten years there.  This experience and her research led to her own definition of experiential education as the process of “healing” or making whole.   The essential key was engaging the mind such that a revelation, an Aha! moment, accompanied by an emotional imprint, took place, a precious and too often rare event.

Some of the most influential experiences in her life include serving three years in the Peace Corps in Malaysia from 1965-1968 and raising three children, taking ten years off to do this.  She continues to have contact with former Malaysian students, two of whom funded a 2008 yurt build and mini-reunion with nine of her group for a Peace Corps colleague needing housing for apprentices at his medicinal herb farm in North Carolina.     

Besides travels around Southeast Asia during her PC tenure, she participated in a premier program in India in 2002 that included trekking and Outward Bound type challenges which started her on the meditation path she currently pursues.  In 2004 she traveled off tour with Wm.S. Coperthwaite and a companion for four weeks in China to research crafts and visit contacts.  The connection to Bill, yurts, and simple living has been a major influence for JoAnna and her children over the last forty years.

The hosting of AFS exchange teachers from China and Thailand over recent years has generated major interest for her to spend time teaching English in China, home of her parents.  The “healing” path has taken her to a new post-retirement passion, that of prison work.  In fall of 2008 she initiated meditation groups at the local detention center.  

JoAnna’s children live in the SF Bay area.  Her brag is that the first vehicle purchased by any of them was by her oldest at age 29.   Simple and sustainable living are also in their blood.  They too have traveled the world widely, in the spirit of JoAnna’s favorite expression:  “Where there is teaching, there is not always learning, and where there is learning, there is not always teaching.”

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Other than having the good sense in the summer of 1965 to go to camp (as a 10 year old), meeting and knowing Karl Rohnke for 30 years is one of the most significant events in my life as a experiential-adventure-educator-psychologist-psychotherapist.

I went to and worked at Camp Monroe in the pine tree, sandspur, copper head, black water infested part of the southeastern portion of North Carolina every year through my undergraduate experience ending in 1977.  I learned so many valuable things experientially – not just how to paddle and camp, but how to trust the group process - how to rearrange your entire day’s cabin plan when the weather would turn electric from the powerful thunderstorms – how to handle a group of scared kids in aluminum boats paddling through the NC swamps. 

Camp led me to a wonderful experience of an instructor’s course at the now defunct Wolfcreek Wilderness (GA) (with “Crazy Dave & Dr. Don) and to an incredible experience through my alma mater Davidson College’s summer program at Broughton Hospital in Morganton NC.  I was fortunate to rock climb each Wednesday in the summer of 1976 at Table Rock with male adolescents who were patients at western NC’s mental hospital.  I had spent time with these young men during the week – in school, recreation therapy”, and on their ward.  When they went “on belay” at Table Rock, on those two and three pitch climbs …”something happened”… the conversations, as I sat with each kid on the rock shelves overlooking western NC,  “changed” to a reality base that I had not experienced in their other milieus – and my relationship with each of these young men changed in a positive way – I did not know the term “therapeutic alliance” at the time, but I knew something was different.  I have spent my career trying to understand what “happened” when those kids went on belay.  It has been quite a journey.

I saw a book titled, “Physical Education: Adventure Curriculum” while at Wolfcreek Wilderness, ordered it and received by return mail “Cowstails and Cobras”.  Little would I know how the use of this book with high school kids would impact my career.  This well-worn book led me to a Project Adventure training in Hamilton, MA in the fall of 1978.  At the time I was working with “second chance” adolescents at The Glade Valley School in Sparta NC and together we built and explored low initiatives.  Karl came down to Glade Valley and ran a workshop and this was one of the many times I would learn so much from simply carrying his bag of tricks and having FUNN with such a master.  My journey led to The Webb School in Bell Buckle TN, where I developed an outdoor program (“Outer Limits”) and begin to understand the power of adventure + therapy. Curiosity on how to impact family systems led me to graduate school in Counseling Psychology at The University of Georgia and being blessed to be with supervisors who had no experience in adventure or wilderness, but had tremendous knowledge of and respect for experiential and metaphorically based therapy.  They challenged me to know why experiential methods were so powerful in therapy. 

Georgia College has been my place of employment since 1986.  In that time I have had the opportunity to start and end an adventure therapy based masters in psychology (94-98) program; host a “metaphorical potluck”  (1996) with my dear friends Mike Gass, Karl Rohnke, Jude Hirsch, Simon Priest, Jim Schoel, Laurie Frank, Scott Bandoroff, and Christian Itin; keynote at the first and second International Adventure Therapy Conferences put together by the multi-talented Martin Ringer; consult, since 1991, as a psychologist at Project Adventure’s Covington GA site with many wonderful (and challenging) young people; write and present with Mike Gass in multiple places around the world; serve in leadership roles in the AEE-Southesast and on the AEE board, and meet and work with my wonderfully talented wife, Jude Hirsch!  I have truly been blessed by my association with the wonderful people of AEE!

