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 Wilderness School Students get real outdoor experience in the International Wilderness Leadership School. Sandra Ewert/Courtesy Photo
An International Wilderness Leadership School instructor stopped at the University of Idaho Tuesday to encourage students interested in outdoor leadership to pursue the courses and potential class credit.
IWLS sent five instructors across the nation to promote the school. Instructor Sandra Ewert took a loop through Colorado and Utah and made her last stop at UI.
“I like to be outside and play outside while I work,” Ewert said.
Between her college tour stops, Ewert has been climbing all over the United States, something the German native said she’s been enjoying.
Ewert fits the description of IWLS instructors — a young, avid outdoor adventurers.
IWLS is a branch of the Alaska Mountain Guides and Climbing School, Inc. In the last two years, there’s been a push in promotion, and IWLS began offering school credit for their courses.
The program gives students real-world experience, ranging from one-day courses to 90-day full semester programs. IWLS teaches special forces, women’s specific groups and regular groups.
Ewert presented a slideshow in the Student Recreation Center classroom and walked through an IWLS Alaskan semester. With amazing slides of mountain ranges, glaciers and wildlife, she showed the setup of the semester.
Classes are limited to 10 students accompanied by instructors. The course begins in Haines, Alaska. where students pack and prepare for two days. Depending on weather, they either travel by boat, plane, helicopter or four-wheel drive to the glacial destination where they will live in tents for 24 days.
“We try to go far out there and get detached,” Ewert said.
Students learn technical skills while also adopting the soft skills of leadership and group dynamic. Each student is responsible at least once to be “leader of the day” where they decide everything from when the group will wake up to where they will go.
When the 24 days comes to an end, the students go back to Haines for two days before they depart either backpacking or sea kayaking where they live in the wilderness for another 24 days.
IWLS uses an 18 point curriculum and assess students’ technical and soft skills before awarding them with various certificates on first aid and rescue, education and environmental protection.
Ewert said her students’ ages range from 19 to 45 years old with some students having a lifetime of outdoor experience and one woman having gone
car-camping only twice.
Ewert said her favorite part of the program is watching people grow past their expectations.
“With different abilities, everyone grows at a different level,” Ewert said. “It’s like a one room school where everyone teaches each other.”
IWLS teaches courses on mountaineering, rock and ice climinbg, backcountry skiing and snowboarding, sea kayaking, backpacking and river rafting. Because IWLS offers the courses year round, the locations must change in response to weather. Course locations also give students a cultural experience while they’re in the wilderness of eastern Africa in Tanzania, Ecuador, Nepal, Baja in Mexico and the American Northwest—all similar to the setup of the Alaskan semester.
“Nothing takes the place of real world experience,” Director of IWLS Sean Gaffney said. “This philosophy is one of the primary underpinnings of all IWLS courses.”
Depending upon the university, credit options vary. Some universities contract out to IWLS, whereas universities like UI have the option of receiving transfer credit from an affiliated university.
Outdoor Program Coordinator Mike Beiser said what makes IWLS different is they have a curriculum with the Wilderness Education Association.
“They do assessment so it’s like taking a class in the field,” Beiser said.
IWLS’s 18-point curriculum gives students a different outcome than if they were to go with other wilderness courses. Beiser said the certificates also help “grease the skids” for future employment.
“My goal is to be able to contract to an organization like this, if not this one,” Beiser said. “What we’re missing is a solidified senior thesis project capstone.”
Outdoor Recreation Leadership minors aren’t required to do an extended trip or expedition, and Beiser said that’s a big hole in the program.
The UI Outdoor Program has a similar curriculum, but extends it over a semester because it’s impossible for students to be removed from their other courses for months at a time to gain credit in real outdoor experience.
“There’s something different about being out there for 24 days working with people,” he said. “You live it. You can’t duplicate that unless you’re out there.”
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