Located within the Betty L. Siegel Student Recreation and Activities Center is a branch of Outdoor Adventures, Nature Bound, that offers day and weekend trips to destinations across the United States in myriad outdoor sports, as well as leadership training and team building workshops.
Nature Bound regularly offers trips and experiences in road and mountain biking, hiking, backpacking, climbing, caving, car camping, canoeing, rafting and stand-up paddle boarding. The organization can also offer vendor trips in ziplining, hang gliding, snowboarding and white water rafting.
The trips vary from beginner to advanced levels, can cost as little as zero to five dollars all the way up to $350 for one nine-day trip and all Kennesaw State students are welcome to attend until spots are full. Trip Leaders are Kennesaw State students who come up with the ideas for and plan these excursions.
Physics major and Nature Bound Trip Leader Kaitlyn Stahl reported that one of the many “objectives for the trips is for the participants to maybe learn something about themselves.” Trip Leaders “want to relate the activities to real life.”
Stahl went on to explain that participants may be prompted to answer questions like, “how did you use perseverance in rock climbing and how can you use that to maybe persevere in other aspects of your life like schoolwork or jobs [or your] mental health?”
Trip Leaders undergo a significant training process in order to prompt such questions, such as CPR and Wilderness First Aid Training, which they receive free of charge, as well as advanced leadership courses held by KSU Outdoor Adventures Faculty.
These courses are taught in conjunction with the Climbing Gym staff, bike mechanics and the Recreation Center’s front desk workers. They teach students how to create activities for trips that will foster reflection, and how to debrief participants after said activity.
Mechatronics engineering major and Trip Leader Krishna Poroori pointed to the Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory as the defining theory for facilitated learning on trips. It describes learning being highly effective when related to first-hand experiences followed by reflective observation of them.
According to Stahl, employees “learn how to do these skills really well and then…learn how to teach them to other people”
Nature Bound employees are first hired as unpaid Leaders-In-Training with a list of objectives to complete. These LITs also go through a training process shadowing current Trip Leaders and then must complete three trips as a (paid) Co-Leader. Once they are promoted they can supervise and mentor new LITs to help them meet their objectives.
Luke Hardaway is in his first semester as a Trip Leader and reported that “physical training for kayaking Trip Leaders includes minimum four days of on-water training and minimum three days of classroom learning to help facilitate teamwork and community building.”
He recalled that the program has allowed him to learn “new skills to…enjoy nature on [his] own terms and at [his] own pace.”
Poroori reported that pre-existing groups such as on-campus clubs may request “customized trips” wherein only members of said club will experience together one of Nature Bound’s notable outdoor experiences.
Most recently, students from the KSU CARES’ ASCEND program, for students facing homelessness and/or food insecurity, were given the opportunity to attend an overnight outdoor rock climbing trip.
Poroori also stated that Nature Bound is currently looking to hire more Trip Leaders with a “love for the outdoors” who want to “help foster a community” and “be of service to the KSU community.”
He called the program a “family.” Similarly, Hardaway remarked, “whether it’s new friends or a new challenge, it’s all love around Nature Bound.”
