Outdoor House/Earth Lodge

If outdoor recreation or the environment tops your list of interests, the Outdoor House/Earth Lodge is the program for you. The Outdoor House/Earth Lodge has been described as “a community for naturalists by naturalists.”

Students from different backgrounds will be able to come together and share a communal living experience in which they will get involved in:

·        Environmentally friendly practices

·        Outdoor recreation

·        Social and political issues linked to the environment

·        Green and recycling issues on campus

·        The impact of technology, art and media on our natural world

·        And whatever else you can think of…

The program will truly become what the students make it year-to-year. Residents of the Outdoor House/Earth Lodge will be encouraged to self-govern and plan extracurricular activities and promote the Lodge as a place where other students and organizations that share the same passion for the Earth can feel welcome and at home.

About the Class—ENGL 206: Natural Reflections of Fiction and Nonfiction

This class will focus on personal and intellectual interaction with nature and use fiction and non-fiction works to examine those interactions. Students will examine the natural world through a diverse collection of literature and media.

The class also will utilize films and outdoor excursions from the James River to the Blue Ridge Mountains and beyond, below ground and above! In this way, the course serves as an important platform to bring the members together to share their experiences and plan community activities.

This literature class, combined with the outdoor adventures, skill training sessions, movie nights, craft workshops and planning dinners, will take the classroom experience to a higher level. Plus, the course will count as your literary studies general education requirement (FLST).

About the Professor—Professor Lee Carleton             

Currently involved in doctoral studies in Media, Art and Text at VCU, Lee Carleton is assistant director of the Writing Center and an avid hiker with decades of outdoor experience. Not your ordinary academic, he also is a part-time farrier, op-ed writer and scholar interested in education, alternative community projects and digital media. He continues to develop his hypertext of Huxley’s novel Brave New World, which he has shared at domestic and international conferences on teaching and technology.

Lee holds an M.A. in Composition & Rhetoric with a specialization in literature from Virginia Commonwealth University and a B.S. degree in Bible from Lancaster Bible College.