An educational adventure for college students

The Castle Rock Institute is a wilderness-based center for the Humanities and study abroad australia program affiliated with Brevard College. Each semester it seeks applications from college and university students to live, travel, study and experience the wonders of the natural world together. Based in a lodge set in North Carolina, CRI aims to enliven the study of the Humanities through classwork, attention to cummunity life, and through group outdoor adventure activities. The Castle Rock Institute is dedicated to investigating links between scholarship and the practical dimensions of human life, by emphasizing the relationships between collective experience outdoors, studying the Humanities and living in a tight-knit community. This is a unique study abroad australia program.

Post Mountain Biking

Expedition students enroll in 4 different courses taught by Castle Rock Institute Senior Professors. Each course meets regularly throughout the semester and awards 4 hours of academic credit. The Institute strives to balance and integrate scholarship and outdoor adventure by creating a highly organized study abroad australia program, and believes that this can realize significant benefits for both.

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 study for expedition participants.

The Castle Rock Institute study abroad australia expedition organizes for its participants study abroad australia experiences and adventure opportunities. This program 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 natural world and the scholarly goals central to the Humanities. Focusing on meaningful expressions of this relationship, this challenges students to find a balance between real life and their studies. It provides a chance to bring together many aspects of their college experience that are ordinarily fragmented.

An Alternative Study Experience

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. Working with the method of comparison, each class explicitly considers how insights offered by the other disciplines can contribute to an overall understanding of the theme at hand. Students find unexpected connections.

The general mission of the Castle Rock Institute Australia Program involves a unique combination of features. We sponsor a semester-long and 4-week summer study programs for college students that combine adventure activities, the challenges of life in a small group, and courses in the Humanities. Combine all this with the unique areas students travel on the continent, and it's clear CRI is a study abroad australia program like no other.

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