About the expedition
The McCombs Business Honors Leadership Expedition is an 8-day, field-based training for Canfield Business Honors Program (BHP) students from the McCombs School of Business. This action-based leadership practicum takes you out of the classroom and immerses you in the unscripted wilderness context. Here, your decisions have real consequences and collaboration with your peers becomes paramount. Each day you will have the opportunity to exercise individual decisiveness, while simultaneously facilitating effective teamwork amongst your peers - skills relevant in your work as a student of business and in today's economy.
On this expedition, you will backpack through the red rock canyons of the Colorado Plateau in southern Utah. This area is characterized by rugged terrain and delicate beauty, with red sandstone, and green junipers adding color to the arid landscape. Relics of the Ancestral Puebloan culture may still be seen in the form of ruins, petroglyphs, and potshards. At times you will travel across the mesa tops with spectacular views in all directions while at others, you'll wind your way through the labyrinthine depths of deeply incised canyon waterways. You will learn fundamental wilderness travel skills. Map reading and route-finding can be tricky in this convoluted country, providing an excellent classroom for learning these skills.
Leadership is a key component of your canyon course. You will be given responsibility for the structure of the course as your skills and expertise improve. Student leadership teams will be responsible for planning and facilitating the day’s activities.
There are significant technical and environmental challenges on every leadership expedition. NOLS instructors will play evolving roles as students’ knowledge, experience, and abilities increase during this self-contained expedition. Students will take on increasing levels of personal and team responsibility for the technical and interpersonal — what we at NOLS call “EB” or expedition behavior — aspects of the course. NOLS instructors will provide structured briefing, debriefing, feedback, technical expertise, risk management, evaluation, classes, and participant leadership and followership opportunities.
