Running Head: The University of Georgia Outdoor Recreation Site Visit Report

The University of Georgia Outdoor Recreation Site Visit Report Site Visit Date: April 5th, 2013 Lance Hanie: lhanie@uga.edu Jim Crouch: jcrouch@uga.edu Mark Schleier, Oran Allen & Brittany Maddock

The University of Georgia Outdoor Recreation Site Visit Report April 14, 2013 The University of Georgia Outdoor Rec. Site Visit Report Our group conducted a site visit at the UGA Outdoor Rec. facility on Friday, April 5th from 1:00 PM to 5:00

PM. Our group selected this facility for our site visit because we are very interested in working in college settings and UGA seemed to have a solid outdoor rec. program for their students. Additionally, they are located relatively close to Georgia College which reduced the amount of travel for us to conduct this site visit. During our time at UGA, we met with and interviewed the assistant director of outdoor recreation, Lance Haynie, and the coordinator of outdoor recreation, Jim Crouch. Additionally, we interviewed one of the many student trip leaders UGA has as well as a climbing wall lead facilitator, challenge course lead facilitator and a gear rental student worker. We were able to witness the indoor static course in action at the end of our site visit. We were also able to sit in on the monthly leaders meeting that the administrators conduct with student leaders each month. Our day began with a tour and informal interview with Jim Crouch, who is head of challenge course and leadership development at UGA. After our tour, we met Lance where we conducted our interview and observed the monthly meeting. We finished the day with a tour of the gear rental shop and an observation of the indoor challenge course in operation. UGAs Outdoor Rec. program was created in 1980 and offers a massive range of activities for its student body to enjoy. Their outdoor pursuits program offers over 100 trips and clinics annually for students of all competencies to join. All of the trips and clinics can be found in the Outdoor Rec. catalog they put out each semester. This catalog shows when the trips are, how much they cost, what skill level is required and brief descriptions of the bigger trips.They also host indoor and outdoor challenge course programs as well as offering a full student gear rental service. Aside from their faculty, the programs are completely student lead, organized and planned. Each semester, UGA has roughly 24 challenge course facilitators, 25-30 trip staff, and 6-8 gear rental staff. These staff are not transferable in that challenge course facilitators are not qualified to lead trips and vice versa; they must go through separate trainings and progressions.

The University of Georgia Outdoor Recreation Site Visit Report

UGA has two separate challenge courses, an outdoor and an indoor. Their outdoor challenge course is located on the College of Warnells property near the Ramsey Center. Their course contains both high and low elements. Their high elements include a climbing wall, zip-line, static course, catwalk, multi-vine, and pirates crossing. Their low elements include TP shuffle, trust fall (as they referred to it), wild woozy, mohawk walk, and whale watch. Their indoor course is inside Ramsey center in the ceiling of the badminton courts. This course contains a range of static elements, as well as ending with participants riding a zip-line down. The manufacturer of their courses was cornerstone engineers from North Carolina. The manufacturer conducts an annual inspection of their courses, and the staff conduct inspections prior to and after each program. On our site visit, we had the opportunity to observe a program using the indoor challenge course as well as sitting in on a managers meeting and observing the discussions that take monthly between the different student supervisors and administrators. Every Friday night during the spring semester, UGA Outdoor Rec. hosts Friday Night Heights. This allows students to come use the indoor challenge course free of charge. Since the indoor challenge course usually has some of the elements pulled up and blocked off for safety, this was a great opportunity for us to see it all properly set-up and in use. It also allowed us to see some of the challenge course workers conducting the program and doing their job. It was great to see them encouraging the participants and helping them out with ideas and strategies to get across the tougher high elements. This also allowed us to actively see some of their safety precautions. For example, the smaller platforms were only allowed to have three people on them at a time and this was strictly enforced. Also, you were not allowed to step foot onto the badminton courts, which are located underneath the challenge course, without a helmet on. We experienced this rule being enforced when Mark traveled under the challenge course in order to document our experience. Managers meetings occur once a month, so we were lucky to be going on our site visit when one was occurring. Lance, Jim, and the manager from each department, challenge course, rock wall, trip leaders, and the ORC (Outdoor Recreation Center) come together and make sure that everyone is on the same page. They talk about

