Community Learning is central to the general mission of the Castle Rock Institute. We sponsor a semester-long study program for college students that combines a range of adventure activities and 300-level courses in the Humanities. This is a unique outdoor education program.

The Castle Rock Institute is an off-campus research center for the Humanities and Outdoor Adventure affiliated with Brevard College (a liberal arts college in western North Carolina). Each semester it seeks applications from college students and scholars from the United States and abroad to live, study and experience the outdoors together. Housed in a lodge set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, the Institute aims to enliven the study of the Humanities both through focused interdisciplinary classwork, and through organized group adventure activities. The Castle Rock Institute is dedicated to investigating links between scholarship in the Humanities and the practical dimensions of human life in the natural and social world.

Visiting students enroll in four courses taught at Castle Rock by Institute Senior Fellows. Each course meets regularly throughout the semester and awards four hours of college credit. Students also spend several full and half days per week participating in small group activities like rock climbing, backpacking, and paddling. The Institute strives to balance and integrate scholarship and adventure, and believes that doing so can realize significant benefits for both.

CRI Semester Program for College Students

As a complement to its academic mission, the Castle Rock Institute organizes for its residents a variety of adventure activities. The Institute takes seriously the idea that there is a fundamental connection between body and mind, between the embodied practice of lived experience and the more abstract, theoretical concerns of the intellect. Some of the best learning, in other words, involves a mutually reinforcing relationship between direct and intense contact with the natural world and the scholarly goals central to the Humanities. Focusing on meaningful expressions of this relationship, challenges students to find a balance between real life and their studies.