The Wilderness Ventures office opened for its 40th season in early September and in the past month our crew has been busy making preparations for this monumental season. Our summer season is still nine months away but our planning process is always eighteen months ahead.
Mike and Helen spent two weeks in the northeast, working out plans for future trips and spent a week biking some wonderful back roads near the Saint Lawrence River.
Pete, Paul and Trent have been busy processing our student questionnaires that all of you wrote at the end of your trips. We have been appreciating all of your feedback you gave us and will be making changes to many of our trips per your suggestions. We can always improve our trips and all of our students play an important role with this. Soon we will be compiling parent feedback and then all of the information will be used to put finishing touches on many of our adventures. If you have any extra time and would like to make any more suggestions or add any new trip ideas, please drop us a line as we are always interested in what your suggestions may be.
Shauna has been busy organizing our visits to dozens of colleges and universities where we’ll be traveling to in November in our yearly effort to recruit the very best leaders for our summer adventures. Last year, our applications totaled 420 for just 60 new leadership positions. So far, we’ve planned to visit over thirty schools around the country. This November we’ll be visiting schools around the country where we’ll be conducting interviews, hold informational presentations and meet hundreds of applicants. If you are eligible for summer employment, be sure to check out our list of campus visits. You can also download our 2012 leader application from our website.
Bridget and Joseph have been busy with research for our new trips for 2012. Prior to adding a new trip to our current and amazing schedule of opportunities, we decide what type of trip we want to offer, where we think our students would want to go and then what types of activities would be the most exciting and fun. Last summer, we added six new programs: California Explorer, Blue Ridge, Colorado Utah, Pacific Coast Bike, Alaska Two Week, and Costa Rica Service Two Week adventures. We will soon be updating our website so be sure to visit it to learn more about our new programs for 2012.
Shauna, Trent and Mike have read every student evaluation, reviewed every leaders’ performance and have met with every leader while reviewing all of our current trips. We want to be sure our existing trips remain current, vibrant, and exciting.
It has been a busy fall for us all, reviewing all of our 2011 trips, hearing from families about their experiences from last summer, and planning for 2012. We hope you will join us in 2012 for your best summer ever.