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Clifford Knapp is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. He retired in 2001 after teaching there for 21 years. He was on the faculty of Outdoor Teacher Education and taught a variety of courses in general education and outdoor/environmental education. He also has taught at Southern Illinois University for eight years in the field of outdoor education. In addition he has taught at all levels of education in public and private schools for 9 ½ years.
    
Cliff holds a B.A. degree in Junior High School Education from Paterson State College (now William Paterson University) in Wayne, New Jersey. He also holds a M. S. degree in Educational Administration and Supervision and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.
    
He has had experience in summer children’s camps as a counselor and director in New Jersey, New York, and Illinois. He co-founded and co-directed a unique camp dedicated to human relations and outdoor adventure sponsored by the Sagamore Conference Center in Raquette Lake, New York for several summers.
    
Cliff has published extensively in the field of education in journals and books. He has written more than 100 articles appearing in publications such as Science and Children, Instructor, Camping Magazine, Science Teacher, Journal of Experiential, Journal of Outdoor Education, Journal of Environmental Education, School Science and Mathematics, Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, Cooperative Learning Magazine, Taproot, Whole Terrain and Phi Delta Kappan.
    
In addition he has authored or co-authored the following books: Exploring the Power of Solo Silence and Solitude (with Thomas Smith, 2005); In Accord With Nature (1999); Just Beyond the Classroom: Community Adventures for Interdisciplinary Learning (1996); Environmental Heroes and Heroines: An Instructional Unit in Earth Values and Ethics (1993); Lasting Lessons: A Teacher’s Guide to Reflecting on Experience (1992) (translated into Chinese in 2003); Creating Humane Climates Outdoors (1988); Using the Outdoors to Teach Social Studies: Grades 3-10 (co-authored, 1986); Humanizing Environmental Education (with Joel Goodman, 1981); Bulletin Boards for Environmental Studies (with Stuart S. Seim,1973); Outdoor Activities for Environmental Studies (1971); and Exploring and Understanding Our Changing Earth (with Harold Hungerford,1968).
    
Cliff holds professional memberships in The Association for Experiential Education, The North American Association for Environmental Education, The American Nature Study Society, & The Environmental Education Association of Illinois.
    
He enjoys reading, writing, walking, nature crafts and working with both children and adults. He has special interests in environmental ethics, human relations skills, values education, reflecting on experience, indigenous cultures, collecting insightful quotations, and living history. He has successfully combined his work and play in the outdoors during his professional career and in retirement, as well as in his personal life.

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Tom Lindblade has been a Counselor/Therapist and Experiential Educator for over forty years. He began his experiential career working in summer camps while in college in the early Sixties.  Then he completed a Master's degree in Counseling and a post graduate certificate in Gestalt Therapy.  Throughout his career he has been able to combine his skills as a therapist, career counselor and experiential educator.  

For twenty five years Tom taught in and coordinated  the Field and Experiential learning Program at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.  The program is still the only comprehensive experiential undergraduate credit granting program in the US.  FEL offers over two hundred courses per year in over forty academic disciplines, including about twenty international courses per year. As Coordinator, Tom facilitated the development and marketing of hundreds of interdisciplinary and experiential courses and since retirement in 2000, continues to teach at COD in an adjunct capacity.  He developed and led field studies which have taken students to fifty countries and many wilderness areas of North America. Tom has visited Southern and Eastern Africa eight times, and has led students on expeditions to Europe, Asia, North, Central, and South America.

Since retirement in 2000, Tom has become active as a volunteer, and serves on the Board of the Association for Experiential Education, is President and Safety Chair of the Illinois Paddling Council and Training Director of Prairie State Canoeists.

Tom is an Instructor/Trainer for the American Canoe Association and continues to train Canoe Instructors for various organizations.  He has a life long love for waters and for paddling.  He spends as much time as  possible in one of his five boats, and in recent years has become intrigued with the combination of travel, paddling, and digital video, with more than 100 videos posted on You Tube which can be accessed through his website at http://www.hauntedbywaters.com

Tom has been married to Peg for twenty seven years.  His son Cam is an avid paddler and has his own painting and contracting business in Kalamazoo MI where he lives with his two daughters.  Tom's Daughter Kim is an Epidemiologist and Director of Emerging  Infectious Diseases  for Central America  Kim lives in Guatemala with her husband, son, and daughter.