The University of Georgia Outdoor Recreation Site Visit Report positive things that have occurred in their area, how recent programs have gone, how many people have been participating in the programs and showing up to the rock wall, and what changes need to be brought about. Due to the fact that it was nearing the end of the semester they also talked about interviews for new hires, how many people they were looking to hire, and who would be sticking around to work for the summer. After discussing things that

had already occurred they moved on to upcoming events and how they were preparing for them and looking forward to them. Prior to our arrival for the site visit, we compiled a list of AEE standards that we believed to be most applicable to the UGA outdoor Rec. program. As mentioned earlier, UGA offers a massive range of programs for students, so the majority of the AEE standards were used in this compilation. In this interview, we covered sections 1-7 and 11, but had planned on covering more that werent addressed because of time. Although our interview only lasted an hour, we had the opportunity to observe each of their facilities and gain a plethora of information on the actual operations of their program. Our interview with Lance and his head student of trip staff opened with some background on both of their histories with the program and how ended up at UGA. There was a wonderful atmosphere throughout our interview and both seemed very excited about discussing their program. We found that many of our questions had chain reaction answers and that several other questions were answered in the process. We also adapted our questions to fit the program more closely and reduce the amount of redundancy in our discussions. For example, we took really good notes throughout the day and already knew facilitator progressions for UGA as well as the type of trainings and hours required for these progressions because Jim or Lance had already addressed it for us. Sections one and two were used in our opening interview where we discussed the programs mission statement and how their programs relate this. We received a long response, but the end answer was that they are lacking a clearly defined mission statement and that Lance Hanie, the assistant director, had been their for less than a year and is working diligently on establishing a quality and lasting mission statement. He explained how this is a long and arduous process that does not need to be

The University of Georgia Outdoor Recreation Site Visit Report rushed and that he is incorporating his staff into the development of their mission statement. He then explained how their program is very student driven in that all trip leaders and facilitators are students and that each program is unique with how participants and staff create new and exciting programs. We also asked about the student leader dynamics, which was actually answered by a student trip leader. She discussed the progressions that trip leaders undergo in order to reach trip leader status and how much fun she had moving through this process. They seemed to

be very proud of their program and each of their staff members and that because of the long and difficult progression to trip leader, they rarely have issues with leaders in and out of the field. The UGA Rec. program requires its staff to only have First Aid, CPR, AED & epi-pen. Their reasoning for this decision is that they are never in remote environments and they do not want to require difficult and expensive trainings for students so that they can be trip leaders. They felt it unnecessary to require it, but did value students who acquired these trainings and credentials on their own. They manage these certifications on an excel database and update them frequently to ensure students are not expired. This is managed by the UGA Rec. Center. The Rec. center also trains students on driving campus vans for different programs and these trainings are UGA Rec. Center inclusive (not only outdoor students are trained, but all students working at the rec. center may be as well). Some areas of improvement that we, and the administrators, saw and agreed on were the lack of signs on challenge course equipment and that this could be an issue for them legally. They also explained how they werent happy with the lack of a mission statement and that they are exciting in developing one soon. We also discussed the creation of a written trip leader progression checklist and that this is a very important document in that it is an easy and enjoyable way to ensure staff are ready to lead their intended trips. They also dont have a written policies and procedures, and dont plan on creating one. They do have bits and pieces of one though that they give to their staff, which includes EAPs, and general tips and strategies. We agree that UGAs Outdoor Rec. program is lacking in terms of AEE standards, but we believe that they have a nice program and a lot of work to do that they are aware of to make it safer and more resemblance of the AEE standards.

The University of Georgia Outdoor Recreation Site Visit Report

We were able to give the administrators some feedback and potential advice on how to improve their program and assist them in becoming safer and more effective. We gave them the GCSU ODED forms and policies page so that they do not have to re-create the wheel. We also explained to them how they could create facilitator checklists and improve trainings for their staff. It was an awesome experience for us and we learned a lot about how other programs operate and manage themselves. We believe that it was mutually beneficial for all of us and that we are all walking away with a better understanding and belief in outdoor education and recreation.