![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2018\/11\/CC-BUL-Winter18-28-WildernessMcClintock.jpg\")
<\/a>Britt McClintock poses for a portrait on Sunday, October 7, 2018 at the Gilmore Stabler Cabin of Colorado College.<\/p><\/div>\n
It\u2019s a lesson McClintock, 33, learned as a girl roaming the woods near Erie, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up in a predominately white environment … and spent a lot of my younger years struggling with my self-identity, so the outdoors offered a space where there <\/span>weren\u2019t a lot of rules, a lot of boundaries,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n McClintock joined the Outdoor Ed staff in August as executive-in-residence, a position she will hold through December. She\u2019s tasked with helping the program embody its commitment to inclusion and diversity: developing curriculum used to train student trip leaders, offering workshops, bringing in guests, and leading outings herself.<\/p>\n Students create drawings of an “ideal outdoor education community” during outdoor leadership training on Sunday, October 7, 2018 at the Gilmore Stabler Cabin of Colorado College.<\/p><\/div>\n That included a first-year outdoor orientation trip composed of eight women of color. \u201cI think we passed <\/span>at least 50 people\u201d backpacking in Eagle\u2019s Nest Wilderness, McClintock recalls, \u201cand one of the students said, \u2018They\u2019re all white. What do you think they think of us out here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a familiar experience for minorities who venture into the wild. Nearly three-quarters of Americans who participate in outdoor activities are white, according to The Outdoor Foundation\u2019s 2018 outdoor participation report. Historically, African Americans are least likely to be involved in outdoor recreation, though Hispanics also lag whites.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a concern, for several reasons. At a time of accelerating environmental degradation, a new generation of invested wilderness stewards is crucial \u2014 and<\/span> minorities are expected to become the majority in the United States by 2050. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have people of color who care for the environment and who are advocating for it, what does environmental conservation start to look like?\u201d McClintock asks.<\/p>\n But participating in the outdoors \u2014 especially on group outings that require cooperative effort \u2014 also benefits individuals.<\/p>\n \u201cA fully complete education is not only about academic performance and intellectual development,\u201d says Peter Steinhauser, executive director of Outward Bound USA. \u201cIt\u2019s about character development, teamwork, compassion for others. Those are not necessarily the kinds of things one learns at the best of schools.\u201d<\/p>\n Abby Dione, the first black female owner of a climbing gym in the US, led an all female climbing session in the Ritt Kellogg Climbing Gym. Oct. 3, 2018<\/p><\/div>\n Experiential outdoor learning embodies qualities Colorado College values, Hammes says. \u201cIt\u2019s powerful when people can step outside their comfort zone and do what they didn\u2019t know they could. The activity \u2014 white-water rafting, mountaineering, or whatever it is \u2014 is just a conduit to fulfilling greater learning objectives: leadership, stewardship, discovering what is within themselves, and out there …<\/p>\n \u201cThese are really transferable skills. We\u2019re not making mountain guides here. We\u2019re making a good lawyer a great lawyer, a good doctor a great doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n Outward Bound learned long ago that the greatest benefits attach to mixed groups: \u201cThe more homogenous, the less powerful the outcome,\u201d Steinhauser says. That composition \u2014 a small, diverse group in which members must rely on each other to accomplish shared tasks \u2014 is also the most effective for countering unconscious bias, according to Princeton social psychologist Susan T. Fiske.<\/p>\n The relationship-building that occurs on outdoor trips can be \u201cmagic,\u201d Hammes says. \u201cYou\u2019re out there overnight and dealing with a little bit of adversity, and <\/span>everything is very communal: You\u2019re eating, sleeping, hiking together \u2014 and having conversations you probably wouldn\u2019t have on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n Women are well-represented in outdoor education; at both Outward Bound and CC, they comprise the majority of field instructors. But keeping minorities involved is a challenge. Beyond the Priddy Experience \u2014 a required four-day new-student orientation trip that combines service with outdoor activity \u2014 many will take one additional trip and then fall away, Hammes says.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>