Master Degree in Outdoor Leadership and Sustainability
The world has changed. Much of what was has been lost or forgotten. But under the monuments of steel and glass, heavy lattice of city streets, there are worlds beyond this one we know. People are beginning to remember the old ways. Very soon nothing will be the same. Our time has come. Are you ready?
This program guides individuals to become leaders of sustainability and social entrepreneurship in their communities. While applying cutting-edge social and collaborative learning methodology we draw on ancient and modern heritages, integrating diverse topics in both the field and classroom setting. We develop competency in traditional skills and wisdom while delving deeply into the theory and practice of what they have to teach us in today's world. In the TrackersTEAMS Graduate Studies you are immersed in lost and ancient arts, reshaping this experience to create your own thesis, practicum and learning model.
Through Prescott College your community and workplace becomes your classroom and the Pacific Northwest a social village in which to learn. Students can pursue a masters degree in diverse themes including environmental sciences, humanities, sustainability education or a student designed area of focus. TrackersTEAMS students enrolled in the Prescott College Master of Arts Program must complete the residency, coursework and other requirements common to all students in the relevant M.A. program at Prescott College.
Program Contacts
Email us to learn more or call...
Nicole Apelian, TrackersTEAMS Graduate Studies Director, 503-367-6296
Pramod Parajuli, PH.D, Prescott College Liaison, 928-350-3222
This program is primarily designed for those seeking a graduate degree through Prescott College yet it also available to other degree programs or without accredidation. Please contact us for more information.
Payment Options
Deposit A base $1200 deposit is used to secure your place in the program, the remaining balance is divided into two equal payments made at the beginning of each semester.
Payment Plans Contact Us for alternative payment plans
Credit Card There is a 3.5% courtesty charge for credit card payments
Schedule
Application submission deadline April 15th, 2010 Contact Us to begin the application process.
Schedule The majority of students take 3-terms (a year and a half) to complete their graduate work. All of Semester 1 and Semester 2 takes place at our Portland, Oregon campus. Graduate students earning a degree with Prescott College also attend a colloquia in Prescott, Arizona every 3 months. TrackersTEAMS graduate students travel together. Semester Three may be completed anywhere due to the independent study component of the final semester. Students must complete a minimum of 40 semester credits to receive a Master of Arts degree from Prescott College.
Semester One Late August 2010-December 2010
Semester Two January 2011-June 2011
Final Semester Practicum and Thesis Work
Class Times Semester One & Two
Class days for Semester 1 & 2 take place every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with holiday breaks. Monday and Tuesday are classroom and field learning days with a Monday overnight at the Trackers Homestead. Wednesday is an independent study day, where students have access to mentors in Portland at the Trackers Campus.
There are also three week-long Nature of the Village: Collaborative Learning overnight programs at the beginning of each season, as well as a 2-week Permaculture Design Certification overnight course. TrackersNW students enrolled in the Prescott College Master of Arts Program must complete the residency, coursework and other requirements common to all students in the relevant M.A. program at Prescott College.
This program is primarily designed for those seeking a graduate degree through Prescott College. It is also available outside of this. Please contact us and see Prescott’s FAQ for more information
Electives
Wilderness First Responder and Traditional Kayak Building may also be taken for credit. These are available throughout the year.
This program seamlessly blends both hands-on learning with a higher academic value of context and integration into core thematics. These include:
• Ecology and Naturalist Studies
• Systems Awareness and Thinking
• Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Sustainability
• Team Leadership and Collaborative Organization
• Social Entrepreneurship
Students will also have the following upon completion of Year One:
• Permaculture Design Certification
• Wildlife Tracker Certification
• Experience building a traditional Umiak boat
Core Thematics Developed
While the ancient and modern skills we teach often have a hands-on and field component, their scholarly value is synthesized through seminars, intensive writing and peer and professor review. These thematics include:
Tracking and Naturalist Skills
Tracking and naturalist skills can be considered a euphemism for awareness and greater connection to the world around you. Both the practitioner and the student not only gain a full breadth of knowledge for the natural world, but a functional and kinesthetic understanding of how it integrates in a whole dynamic web. The deep awareness of ancient trackers of hunter-gatherer cultures is born from necessity and an intrinsic relationship of place stemming from survival with nature. We introduce a new language of learning that includes interactive ecology and the core principles inherent in tracking both as a tool and a process applied to systems thinking models. Students perform real world assessment and survey of wildlife corridors using both ancient and modern technology.
