At the UVM Adventure Ropes Course, our mission is to provide and promote adventure-based, experiential learning and cooperative team-building opportunities for UVM and the surrounding community, utilizing the values and aspiration outlined in UVM's "Our Common Ground": Respect, Integrity, Innovation, Openness, Justice and Responsibility.
As realized through experiential ropes course challenges, openness and respect for self and others provide a gateway to intentional group development, cooperative teamwork, and personal growth. By working with and supporting others in challenging situations, individuals develop leadership, communication, problem-solving and trust-building skills. Physical safety and emotional safety take precedence over all individual and program goals. In ropes course programming, mutual support by group members is integral to individual success, and community contribution by all participants is essential to group success.
Recognizing that healthy risk taking is an important part of the learning process, we subscribe to the philosophy of Challenge by Choice. That is, we encourage but don't require participation in all activities, and we engage participants in helping to manage their own safety and the safety of the group. Individuals choose the level and extent of their own participation. This provides an opportunity to meet potentially difficult or frightening challenges in a supportive and respectful environment, and a chance to back off when pressure and self-doubt become too strong. Through the Full Value Contract participants agree to create and maintain a safe and respectful atmosphere where participants work together to support individual and group goals.
The use of the ropes course as a cooperative teambuilding and group problem-solving tool emerged in 1971 with the Project Adventure (PA) program located at the Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School in Massachusetts. Initially used as an alternative to traditional physical education offerings, ropes course programming has been adapted to address a broad range of educational, recreational, therapeutic, and professional developmental needs.
In the spring of 1996, John Abbott (Assistant Director of UVM
Student Life & Outdoor Programs) and Allie Cohen (from the UVM
Office of Drug and Alcohol Education) collaborated to identify
experiential and adventure-based educational programs to help
judicially-referred UVM students explore substance abuse issues. A
local ropes course seemed the perfect solution, and the idea of
creating a ropes course at UVM was borne. Through a gift from the class
of 1999 and after years of planning, the UVM ARC opened in the spring
of 2000. In 2002, the UVM ARC moved to its current location, the
90-acre UVM property in South Burlington known as the Wheeler Farm. We
are proud to have worked with over 400 groups to date, and we look
forward to a long history working in and for the community.
Last modified April 20 2007 08:22 PM
