The ESOL program is an interdisciplinary, honors sequence focusing on environmental studies and practical experience in outdoor leadership. Successful completion of the sequence is recognized on students’ official academic transcripts, with the presentation of honors chords at graduation, and a scholarship for one graduating senior.
To complete the sequence with Honors, students must:
- attend one ESOL Outdoor Leadership Expedition;
- successfully participate in two environmental leadership seminars;
- complete twenty hours of volunteer service with an environmental organization.
To receive Honors with Distinction, students can:
- satisfy the Honors requirements as well as pass the UC approved, Current Issues in Science, environmental studies course offered by Crespi’s Science Department;
- satisfy the Honors requirements as well as attend two or more Expeditions and four or more Seminars;
- satisfy the Honors requirements as well as attend eight or more Seminars;
- satisfy the honors requirements as well as complete sixty volunteer service hours with an environmental organization;
- satisfy the honors requirements as well as complete an environmental studies thesis project.
Crespi’s initiation of the Environmental Studies and Outdoor Leadership program in 2009 responded to two imperatives: realizing the vision of “ecological conversion” heralded by John Paul II, and responding to our students' need for genuine challenge and adventure.
Surveys find that conservation-minded adults tend to trace those concerns to time spent in the wilderness. Thus the superficiality of much widespread support for “the environment” is betrayed by our growing failure to plant real seeds of stewardship when they have the best chance to blossom. This failure is vividly captured in Richard Louv’s recent book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Louv bases his provocative “diagnosis” in part upon the findings of researchers who claim that contact with nature reduces symptoms of hyperactivity and attention-deficit disorders.
Accordingly, as a Gurian Model School, the ESOL is aligned with Michael Gurian’s pedagogical philosophy, emphasizing brain-based and gender-specific teaching awareness—such as appealing to the spatial-mechanical inclinations of the male brain—and comes at a time when the research continues to confirm the ability of wilderness education to effectively foster lasting character formation in ways that are difficult in traditional classroom settings. Studies of the positive impacts of wilderness education programs, years after their completion, find success in a wide range of areas, including outdoor skills, interpersonal skills, leadership skills, self-awareness, change in life perspectives, improved GPAs, better performance on standardized tests, reduced discipline and classroom management problems, increased engagement and enthusiasm for learning, greater pride and ownership in accomplishments, greater enthusiasm among teachers for instruction, and higher student attendance.
The ESOL program recognizes that invaluable learning occurs outside of the classroom, that nothing is more “outside of the classroom” than the wilderness, and that the best preparation for engagement with environmental issues is actual experience in the environment. Inspired by Saint Thomas Aquinas’ distinction between our theoretical and practical dimensions, the ESOL requires students not only to participate in reading seminars, but also to deepen this book-knowledge on environmental service projects, and to fortify it in intensive, wilderness leadership expeditions.