Bear River Institute provides learning opportunity
Students who love the outdoors have it good at Utah State University, where they can kayak in Logan canyon, learn to rock climb on Fuicodal, or cross-country ski up Tony Grove. What is amazing is that students can earn college credit for doing these things.
One relatively new way students can earn credit by exploring the outdoors is through the Bear River Institute. The BRI, run through Continuing Education Conference Services, provides students and the community a unique opportunity to learn about the surrounding bioregion through hands-on experience.
Since it opened in Fall 1999, the BRI has offered courses like Climbing and Exploring in the West Desert, Winter Ecology in the Bear Rivers: A Yurt-bound Ski Tour, and Great Basin Birding. The courses seek to combine recreation with “promoting greater understanding and stewardship with our changing Western public lands,” according to the BRI Web site.
As Darek Staab, program coordinator for the BRI explains it, the goal of the program is, “to promote and teach bioregional education . . . [and to] explore the natural and cultural history of the surrounding bioregion outside of the classroom.”
The program is new, so few students are aware of the opportunity they have to explore the outdoors through the Institute, Staab said. And some who do know about it are hesitant to sign up.
“There is a perception that to take an outdoor course, you have to be an extreme outdoor person,” Staab said.
The BRI is hoping to change that perception. The institute’s mission is to get everybody into the outdoors, no matter their skill level.
Students can have “beginning to intermediate experience. All you need is a sense of adventure. The only challenges are walking and dealing with weather,” Staab said.
Most courses include classroom preparation before participants go out into the field. Instructors combine education about a particular area’s ecology, wildlife, or other focus, with education on preparing for a trip to the area, including equipment, meal planning and safety planning.
After completing the coursework, students get to experience what they have been discussing.
Staab said they hope as more students learn about the Institute classes will begin filling up.
“Most of our courses are only at 30 percent enrollment. We’re always right on the fence of ‘Do we run the course or not?'” because at least six students have to be enrolled for the course to run, Staab said.
The make or break dates for many of this semester’s BRI courses are still open. More information is available at (435)797-0423; in the BRI office in the basement of the Eccles Conference Center, Room 103; or on-line at www.ext.usu.edu/bri