An Outdoor Education Opportunity for College Students

Outdoor Education is central to the general educational 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.

Basically, 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. 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 outdoor 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.

Outdoor Education

The Institute encourages interdisciplinary thought and experimentation by focusing each semester on a particular issue, idea or theme drawn from the Humanities. This theme serves as the main topic of discussion and area of research for residents at the Institute.

shoes that have been through it all

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.

Different from the historical approach of most college Humanities programs, the curriculum at the Castle Rock Institute is organized thematically. Instead of sweeping through a series of "great books," all of the courses offered during each semester at the Institute address a single issue, idea or theme drawn from the Humanities. Accordingly, each class explicitly considers how insights offered by the other disciplines can contribute to an overall understanding of the theme at hand. For example, a semester devoted to the notion of "identity" may consider how the use of masks in African religious rituals or how French Existentialist conceptions of self can inform a Jane Austen novel, or can affect the composition of a painting or pencil sketch.

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. It sees, in other words, a mutually reinforcing relationship between direct and intense contact with the outdoor 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.

A typical day at the Castle Rock Institute combines individual study, classroom learning, and opportunities for experiencing the outdoors. Just imagine, one morning you will wake up, and after a hot breakfast, spend a few minutes preparing for the day's class. You might need to finish up some reading or polish a group presentation you're doing with a couple of other students. You'll spend a few hours in class discussing assigned readings, listening to a faculty lecture, or perhaps a guest speaker. After lunch, everyone will gather gear for a short mountain bike or rock climbing trip. Or, this may be a chance for you to work out on the climbing wall, or just to take a quiet walk in the forest. Back in time for a late dinner, you'll have free time afterwards to work on your class readings or studio art assignments, head into town for a movie, or just relax with a friend.

The Institute is located nearby several National Forests totaling close to a million acres, and ranging from 2,000 to just over 6,000 feet in elevation. With several thousand miles of hiking trails, hundreds of designated mountain biking trails, excellent friction and crack climbing spots, rugged rivers with class II and III rapids, and a number of limestone caves --this area is ideal for a fantastic variety of outdoor activity.

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(c) Copyright 2006 Castle Rock Institute
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