Protected Areas in a Changing World: • 127 Proceedings of the 2013 George Wright Society Conference on Parks, Protected Areas, and Cultural Sites Teaching the

In 2005, Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods crystallized many people’s concerns that to-day’s youth no longer spend much time outdoors (see also Pergams and Zaradic 2008). This “na-ture deficit ” may be connected to modern plagues such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, stress, depression, anxiety disorders, and childhood obesity. Public land mangers often fear the current generation will fail to support outdoor recreation (see America’s great outdoors). While discussions have focused on K–12 students, this paper discusses college-level courses that the principal author has offered in national parks over the last five years. These courses focus on the politics of the national parks—Grand Tetons and Yellowstone (three times), Mammoth Cave (four times), Great Smoky Mountains (once), and Indiana Dunes (once). We will discuss only the Greater Yellowstone and Mammoth Cave experiences here. This paper’s key finding is simple: students like experiential courses, they learn a lot in them, and they evaluate them favor-ably. They generally emerge with a greater sense of stewardship. Course objectives and theories of experiential learning Field experiences confront academic knowledge with reality on the ground, including the physical landscape, fauna and flora, and social setting (Cantor 1997; Dewey 1977; Kolb 1984). Applyin