Courtesy of Glacier Institute
The Glacier Institute has announced it’s July courses, which will get you outside and enjoying the Flathead!
· July 6-7, 2014 – The Art of Interpretive Writing – Instructor Alan Leftridge, PhD With Glacier National Park as your subject, develop new writing skills with the five elements of interpretive writing. This genre seeks to connect facts and ideas to readers’ experiences and emotions so they can understand and appreciate the value of a place like Glacier. Learn techniques to achieve these goals in your own writing by examining dynamic examples. Practice writing short texts that relate to your audience, reveal information, and provoke your readers to think and care. With these new skills, you can write powerful blogs, essays, articles, and commentary. Join veteran instructor Alan Leftridge, who has taught more than 100 Interpretive Writing workshops! Lodging is available for $32/person per evening for the duration of this course! Course Fee: $175
· July 13, 2014 – Wildflower Wanderings – Instructor Janet Paul Bones, M.Ed. The wildflowers of Glacier are spectacular. They are especially beautiful against the rugged backdrop of mountain peaks. Their fragility is even more striking when the adverse environment of their habitat is understood. In this class, the goal is to discover and enjoy Glacier’s wildflowers in an informal and relatively non-technical manner. The group will enjoy discovering the diversity of Glacier’s wildflowers–the spectacular and the inconspicuous. Structure and function of plant parts, plant tolerance, adaptation, distribution, habitat, and limiting factors will be discussed as they apply to flowering plants along the trail. Course Fee: $65
· July 14, 2014 – Of Bears and Berries – Instructor Dave Streeter We will hike through important grizzly habitat and observe the scene of a litany of human/bear contacts that has helped shape Glacier’s bear policies. On the trail we will look for bear sign, scat and feeding opportunities for trail side talks. We will discuss the life cycle of the bear, including mating, reproduction and raising the cubs. We will connect the landscape of the Continental Divide and how the bear uses it. Instructor Dave Streeter will relate personal encounters with each of these denizens in his 38 years of hiking this territory. We will talk of the bear research ongoing here and the unfortunate human/bear incidents. Course Fee: $65
Solely dedicated to education, the Glacier Institute serves adults and children as an educational leader in the Crown of the Continent ecosystem, emphasizing outreach and field-based learning experiences; the non-profit Institute provides an objective and science-based understanding of the area’s ecosystem and it interactions with people. Marking its 31st year of educational programs, the Glacier Institute is a long-time educational partner with Glacier National Park, Flathead National Forest, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and Flathead Valley Community College. The Institute offers family programs, youth science adventure camps, Discovery School at the Big Creek Outdoor Education Center and adult educational programs. The Institute has never turned away a child who has requested an educational scholarship and has welcomed over 28,000 Flathead Valley elementary school children to its Discovery School three-day immersion learning program at the Big Creek Outdoor Education Center.
You can register for these courses by calling (406) 755-1211 or online.
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