Retreats & Trips
Student committees work with Park Faculty Scholars and administrative staff to plan and organize class retreats and "learning laboratories," or studies of current issues in their regional or national context. Each Park Scholar takes a leadership role in organizing one of these trips or other class activities during their time at the university.
The focus of the first-year retreat is to develop the scholars' team-building skills and to orient them to one another and to the university. The retreat is the foundation of the Park Scholar experience. It begins with a welcome to campus and continues with a special off-campus trip to the mountains of North Carolina. High- and low-ropes courses are an exciting feature of the retreat, as well as other camraderie-building activities organized by special upperclassmen facilitators.
By the time the students enter their fourth year, they have grown tremendously as individuals and as a class. The senior retreat, during which scholars travel to a national park such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, or the Grand Canyon, provides an opportunity to assess their personal and collective experience, reflecting on their leadership development, how to improve the program, and how they would like to be involved as alumni. This trip mirrors the first-year retreat and is an important stepping stone for the scholars on their way to becoming alumni.
Learning Laboratories
During their first and second years, Park Scholars plan two experiential trips, called "Learning Laboratories," in which they travel away from campus to study a relevant state or national issue in context. Each class of Park Scholars meets with their Park Faculty Scholars to research the issues in advance and to prepare an itinerary that will allow them to examine a topic firsthand and from multiple vantage points. Learning Laboratory I occurs within a specific region of North Carolina while Learning Laboratory II focuses on the nation's capital. The Washington, D.C., visits have included talks with Supreme Court justices, United States senators, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with time to explore places like the Pentagon, USA Today, the Smithsonian, foreign embassies, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Learning Lab II:
Washington D.C.
Last year's learning labratory focused on the question: "At what point does freedom of the press stop when issues of national security are concerned?"
Students heard from speakers like Dr. Robert Entman, M.C. Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University; Meredith Fuchs, General Counsel for the National Security Archives; Susan Page, Washington D.C. Bureau Chief at USA Today; David Thomas, Director of Public Affairs at the National Defense University; and the Honorable Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court.
While in D.C., Scholars also had a special visit to the U.S. Postal Service and a behind-the-scenes tour of the National Gallery of Art. They visited other cultural landmarks, including the National Air & Space Museum and Arena Stage, where they attended Nine Parts of Desire, a play about the Iraq War.