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My love of the wilderness was kindled in the summer of the year I turned 10 years old (1941), when my uncle took me on a 42-day canoe trip in the Boundary Waters.  That was when I first focused on the lessons of what I have called “wilderness beyond.”  After time spent in the Marines, including 14 months in the Korean War, I returned to pursue studies at the University of Wisconsin.  I was fortunate to do graduate work with Carl Rogers, and it was then that I focused on what I have called “wilderness within.”  In the late 1950s, I studied with and about Native American traditions, and this led me to learn about the importance of circles and about the connectedness of all things. 

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, I worked as a professional clinical psychologist, teaching university, directing community mental health centers, and consulting to special education programs.  Through those years, I drifted away from the American Psychological Association (APA), and became more involved with the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP).  My interest was in facilitating personal growth, and every summer I guided groups on outdoor adventure trips to the Boundary Waters. I began to refer to these trips as “personal growth journey to the wilderness.”  In the late 1970s I first facilitated workshops at conferences of the Association for Experiential Education (AEE), and that is where I have hung my professional hat ever since.  I have attended and presented at over 40 AEE conferences.

Along the way, my high school sweetheart wife and I had six children, ten grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.  We were partners in life’s journey for 60 years before she “moved on” in the summer of 2008.  From 1980-2000, we homesteaded in Southwestern Wisconsin, where I built our earth-bermed home and a wonderful treehouse that served as headquarters for my “Raccoon Institute.”  Of course, those years were also filled with the joy of my children and grandchildren sharing the beauty, mystery, and peace of that secluded 35-acres. 

During those years I published some books, beginning with a collection of workshop papers titled Wilderness Beyond.....Wilderness Within.... in 1980.  In 1992, I worked with friends and colleagues to author The Theory and Practice of Challenge Education, and in 1998, I wrote The Challenge of Native American Traditions.   Since the turn of the century, I have co-authored four more books: The Book on Raccoon Circles, Exploring the Power of Solo, Silence and Solitude, Outdoor Experiential Leadership, and Beyond Dewey and Hahn: Foundations for Experiential Education. 

One of the highlights of the past decade has been seeing the wonderful wisdom of circles of connection spread throughout the world.  Experiential educators and Play-for-Peace workers everywhere have found that connecting people to each other and to the earth is a start toward overcoming the crisis of nature and the crisis of human nature that faces us all.

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Bert Horwood

I was raised in the great valley of the Ottawa River in Canada where outdoor pursuits alone and in company were everyday events. I absorbed teaching arts with my mother's milk and leadership skills from my father's example. Queen's University in Kingston and the Universlty of Toronto turned me loose on an unsuspecting public as a secondary Science teacher. Later came graduate work, employment in supervision and curriculum development and ultimately a professorship in Education at Queen's.

There I met Bob Pieh, a man who had the distinction of establishing two Outward Bound Schools, and who recognized in me a fellow experiential educator (although at the time I had no idea that there was such a way of characterizing my particular set of teaching methods). When the time was ripe, Bob encouraged me to shift disciplines from Science Education to Outdoor and Experiential Education. It was in that field where I did the bulk of my teaching, research and writing. Some of that writing was published by AEE in books now long forgotten.

At heart I was an experiential teacher, whether canoe tripping with high school ruffians, presenting workshops to teachers, provoking my grandchildren into exploring this bug or that flower, or advancing knowledge by disciplined inquiry into what people learn from their experiences. This work was graciously recognized in 1992 by AEE giving me the then Kurt Hahn Award and subsequently electing me to serve on the Board and Executive.

Now, 15 plus years into my retirement from paid work, I pay more attention to spiritual and religious experience and what sense we can make of them. I do this through the discipline of Quaker faith and practice and their applications to all aspects of life. I have come to value stillness, quiet and the virtues of solitude more than ever. My active engagement with the AEE community paused when I refused to travel in the USA due to the oppressive policies of the United States government with respect to my fellow citizens wrongly captured and tortured. Those policies may change with the regime change of 2009 and if it happens it will be a fine thing indeed.

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James Kieslmeier

Jim’s work is rooted in his time as a youth worker in Harlem and then as a U.S. Army Infantry platoon leader and community relations officer in Korea during the 1960s, where he saw firsthand that the potential for life and learning were not equal for all. With the Army, he developed a program placing GIs as tutors in Korean schools, an approach that not only had educational benefits but also improved relationships between GIs and the communities in which they were stationed. This experience would feed his ongoing passion for combining community service and education.