Bushcraft, Folk Arts, and Wilderness Survival Skills
Today, participation in the out-of-doors is often limited to observation and sport. People crave real interaction with the natural world. Being fed by the land is a rite of passage that truly creates empathy and accountability for place and community. Through harvest and care for sources of local wild foods, principles of sound ecological practice can readily be applied. We address how knowledge and direct experience in bushcraft, wild and sustainable food systems and folk arts can dramatically illuminate an emerging integrated human relationship that encourages diversity. We also address how theory and initiatives of sustainability that lack these components of locally sourced craftsmanship and food systems may be prone to long term failure and degradation of core values.
Permaculture and Traditional Ecological Knowledge
As humans, we were born to care for the land and our families. Old ways of seeing and caring point the way for a new path out of the global crises we now find ourselves in. Students in this course receive their permaculture design certification. Woven into this is a rich relationship with wild plants, their edible and medicinal use, and the ecology of the land and family. Our focus includes hands-on design projects, student lead and implemented by our collaborative learning models. This is a rare opportunity to experience permaculture in action through four seasons and to take these basic principles of sustainable design and caretaking further, putting them to good work as a foundation that prepares us to learn from voices and old ways of traditional knowledge and skills.
Outdoor and Recreational Guiding
Our certification and training work with students to develop highly marketable skills with a foundation in business, team collaboration, and communication. Students learn to create healthy communities and organizations rooted in the land in a functional way. They can receive their Wilderness First Responder certification, learn kayak and water rescue, and they learn how to put together long-term backcountry expeditions. Framing these operational nuts and bolts of Adventure Education are our truly cutting-edge social models of learning and team leadership.
Team Leadership and Facilitation Skills
Teams are the new paradigm for collaborative learning and leadership. This program looks at a family, a village, and a community as a team where everyone has gifts to share. Many team models and organizational facilitation skills are presented. From Open Space to agile teamwork, from improvisational group building to a highly refined awareness of natural ecological systems, we have combined modern and traditional cultural awareness into a highly effective way of getting work done. We call this Natural Agile Teams. As we work through our year, we take on core routines of facilitation and find that coming together generates better communication and healthier results. While many models sound great on a whiteboard or flip chart, Natural Agile Teams yields results tested by some of the most successful collaborative entrepreneurs and companies today.
Fitness and Holistic Health
In this culture we often ascribe an inability to surmount challenges in our lives to a lack of willpower, skill or other such abstract factors, yet often we can find their source in our lack of health and wellness. Mental focus, a positive mental attitude, and a competency in your physical body comes to you as you deeply reflect and act on your own unique nutritional needs and physical expression. Using such resources as the bio-regional martial and movement art SHIFT, students learn from world-class instructors on how to stay fit and healthy.
Business Skills, including marketing and accounting
The hunters and gatherers of tribes have traditionally demonstrated a deft awareness of their resources and long term sustainability directly integrated into their culture. The social entrepreneur meets a similar modern analogue. The capacity to assess resources for the community while projecting and developing stability through the self-organizing systems can be found in survival strategies of animals, plants, humans and ecological systems. We address how critical it is to understand a market-driven economy through the lens of whole systems awareness and how collaborative work teams can be one of the most effective tools that produce both generative profit and reparation for the local land base. These teams and their processes utilize highly functional cultural systems in both professional, academic, communal, and familial environments for long term diversity. Students can produce either a personal life plan or fully developed business plan in their first year. The implementation of these plans can be a critical component of their thesis development throughout the second year.
