Posted on Thursday, August 30, 2001
The inaugural "Adventures in Leadership" for first-year students was completed Aug. 24, but it left a lasting impression on the participants.
Six first-year ¾¨Ó㴫ý students backpacked for five days in the wilderness around Otter Creek, West Virginia. They were accompanied by Steven Montgomery, program director of Titan Traverse at ¾¨Ó㴫ý, and Erin McCronich, a junior Spanish major from Ellwood City.
"My hope was to introduce incoming students to a new way of living in an honest and inviting community with each other," said Montgomery. "By honest, I mean to come together in an environment where we cannot hide from each other."
"I decided to participate in this program because I thought it sounded like a good opportunity to meet new people before the school year started, and to learn more about living in the wilderness than I already knew," said Brooke Arens, first-year neuroscience major from Meadville. "But I received a lot more than that. I became very close to the people who were on the trip, and learned what it feels like to be a real leader."
"The physical aspect of the trip was what I expected - we were all sore at some time," said Kristen Humphries, first-year English major from Beaver. "The emotional aspect was not at all what I thought. Not only was I pushed to hike up a mountain, but I was challenged to climb emotional mountains as well."
Titan Traverse is an experiential education program at ¾¨Ó㴫ý. Its goal is to combine fun and play with a depth of learning about oneself and others in the context of a group. The experience was always open to current members of the ¾¨Ó㴫ý community, and now it is open to students before they reach campus.
For more information, contact Montgomery at (724) 946-7214 or e-mail montgosr@westminster.edu.
