Outdoor Orientation Program Symposium. April 17th, 2009 at Camp Becket-Chimney Corners YMCA in Becket, MA.

The Outdoor Orientation Program Symposium (OOPS) is a meeting of program directors, school administrators, student leaders, researchers, and land managers interested in and/or currently working with college outdoor orientation programs.

OOPS provides two conferences a year both aimed at meeting the needs of program directors, but each with a different focus. The national conference in the fall focuses on administration issues and the regional conference in the spring focuses on gathering student leaders with their program directors.

This Spring's conference at Camp Becket-Chimney Corners in Becket, MA., focuses on outdoor orientation “Best Practices” highlighting some of the unique and truly impressive program features from a variety of college programs. Highlights include programs that use the best risk management practices and systems, programs that have developed great staff training programs, devised ingenious marketing programs, and programs that have successfully integrated academic curriculum into an outdoor orientation program. 

If you have a camp based orientation program, or an wilderness based orientation program, this conference is specifically geared to meet your needs.

Whether you have attended OOPS for several years or this is your first time hearing about our community, we welcome you to join us in an effort to provide exceptional orientation experiences for college students.

OOPS operates as a pre-conference to the Association of Experiential Education. Although we encourage participants to also register for the AEE conference, it is NOT a requirement to participate in OOPS. The regional AEE conference provides a way to continue discussions and also learn relevant program information aimed at a broader audience of experiential education program directors and staff.

The cost for OOPS is $85 for professional staff and $35 for students. Lunch is provided.

Registration and information for OOPS is located at the AEE Website:

http://northeast.aee.org/conferences/preconference

Questions can be directed to this springs conference convener, Brent Bell, University of New Hampshire, bbell@unh.edu.

Call for proposals

Due date: Feb. 15th.

If you would like to present a "Best Practice" that your campus or organization is using, please submit a proposal by Feb. 15th. To encourage proposals, stimulate ideas and contributions of students and the overly busy, the OOPS proposal process short and sweet.

1. Name and identifying information

2. A description of your best practice.

You will be contacted with further questions and information to aid in the development of an OOPS workshop.

All information and questions should be sent to bbell@unh.edu