Canceled: Leadership Expedition to Patagonia | 1.5 Academic Credit

Leadership Expedition to Patagonia

Leadership Programs is excited to announce the sixth annual Johnson Leadership Expedition to Patagonia. Students will travel to the Aisen Region of Chilean Patagonia  where they’ll test and enhance their leadership skills in an unpredictable, challenging, and dynamic wilderness environment.

Students can expect to:

• experience ambiguity and adversity;
• be forced to make decisions with incomplete, inconclusive, and/or conflicting information;
• take turns assuming full responsibility for the entire group; and,
• receive real-time feedback and coaching on their leadership efforts.

In short, this is a chance to practice, rather than just talk about, real leadership.

Students will also be expected to support each other’s leadership development and will be guided, in real-time, on how to give effective feedback and coaching to the rest of the team.

Read about (and see photos from) past Patagonia Leadership Expeditions in the Cornell Enterprise here and here, on the Johnson website, and on the NOLS blog!

Patagonia
Patagonia is a remote wilderness of isolated mountain valleys, ragged icy peaks, turbulent rivers, and island archipelagos. This is a land that demands exploration, and students will experience some of its dramatic landscape firsthand. The hallmarks of a NOLS Patagonia course are remoteness, fickle weather, and exploration.

The Johnson team will begin in the Aisen Region of Chile, where they’ll start and end the expedition at NOLS’ main base camp—a working farm of several hundred acres set in a beautiful landscape near the city of Coyhaique.

National Outdoor Leadership School
For the eighth year in a row, Johnson is partnering with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) to plan and execute this expedition. NOLS is an internationally-renowned leadership training institute with 50 years of wilderness training experience. NOLS believes that "what [it] teaches cannot be learned in a traditional classroom or on a city street. It takes...time to develop leadership. The backcountry provides the ideal setting for this unique, experiential education—NOLS classrooms are some of the world’s wildest and most awe-inspiring locations."

 Leadership Expeditions

Leadership Expeditions are a chance to leave Ithaca and dig in, full-time, to your leadership development. Expeditions are designed to give students the opportunity to go through the Johnson leadership learning cycle of instruction, experience, and review multiple times in an intensive, condensed timeframe.

 Logistics
Dates: TBD, inclusive of travel time. The expedition dates are TBD, but students must arrive in Coyhaique, Chile, no later than the evening of TBD (please note that to do that, you will need to depart the United States on TBD). Students will be able to depart Patagonia on TBD (most likely arriving in the United States on the TBD), although it is worth considering a departure on the TBD in case the exhibition team is delayed on the ground.

Eligibility: The expedition is open to all Johnson residential 2nd years and AMBAs. If you are an AMBA student planning on participating in a Johnson Immersion, you must check whether your Immersion start dates will conflict with the dates for this Leadership Expedition. If there is a conflict, you cannot participate. We're sorry, but this expedition is not open to Cornell Tech or Exchange Students. 

Academic Credit: Participation in the Patagonia Leadership Expedition will count as 1.5 academic credits on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis. Please note: You must be available for our pre-departure retreat in December and the post-expedition session in January in order to participate. 

Program Fees: The cost of the expedition includes a program fee to the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) of approximately $2,455, plus round-trip airfare to Balmaceda, Chile (the airport identifier for Balmaceda is BBA), lodging in Coyhaique (one night each at the start and end of the expedition), and a few miscellaneous meals and incidentals in Coyhaique. Students are also responsible for preparing personal gear for the expedition (such as good hiking boots, rain gear, etc.). The amount students will have to spend on gear will vary depending on what students already own; this will be discussed in detail at our information sessions. Please note that all meals during the expedition, as well as all group gear (such as tents, cooking stoves, etc.) are covered by the program fee. Leadership Programs recommends that students budget approximately $4,000-$5,000 in total to participate, as airfare can vary widely from year to year and is difficult to predict. Some students might qualify for student loans to help cover the costs of the expedition since this is an academic class, but you must make an appointment with the financial aid officer, to find out if you qualify.

Important Note about Physical Conditioning: The Patagonia Leadership Expedition is an intense, 10-day physical experience that involves hiking all day, every day, with no trails. If you are considering participating, it is essential that you begin to prepare physically. Please carefully review the attached "NOLS-How to Prepare Physically" document so you can begin your planning.

How to Register