A former middle and high school teacher and Outward Bound instructor, Jim has been engaged in the design and implementation of comprehensive state and federal youth service and service-learning models since 1984. He has advised three Minnesota governors, helped U.S. Senator Dave Durenberger write the 1990 National Community Service Act, advised the Clinton Administration's transition team on AmeriCorps, and testified before the Minnesota House and Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Jim also helped initiate the nonprofit African Reconciliation and Development Corps International, and led its first project in Somalia during the civil war in 1993.

Jim is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota, where he founded the Center for Experiential Education and Service-Learning. He holds a doctorate in education from the University of Colorado, a master’s in international relations from American University in Washington, D.C., and a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College. Jim is married to Rev. Deborah Eng Kielsmeier and is the father of three daughters. Jim was a founding leader of AEE and co-editor with Dick Kraft of the first edition of Experiential Education and the Schools. He has inspired innumerable experiential educators in the practice of service learning for the development of youth.

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Jed retired in 2006 following ten years as President of Sterling College in Vermont. He has been a practitioner and consultant in education and outdoor pursuits, including over 60 safety and quality reviews and accident investigations. He co-authored the Association for Experiential Education's Accreditation Standards for Adventure Programs, has had several articles published, and produced three educational videos on experiential and adventure topics. From 1987 through 1992, he was Executive Director of the United States Biathlon Association. (He was on the U.S. Biathlon Team in the 1960’s while serving in the U.S. Army.) He was a faculty member at the University of New Hampshire from 1973 to 1982 - where he designed and directed an experiential teacher education graduate program called "Live, Learn, and Teach." He has also worked as an instructor, program director, and school director for several U.S. Outward Bound schools and as a mountain guide. He has been Chair of the Safety Advisory Committee and the editor of the annual report Accidents in North American Mountaineering since 1974.

He was a member of the Board of the American Alpine Club from 1974 to 1998, serving as President from 1992-94 and as Secretary from 1994-98. He was elected to Honorary Membership in 2007.

Jed served on the Association for Experiential Education board from 1978-84, was Vice president from 1980-82, convened the 1979 AEE Annual Conference in NH, and was on the Program Accreditation Services board from 1992-2002. He was re-elected in 2007.

He has also served on the boards of the National Outdoor Leadership School and the Student Conservation Association, where his primary involvement was in risk management. Jed was one of the founders and still serves on the board of the Wilderness Risk Managers Committee. He is currently a member of the Dartmouth Outdoor Programs Safety Committee and serves on the Board of Directors for the Exum School of American Mountaineering (WY) and Heartbeet Lifesharing (VT).

His avocations include skiing and climbing, which he has done for over 50 years. His climbing expeditions have taken him to the top of North America twice and to mountain ranges far and wide. His education includes a B.A. and M.Ed. from the University of New Hampshire, and graduate work in anthropology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Jed’s wife Perry served as the Director of Development during his tenure at Sterling College. They have two married daughters, Heather and Willow, two grandsons, and two granddaughters.

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Karen Warren

Karen Warren Karen’s involvement with AEE and the Hampshire College Outdoors Program began about the same time. In 1983, she packed her first Experiential Education class into a van and drove 22 hours to Lake Geneva, WI to attend the AEE international conference—for the weekend! She has been involving Hampshire College students in adventurous learning experiences ever since. She has learned much from students over the years.

Karen has been an outdoor adventure educator and trip leader since 1974, working in programs for summer adventure camps, adjudicated youth, people with disabilities, environmental education, Outward Bound and alternative education in the public schools. She has taught in the Outdoors Program/Recreational Athletics department at Hampshire College, Amherst, MA for over 25 years. Her courses have focused on experiential education theory and practice, outdoor leadership, social justice issues in the outdoors, and wilderness studies as well as various outdoor skills. Karen has led over a thousand outdoor trips such as sea kayaking in Belize, the Bahamas, and New Zealand; paddling the Rio Grande and the Everglades; winter camping in Yellowstone; teaching natural history of the Hawaiian Islands, telemark skiing in Quebec; and canyoneering in Utah. Her personal and family trips have lead her through all 50 states to the summit of Kilimanjaro but her favorite outdoor place just might be in her own backyard.

Karen holds degrees from a number of schools that have changed their name since she attended. She has a B.S. in Biology Education from Central Michigan University; an M.S. in Experiential Education from Minnesota University Mankato and a PhD in Experiential Education and Social Justice from the Union Institute and University. She has served on the academic committees of students studying at Prescott, Lesley, and Vermont Colleges as well as the Audubon Expedition Institute.

