WRMC Conference

For those of you who aren't able to be here, I'll try and give you a flavor of this year's Wilderness Risk Management Conference. OutdoorEd.com will be covering the conference and bringing you both highlights and key information from conference presenters. 

Day 1

This is the first full day of the 15th Annual Wilderness Risk Management Conference (WRMC) sponsored by the National Outdoor Leadership School, Outward Bound, and the Student Conservation Association.The conference is being held in the Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park, a spectacular backdrop for the conference. It's the largest conference attendence ever with over 350 people from programs across North America and internationally.

As usual the conference was proceeded by several days of in-depth preconference sessions. Here's what was going on:

  • Wilderness Medicine Institute WFR Recertification
  • NOLS Risk Management Training
  • Outward Bound's Instructor Judgment Training
  • Risk Management for Service and Conservation Corps
  • Climbing Site Management
  • The Learning Brain
  • Managing Risk with Volunteer Leaders
  • Using Case Studies as a Teaching Methodology

That list gives you a really good sense of the topical focus of this conference. That's the reason why I find this conference one of the best professional development experiences for me each year. Unlike more general conferences, the core focus of the WRMC means that for three days I get to live and breathe the core issues of risk management from a broad range of perspectives. I have more than twenty-seven years in the field of outdoor education as a program director and I always gain new information and insights from the WRMC. It's also an opportunity for me to share my experience and bounce ideas off friends and colleagues.

The conference opened with a keynote address by Dr. Sarah Newman, who is the first Public Risk Management Specialist for the National Park Service. Dr. Newman is an epidemiologist by training and brings her expertise to the immense job of designing and implementing a Public Risk Management Program for the first time in the National Park Service's history. Her program will conduct risk assessments and analyze risk management to identify ways to prevent and reduce injuries to the millions of National Park visitors. Dr. Newman identified some of the complex issues of gathering and evaluating data from such a diverse set of parks across the country.

After the keynote the conference moved into workshop mode. There are four key conference workshop tracks:

  • General Program Management
  • Staff Training
  • Crisis Management & Emergency Response
  • Legal and Insurance

Within each of these four tracks there are numerous workshops by some of the top experts in the field. I started the first workshop session with a presentation by Kent Clement, professor at Colorado Mountain College. Kent, through his background in instructing in the outdoors for more than two decades and in statistics has identified a number of important components that make up the judgment and decision-making process.

In between workshops I've been at the OutdoorEd.com booth in the Exhibit Hall, talking to people about OutdoorEd.com and encouraging folks to continue contributing to the site. I'll be posting more about the conference over the next few days.