Conservation School Is One Long Field Trip

Right: Students at the Conservation Leadership School participate in a kayaking training session on Lake Perez

Penn State's Conservation Leadership School (CLS) is what most folks would call nontraditional. The students sleep in tents, eat in a military-style chow hall and can spend the morning cutting down trees, then debate environmental policy in the afternoon. Their classroom can be under the stars or knee-deep in a creek.

For two weeks in the summer, teenagers literally work their way through natural resource management lessons such as soil analysis, wildlife management, forest science, energy production, natural history, environmental policy, and conservation. These sessions are held in the Stone Valley Experimental Forest and the Stone Valley Recreation Area. High school sophomores and juniors in high school can attend one of two introductory schools and can opt to return for an advanced session the following year.

The Conservation Leadership School has been part of Penn State since 1948, when it began in the College of Agricultural Sciences. It later became part of the parks and recreation program in the College of Health and Human Development. The program started as the Junior Conservation Camp, where teenage boys learned firearms safety, water safety, and forest skills. Now, 50 years later, both boys and girls can enroll and the curriculum focuses on environmental issues. In 1997, the School of Forest Resources was given management of the program, a change that Larry Nielsen, director of the school, believes is a perfect fit. "Good natural resource management depends on kids understanding how it works right from the beginning," he says. "We have to invest in the next generation of landowners and decision-makers. Conservation education is an important part of the School of Forest Resources' role, and the Conservation Leadership School is a great way to support that."

Right: Conservation School instructor Bobby Deibler explains how a water filtration system works.

Jim Hamilton, assistant professor of speech communication at Penn State Mont Alto, will remain as CLS director, a post he has held since 1978. Nielsen also has appointed Robbianne Mackin, a graduate student in forest science, to help promote and organize the program.

Most of the participants' activities are hands-on, ranging from harvesting timber to speechmaking. Practicing conservation principles and public speaking are put to the test at the end of the school, when a mock public hearing is held. Students are asked to take sides on a proposed industrial development in a rural community. The students argue their cases in front of a guest panel and must defend their decisions and answer cogent questions from the school staff and the faculty guests.

Nielsen says the School of Forest Resources will provide an academic home for the Conservation Leadership School, pointing out that the forestry school, with programs in forestry, wood products, wildlife, fisheries, and water resources, has the infrastructure and expertise to support it. "The program itself doesn't need anything from us--it's great," Nielsen says. "I care deeply about conservation education and moving the program into the School of Forest Resources made the best sense possible."

For more information, contact the Conservation Leadership School, The Pennsylvania State University, 306 Agricultural Administration Building, University Park, PA 16802-2601, or call (814) 865-8301.

–John Wall