A frequent contributor to many experiential and outdoor publications, Karen is the editor of Women’s Voices in Experiential Education and a co-editor of The Theory of Experiential Education and Theory and Practice of Experiential Education. Karen writes about topics that incite her critical thinking about education and its place in our world. Social justice education, feminist theory, environmental justice, and student-directed learning environments are a few of those topics. She is committed to making this work accessible to a wide variety of practitioners, encouraging new authors and making a difference in how we think about and practice experiential education.

Karen has been involved for many years in AEE. She has served on the Board of Directors, Professional Group, Publications and Journal Advisory Committees. Karen was instrumental in the early years of the formation of the Women’s Professional Group, a place she still calls home in AEE. From serving on the task force that created the current AEE definition of experiential education to conference planning committees to regularly presenting and speaking at AEE conferences, Karen has found a place in AEE to grow through service. She has received the AEE’s 1998 Michael Stratton Practitioner of the Year Award and the 2006 Experiential Teacher of the Year Award as well as the Blair and Carol Brown utstanding Staff Member Award at Hampshire College.

Karen’s home life grounds her professional work. She lives with her wonderfully supportive partner Sue Tippett and amazing daughters Yeye and Xin Xin in the hills of Pelham, MA where moose, fox, deer, bear, and coyotes play in her backyard.

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Betsey Upchurch


I came to experiential education as a complete accident.  I was 32 years old, coaching a swim team and one of my swimmers asked me to go with her Explorer Scout troop on an overnight hike up Mr. LeConte in western North Carolina.  We were to take the nine mile trail and spent the night at the top.  I was flattered and so immediately said “yes”.  Only several weeks later did I get nervous about the possibility that I couldn’t make it all the way up.  The weekend dawned clear and cold.  We set off and the trail got harder and I got more tired.  About half way up, we encountered lots of snow that had melted and crusted over.  My little Rebok tennis shoes were no match for the terrain or the cold.  Yet, I was so amazed at the mountain, the challenge, the clean air and wide vistas that I hardly noticed how hard it was.  When I finally reached the top, I had found muscles and joints in pain that I didn’t know were there.  I had also found a new me, a new pastime, and a new calling.  I spent every moment possible in the mountains backpacking for the next year.  At the end of the year, I realized I had changed completely and mostly for the better.  I went looking for places to share the outdoors that I loved.

That pursuit led me to begin a new career at the Charlotte Outdoor Adventure Center, where they taught me how to rock climb, work a ropes course and run programs for youth at risk.  They also made the mistake of sending me to Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) to learn to canoe.  It wasn’t long before that became a new passion.  When the Charlotte Center began to take corporate clients on the ropes course, I went looking for a new adventure.  I still had not yet found a reason to help the “stuffed shirts”.

I “ran away” and became a raft guide for NOC.  By the end of the first summer, it was decided that I would oversee building a new ropes course and run the action learning program.  While there, I learned from the very best how to run an adventure business and how to engage and empower employees.  The corporate training part of the program grew rapidly and I was fortunate to be able to learn from great practitioners in organization development and experiential learning.  The collaborative atmosphere contributed to the experience of clients as well as my learning.  It was there that I first become involved in the AEE.  I was sent as a surrogate for Bunny Johns to be on a panel discussion at the conference.  There I met others involved in EBTD and worked to create the first EBTD pre-conference.  It quickly became a tradition of fun, revelry, partying, and – oh – learning.  

After 8 years at NOC it was time to move on. An offer to teach wilderness EMT and First Responder with SOLO was accepted and off to NH I went.  I quickly found that while the people were great and the work worthwhile, I really missed working with corporate groups.

I began to focus my efforts around helping leaders create more compassionate workplaces where people were valued, efforts were profitably directed, and ethics were lived on a daily basis.  That has been my work since 1987 but more focused since 1995.  As Director at Duke Leadership Training Associates, I was able to bring academics and real world business together to help create even more powerful and focused work.

In 2002, I joined my current business partner, Jim Morris, formerly of Pecos River and one world learning, in Bristlecone Learning, LLC.  Our work is to help companies and their leaders around culture change, trait-based leadership development, and being profitable while being sustainable.   I am currently working on using virtual 3D, like Second Life and Open Sim, to do high impact experiential training and development in virtual reality.  


None of us get where we are by ourselves.  Colleagues and mentors from AEE have been with me through the last 25 years of accomplishments, failures, laughter, tears, joy, tragedy, and solid impact on the people we work with.

