Outdoor Class Rolls Along

Mount Spokane was the classroom last week for 18 college students traveling in a huge bus jammed with camping gear. The word “Expedition” beamed from the bus’s charter window.

This weekend, the bus was parked at a trailhead while the students took their studies on a trek through the Salmo-Priest Wilderness.

Soon they’ll roll on to the Columbia River, to the dams and the issues they create, before continuing on a course the students will direct by consensus until the semester ends at San Francisco in December.

The bus, which includes a 600-book library, is one of four roving campuses motoring through North America this fall as part of a 25-year-old environmental studies program called Audubon Expeditions Inc.

The program receives sponsorship from the National Audubon Society, is accredited through Lesley College of Cambridge, Mass., and open to students from universities nationwide.

It began in the ‘60s in Vermont as a high school summer program.

“After a few years, teachers realized the students were learning more in the summer program than they were in school,” said Sanna McKim, Expeditions spokeswoman. Since 1978, the program has been geared to college-level natural resources studies. The buses seek hotspots for environmental thinking and action. Students dredge up facts from experts, then work together to hammer out creative solutions.

Near the Salmo-Priest, they may talk to a wilderness ranger, a logger and a member of Earth First! Learning to live as a community is critical to the course.

“The first charged discussion usually centers around food,” said Judy Pratt, one of four faculty members supervising the students. “We have vegetarians and meat eaters who must cook for each other. We’ll probably have discussions with farmers and cattlemen to work through these issues.”

Expedition students must make an extraordinary commitment to maturity.

“No drinking, no drugs and no interference to the common goal of learning,” McKim said. “This is unlike the normal college campus where you can go to class then go back to your room and have your own space.”

Even sex is taboo. It’s too distracting on a bus that’s run by consensus.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo