Experiential learning helps students build confidence in their adaptability and sense of exploration, emphasizing on team-building and leadership — skills which are critical for success, both in the classroom and in the workplace.  and was the featured speaker of the evening. 

“Exploration isn’t about planting flags and leaving footprints,” said Kate Harris, a renowned writer and one of Canada’s premier explorers, at a benefit dinner for Outward Bound held Tuesday in New York. “It’s about how willing you are to let an experience rewrite your maps. ... It is an invitation to get lost in the best possible sense, about how when we step away from the familiar we can truly discover who, and where, we are; explorers, everyone of us, on a world that will never be mapped.”

Whitney Montgomery, the executive director of the Outward Bound's North Carolina school, said the school offers year-round programs in a number of different locations, including "base camps" in the Everglades of Florida and in Patagonia, South America. Montgomery said the school's Educators Initiative introduces teachers to experiential education in an outdoor setting which includes expeditions into the North Carolina mountains, in order to make teachers “students again.”

“They learn how they can take that into the classroom,” he said, noting the courses could have unexpected effects in a range of classroom subjects, including English. “Instead of reading Shakespeare, they may act Shakespeare.”

The program enrolls approximately 48 teachers at a time, and higher ed administrators at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill have partnered with Montgomery to use the approach for students in its Graduate School for Education — Montgomery said many Outward Bound teachers are working as adjunct professors at the university. The process, he said, could be useful other education graduate schools that might disproportionately favor conceptual lessons in lieu of kinesthetic experiences. 

Colleges and universities are striving to find ways to support veterans during their college career as large numbers of service members who served in Afghanistan and Iraq embark upon their postsecondary careers. Outward Bound first started serving Vietnam War veterans, and renewed their veterans' program in 2006 to meet the needs of service members from the dual ongoing wars. The organization now serves between 400 and 600 veterans each year, and could serve as an inspiration to institutions seeking ways to support vets in a positive manner, according to Chad Spangler, the organization’s national director for Veteran programs.

“On an expedition, we really talk about how you can serve the group, and what you can do at home. How do you serve?” he said, touting the smaller forms of service veterans can find in their daily lives. “They’re just as meaningful, because you can make an important impact in someone’s life.”