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McLellan Hall

McClellan Hall is the founder and Executive Director of the National Indian Youth Leadership Project. Mac has nearly 35 years experience in youth development, as a teacher, principal of two tribal schools and has been the driving force behind NIYLP for over 25 years. Mac is of Cherokee ancestry, with roots in both Oklahoma and North Carolina. His wife, Pauline is a member of the Navajo (Dine) Nation and they have three children and four grandchildren. He is a graduate of the Native American Teacher Education Program at the University of Washington and later completed his Masters at Arizona State University. He is a past member of the AEE Board (1987-90). Mac has written extensively on youth development, leadership, service-learning and peacemaking. Mac is the developer of the Project Venture program. He co-authored a book entitled Wisdom Teachings: Lessons Learned from Gatherings of Elders, published in 2005. His articles have been published in Kappan, Journal of Experiential Education, Journal of Navajo Studies, New Designs for Youth and Reclaiming Youth. Mac is the recipient of the Kurt Hahn Award, named for the founder of Outward Bound, the Spirit of Crazy Horse Award, the E-Town Achievement Award from National Public Radio and NIYLP’s Project Venture has been recognized with the Exemplary, Effective, Promising and Model Program Awards. In 2007, Mac was recognized with the Trailblazer Award, for his work in building the Service Learning movement in the United States. In 2008, he was recognized by the National Youth Leadership Council and the National Service Learning Conference with one of the Founder’s Awards. Mac is a member of the Expert Panel on Prevention for the newly established Native American Center for Excellence.

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Arlene Ustin

In 1966, during the Civil Rights Movement, Arlene began her career in education as a teacher of Fine Arts in a junior high school in The South Bronx, New York City. Six years later she joined the North Carolina Outward Bound School as the first woman to hold a permanent program position in the U.S. Outward Bound Movement. As Program Specialist and Course Director she spearheaded the transition from serving male adolescents emphasizing physical skills and group cohesion to offering coeducational courses emphasizing self-actualization, active compassion, and wilderness-living competencies. She also compiled the first book of inspirational readings, the first instructor’s manual that addressed social dynamics as well as technical skills, and revised the trail foods program based on the nutritional information of the day. Six years later she joined the Kurt Hahn-inspired Athenian School as Director of the Athenian Wilderness Experience (AWE), a graduation requirement. During her twenty-eight year tenure, Arlene also developed the community service program into a graduation requirement, designed individualized student internships and non-competitive physical educational courses, and facilitated student and faculty national and international exchanges. She is currently active with Florida educators and political figures committed to implementing quality Service-Learning in all of its public schools. Whether in an inner city, the wilderness, or a suburban landscape, recognizing and honoring diversity in its myriad complexities, seeking the development of the unique potential in each of her students, encouraging the pursuit of excellence in worthy endeavors, and responding to issues of social justice are the touchstones in her work.

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Marianne Scippa

Marianne has been working in the field of professional and personal development as a facilitator, trainer, and coach with a wide range of federal/state government agencies and private sector corporations for over 25 years. Her company, Scippa & Associates, Inc, an organizational development firm based in Northern Virginia, specializes in developing high performing individuals and groups with healthier, more productive work lifestyles. Her individually tailored designs apply to team building, leadership development, managing change, strategic planning, problem solving and conflict management, Facilitator/Trainer development, individual and team coaching and work-place ergonomics. A believer in the value of personal experience for integrated change, she is skilled in the development of adventure-based and action learning programs.

Marianne holds a Masters of Science in Psychology from the University of Bridgeport and a Masters of Human Service Administration from the Organization and Management Department of the Antioch University Graduate School. She has been active with the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and the Association for Experiential Education (AEE). She served as President of the AEE Board of Directors for four years, and in 1999 was the Kurt Hahn recipient giving the keynote address at the International conference. She continues to contribute to AEE through the CAC (Conference Advisory Committee), the OFA group (you figure it out) and by encouraging the development of partnerships with advanced practitioners and newcomers to the field. For more information you can check out her website, still under construction: www.scippaassociates.com

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Sam Tower, retired, Chair of the Northwest Region

Sam Tower may be officially retired, but he is still very much engaged in experiential education.

He and his wife, Sarah, volunteered for Play for Peace and lived in India for a year. Recently, they started an exchange adventure program with India. Currently a participant from India is here working for the Waskowitz Outdoor School for six months and then will be taking the program back to India. The second part will provide teachers with an opportunity to travel to India to work 6 months.

Sam is also currently working with a group of people to carve a 30 foot long Salish hunting canoe that they plan to take on tribal journey in July in Puget Sound. It is just about finished. He and his team used a 500 year old cedar log and it has been a 4 year project.

