Dozens of candidates from undergraduate business and MBA programs across the U.S. go on wilderness expeditions with NOLS each year. Stephanie Cantu, Senior Student Program Coordinator and academic advisor for the Canfield Business Honors Program at The University of Texas, shares what she sees her students gain from these expeditions, and how they’re set up for success in the ever-changing business world.

Topics: Leadership Skills, wilderness education, Business School, students, MBAs, wilderness, NOLS Custom Education, NOLS Expeditions, Leadership

You might think that seven years of working in the business world would have taught me about leadership. Yet the best lessons I’ve learned have come while climbing rocks and mountains and hiking miles into the wilderness, where traveling with companions over steep snowy passes and through thick forested valleys has forced me to face leadership challenges in ways that I rarely encounter inside.

Topics: Leadership Skills, tolerance for adversity and uncertainty, Skills, Backpacking, MBAs, NOLS Custom Education, Leadership

Postholing is a gamble at best; the unstable snow holds a person carrying a pack one step and collapses the next, leaving you up to your knees in snow when you least expect it.

When my Leadership Development class from Bates College rolled into the NOLS Northeast campus in Gabriels, New York this spring, the last thing I could have imagined was that I would find myself hip deep in rotten snow, moving slower than imaginable, and pondering whether or not I would have to set up my tent in the dark.

Topics: Leadership Skills, Backpacking, NOLS Northeast, NOLS Custom Education, Bates College, Stories, Student Stories, Leadership

On the sixth day of our eight-day expedition in the Aysén Region of Chilean Patagonia, we traversed what we called the “alpine pass,” a rocky, snow-speckled valley a mile above sea level. The rain on the pass was cold, almost icy, and the wind blew it horizontally into our faces as we hiked. It was not unlike some winter storms I experienced growing up in Chicago, where the wind blows so cold and strong that a direct gust leaves you gasping for breath. My usual reaction to that kind of weather is to bundle up and steel myself to endure it until it mercifully goes away (or avoid it all together by moving away from Chicago).

Topics: Leadership Skills, tolerance for adversity and uncertainty, NOLS Patagonia, Columbia Business School, Backpacking, NOLS Custom Education, Stories, Student Stories, Leadership

The more that time separates me from my NOLS Expedition with STEP in the summer of 2013, the more I find myself reflecting on the ephemeral 21 days that I spent in Prince William Sound. Preserved in the haze inherent to all fleeting memories, I remember the physical exhaustion, the arduous and cold days and the ill-fated cooking.

Topics: Leadership Skills, Skills, Kayaking, inspiring women, NOLS Custom Education, Leadership

There I was in the middle of the Galiuro Wilderness in southern Arizona. Traversing a mountain trail at top speed for the terrain, sweating profusely in the desert sun, and humming Fergie’s 2007 hit “Glamorous.”

As a diehard Metallica fan, I didn’t expect this particular tune to be rattling around in my brain, but my fellow expedition members, 12 high school freshman girls, would not have it any other way.

Topics: Leadership Skills, Backpacking, adventure, NOLS Southwest, NOLS Professional Training, NOLS Custom Education

“What did I get myself into?!”

Topics: Alumni, Sea Kayaking, NOLS Alaska, backcountry, NOLS Professional Training, NOLS Custom Education

What does whitewater canoeing have to do with a board meeting? Or mountaineering with watercooler gossip? More than you’d think.

Topics: Leadership Skills, education, NOLS Professional Training, NOLS Custom Education, Prime, Adult courses

Space, the final frontier, will now be brought into the private business sector as NASA prepares the first commercialized space flight. American soil has been void of launches to space for a while now due to a lack of funding. It has been the goal of NASA and government administration to once again make space flight a part of American industry, and that goal will soon be reached with the help of some incredible NOLS alumni.

NOLS graduates Doug Hurley, Sunita Williams, Bob Behnken, and Eric Boe will proudly participate in the first commercial crew transportation system and lead space exploration into a new era.

Topics: Alumni, Leadership Skills, NASA, Becoming an Instructor, Astronauts, NOLS Professional Training, NOLS Custom Education

Topics: Leadership Skills, NOLS Patagonia, Backpacking, backcountry, NOLS Professional Training, NOLS Custom Education