Outdoor Education 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 outdoor 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 newly 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. 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.

Outdoor Education

As a complement to its academic mission, the Castle Rock Institute organizes for its residents a variety of outdoor 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. Focusing on meaningful expressions of this relationship academics and adventure, challenges students to find a balance between real life and their studies.