Sam is also involved with a 4-H club that builds and sails boats. The club’s fleet includes a replica of Peter Puget’s long boat, with eight oars and 2 masts rigged in 1790s style, a four oared dory, and an Umiak, which is an Inuit skin boat.

Finally, Sam tries to spend a third of his time wood carving. He is currently carving something for NW regional conference auction right now.

Background

Sam found out about AEE in 1985 when the International Conference was in Port Townsend, WA. At the time he was working for 4-H and he was invited to a ropes course (about which he didn’t have a clue). The leaders would not permit onlookers so he was required to participate. “It scared me and all I wanted was to get down off the platform.” From the experience, he realized it had something to teach him and he ended up training to be a facilitator.

He had been using adventure and experience all along and was successful with it. For example, when he was working for San Francisco Parks & Recreation in 1968 he coached a basketball league. He was the first “long hair” hired. One athlete couldn’t pass math (he couldn’t add a column of 3 digit numbers) so he was not allowed to play on the Police Athletic League team. Sam saw him shooting dice and decided to play with him. Sam asked him for sums and was consistently given the correct answer. So he started putting numbers on paper with dots, and finally he was able to take the dots away, and the student added columns correctly. They won the league that year.

Sam was born in Newton, Massachusetts and earned a degree in Recreation from Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Sam was a camp counselor by the time he was 15 years old. His mother was a summer camp director.

Sam worked with the San Francisco Parks & Recreation department for many years and then went to work for 4H. Sam was the first manager of the 4H Challenge Program for the state of Washington. Started with the existing ropes course, and he managed that one, and eventually spearheaded the state program.

In between the SF parks and 4-H, Sam had a professional puppet theatre for 12 years.

Sam is most proud of the fact that he successfully raised eight foster kids including several years in which he was the home parent.

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Sandy Kohn
I mark my entry into experiential education with a course I took in college called “Nursery School as a Human Relations Laboratory.” For the first time, I was invited to share my emotions in a college class. Specifically I was asked how I felt about 4 year old Scottie throwing things at me every morning. It was a revelation that an institution of higher learning acknowledged that there was more to learn than just facts and concepts.

By the time I enrolled in this class, I had already decided that I was not ready for college. I found most of my classes irrelevant to the issues I was grappling over. I was emotionally immature and unfocused. I felt like I was wasting my time and my parent’s money being in school. So I dropped out (in 1970) and hitch hiked across the country looking for answers to the question: “What should I do with my life?” On the road, I read a short essay by Gary Snyder called “Four Changes”. It was a touchstone for me. With that essay as a guide, I actively sought out intentional communities, alternative schools and explored the counter culture.

Two years later (and numerous odd jobs) I returned to Cabrillo Community College (Aptos, CA) to earn an Associate’s Degree in Early Childhood Education. There I learned about providing lessons for the whole person – including cognitive development, fine and gross motor skills, social skills, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, music, art, … life. At the same time I was working on this degree, I was a student and then an instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School. This also was education for the whole person. I saw lots of parallels in outdoor and early childhood education.

In 1974, I landed at the Boulder Valley Institute, a unique, experience-based interim year program where I ran the mountaineering component (thanks to what I learned at NOLS). While there, I enrolled in a University Without Walls Program where I designed my own degree program in Humanistic Education with an Emphasis in Outdoor Education. My focus was on the education of the head, the hand, and the heart. I was greatly influenced by the writings of Carl Rogers and his work reinforced my commitment to student centered learning and the importance of personal choice in, and personal responsibility for one’s own learning.

I attended my first AEE conference in 1976 in Kingston, Ontario, after which I visited a dozen or so experiential education programs in New England. My path led me to a 6 month stint with Project GIG of Encounter Four in Pennsylvania (an outdoor program for adjudicated youth), 2 years at the Farm and Wilderness Foundation (which runs 6 Quaker summer camps and year round programs), two years as a day care worker, and 4 summers at the Colorado Outward Bound School. I learned an incredible amount from each of these experiences.

Based in Vermont for 5 of these years, I decided to return to school and earn an M.Ed. in Student Personnel Services in Higher Education from the University of Vermont. My first job out of grad school was with the Venture Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and I have been here ever since - becoming the director in 1987. My position is half time in Student Affairs managing Venture (a comprehensive outdoor adventure program) and half time in Academic Affairs teaching activity courses through the Kinesiology Department. The Venture program has grown and flourished in many ways over the years and I have grown along with it. It has been a blessing to be here working with great staff and lots of students who we turned on to experiential learning. Venture has been accredited by AEE since 1995 (we were the 6th program to have received accreditation status), and I have been active with accreditation serving as a reviewer and/or lead reviewer for a half dozen programs.

