"This thesis explores the extent that cultural risk contributes to issues of risk and safety in the led outdoor activity (LOA) sector. The research component develops, applies, and tests a cultural filter to the Networked-Hazard Analysis Risk Management System (Net-HARMS), a risk assessment method underpinned by the systems thinking approach to accident causation. Findings suggest that cultural factors have an emergent effect on system behavior, and...

"What traditional rites of passage (ROPs), contemporary outdoor education (OE) programs, and Western educational systems share in common is an approach to teaching and learning that is focused on specific, predetermined learning outcomes for individuals. This paper outlines the process of designing and implementing an ROP curriculum for a wilderness summer camp that was informed by theories in emergent design, intersectional feminism, and experiential...

"This study sought to outline the considerations for implementing an after-school indoor rock climbing club as an extracurricular activity during an era of COVID-19. The purpose of this research was to create an after-school climbing club for students at Salida High School. Additionally, this study gathered information to either support or reject the continuation of this club beyond the study timeline. Using action research as a methodology, this...

"'Election as Ceremony: Politics and the Art of Transformational Dialogue' explores the parallels between ensemble theater practice and political campaigns. I examine established comparisons between theater and politics and then expand on those to outline a new territory of research by describing eight correlations of phenomena within political campaigns and ensemble theater practice. The research combines my history as a performer and political operative...

"Eleven-year-old Joey and her fifteen-year-old brother, Mathias, live alone in rural New Hampshire. They were abandoned by their mother - a woman who grew increasingly dysfunctional in the aftermaths of six ruined marriages until the year she met a well to-do librarian with a sinister obsession, and deemed him her last chance. The librarian came with an ultimatum: she had to walk away from her older children. When Mathias robs a bank with a squirt...

"Examined through the lens of my own resiliency and adverse childhood experiences, this autoethnography explores why some youth succeed after adverse childhood experiences in their personal lives. The autoethnographic method of research places value on the self-reflexive process of understanding and can be written in many, many forms. I use narrative accounts about personal adverse childhood experience, juvenile delinquency, and dysfunctional family...

"The research presented within this thesis is a preliminary test of the effectiveness of mapping ethnographic information in the form of a life history interview to the recovered historic assemblage at Twenty-Nine Palms Inn, California. The onset of COV-SARS-2 (COVID-19) greatly impacted portions of this study. I was limited in my access to locational data and to the historic assemblage, and special arrangements finally made the artifacts available....

"Ecotherapy and nature-based approaches represent a recently growing field of interventions that focus on rekindling a reciprocal human relationship with nature, one that yields both deeper care, concern, and connection to the planet, as well as positive mental health benefits. As mental illness rises in the United States, ecotherapy has emerged as an intervention method that promises not only mental health benefits to those diagnosed, but also to...

"This paper explores and assesses the impacts of a proposed nature-based leadership development model, with accompanying outdoor practices, on the personal growth and capacity-building of organizational leaders.... [An] original four-quadrant model was created that brings together living systems principles, leadership capacities, the four elements of nature, and specific nature-based practices into an integrated framework for personal development...

"This study explored the well-being of wildlife trackers in their intrapersonal, ecological, and social identities as influenced by their wildlife-tracking practices and their connection with the wildlife-tracking community. Through an ethnographic methodology, using the methods of interview, survey, and participant observation, I delved into the culture of wildlife trackers to learn how they interact in the world and the ways that tracking and tracking...