NGU Skyliner

Laurel Vaughn
Staff Writer

Imagine for a moment that you are a student in the outdoor leadership program. Now imagine that it is your junior year and you are about to dive into the Immersion semester. Visualize yourself going through summer workouts to prepare for trips to unknown destinations. For most ODEL majors, this is the most exciting semester of them all.

The Immersion semester kicked off with a 10 day backpacking trip to Pisgah, N.C., a location that ODEL majors were only aware of two days prior to the trip—which also happened to be the first day of class.

Preparation for this trip began over this past summer. ODEL majors were given workouts that ranged from running 30 minutes a day to doing sets of push-ups and sit-ups. These workouts would help to prepare the students for the 10-day backpacking trip.

Activities on the trip included setting up camp with speed and effectiveness, learning how to find water and the proper procedures in how to make the water drinkable, hiking every day with mileage ranging from 2-5 miles and sometimes even 10-12 miles, rock climbing, rappelling, caving and swimming, all with an emphasis on skill development and learning how to teach such skills and safety procedures.

But this is only the beginning for ODEL majors and their Immersion semester. This trip is only one out of about a half a dozen trips that the students will be taking throughout the semester. Not to mention a wilderness first responder course that offers students hands-on simulation sessions to help prepare for real-life emergency situations, varying from improvised gear to severe environments and prolonged patient care.

“This was an awesome trip which allowed me to build a community with other Immersion participants while making a lot of great, new friends,” Lance Skipper, junior outdoor leadership, said.

“The whole immersion semester is a great learning opportunity for us. It’s great to actually be able to experience activities and to see what it’s like to be out in the field,” Rachel Dalson, junior outdoor leadership, said.

The Immersion trip was lead by Professor Nathan Ruffrage and instructor Whitney Thomas.

Tags: Fall 2009, Vol. 109 - Issue 3

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.