In 2007 I received a Lifetime Service Award from the Southeast Region of AEE. The experiential education community has been transformative and supportive in my life, and I have received many blessing from my long involvement with AEE.

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Bob Henderson, McMaster University, Dept. of Kinesiology

Bob grew up in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His parents sent him to summer camps and he never looked back. He remembers 35-day canoe trips in the Canadian Shield. Those trips filled him with imagination and a desire to learn as many “stories of the landscape” as he could - in the form of history, anthropology, archeology and literature. This “visceral, sensory learning” he received from outdoor adventures led to his curiosity and eventually to his career.

Bob Henderson has taught courses in outdoor education and environmental inquiry at McMaster University for the last 27 years in the Arts and Sciences Program and the Department of Kinesiology. Bob earned a degree in Physical Education with minor Canadian Studies at McMaster University. He earned a Masters in Philosophy and a Ph. D. in Outdoor Education, both at University of Alberta.

Bob Henderson is most proud of the work his students have done. He feels a great sense of accomplishment for having taught so many teachers in Canada over the years and is pleased that so many of them have embraced the idea that one does not have to be conventional to do award winning work.

“Outdoor education is a traditional pedagogy,” is a common theme in Bob’s teaching, “We have been sitting around campfires telling stories for thousands of years.”

One of Bob’s greatest contributions to experiential may be his “modest body of writing.” He has published two very well-received philosophical and conceptual works; Heritage Travel in Canada; and Nature First:  Outdoor Life the Friluftsliv Way , the second co-edited with Nils Vikander.

As an experiential education practitioner, Bob’s life quest is to explain the outdoor travel experience so that people may articulate more precisely its benefits and meaning. He is very interested in cultural studies in outdoor education and how they interplay with the culture we live in.

Bob was awarded the honor of giving the Kurt Hahn Address at the 36th Annual International Conference in 2008 and he was awarded the Michael Stratton Practitioner’s Award in 2006.

Bob has three children, two of which are involved in the outdoors and one that prefers to play basketball. His of his kids are now editing his papers.

Bob is also an active guitar player and a lover of the craft of songwriting as a means of expression. He will sing a song when introducing an academic book because the essence of the lesson may be found in popular culture as presented in a song.

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W. Philo Elmer

Philo Elmer has been an experiential educator and leader in many venues;  the wilderness, ecological studies, service learning, farming,  environmental protection, challenge courses, teacher training and organizational development. He has spent his forty-year career helping individuals reach their potential, ranging from senior executives to at-risk youth, by facilitating countless groups in teambuilding, improving communication skills and developing leadership. He has worked also with all manner of organizations in visioning, strategic planning, capacity building and staff and volunteer leadership development. He ran his own company, Cradlerock, for many years using the Outward Bound model in many nontraditional settings across North America. He is a true believer in the potential of each individual and in personal and organizational growth fostered by direct experiences. He holds a master’s degree in teaching and environmental studies and has worked in many settings with people who have been challenged by traditional learning approaches.

His company was one of the founding members of the Association for Challenge Course Technology. He is a former AEE board member and was involved in all aspects of the development of the AEE MidAtlantic region. He has been connected for years with Princeton University’s Outdoor Action program. A small sampling of the organizations that he has been priviledged to serve include: AT&T, Bristol Myers, Morgan Stanley, The Fresh Air Fund, NYC Police, Boy’s and Girl’s Clubs, Big Brothers, City of Trenton, N. Y. Cities in Schools, Aspira, Washington International School, Princeton Blairstown Center, Milton Hershey School, Christodora Foundation, Leadership Philadelphia and New Jersey, Vision Quest, Outward Bound, Princeton University Community Service, Princeton in Asia and YMCA Camps. He has spent consierable time in operational and management roles such as facility oversight, food service, land conservation, organic farming, green construction, renewable energy, financial management, human resources and risk management and been a residential site manager and program director, executive director and board leader.
 
Philo loves empowering and supporting others, thinking about new opportunities, making things happen, being an entreprenure, being of service, working in community, caring for the earth and -  playing, singing and dancing. He believes that 21st century needs to be about collaboration, re-generation, adaptability and holistic thinking. He would love to see AEE and the OFA’s find new ways of moving the vision of the power of experiential learning. His core credo is “the land remembers”.
He would love to help any younger folks follow their bliss and live their dreams!