The National Outdoor Leadership School, also known as NOLS, got its start outside Lander in 1965. Students in wool Army surplus clothes trekked into the Wind River Mountains with heavy external frame backpacks to learn how to survive and even thrive in the backcountry.
Since then, the school has taken students on wilderness expeditions around the world and established more campuses domestically and internationally. NOLS will celebrate its 60th birthday with a reunion in Lander later this month. The three-day event includes talks from well-known climber Alex Honnold and NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann, a former NOLS instructor herself, talked with president Sandy Colhoun about the school’s successes and challenges since 1965 and what’s on the horizon moving forward.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Sandy Colhoun: It's hard to believe that a little school founded in Sinks Canyon has grown to become a $40 million business and a nonprofit education school that has educated thousands and thousands of students. We're so proud of our wilderness medicine [program], which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. They educated over 20,000 students last year, teaching them skills where they can step up in an emergency.
But we're also proud of the training that we've done for our students around the world to both promote their ability to lead and step up in their communities at home after they've been trained, but also to be comfortable in the wilderness.
We're incredibly proud of our partnerships with folks like NASA, taking astronauts who go to space out on NOLS expeditions, [also] naval midshipmen, Google executives. The breadth of students that NOLS has served is super exciting and we're proud of that.
Hannah Habermann: What are some challenges you would point to from the last 60 years?
SC: I'm so glad you said that, because we do have them. The reality is the world has changed so much. There was a time when NOLS and Outward Bound just competed against each other, in terms of trying to secure students.
But as we all know, the world has radically changed in terms of opportunities that our students can choose from. The challenge for NOLS right now is about enrollment and making sure that we can take our message and make NOLS the course of choice when they're choosing to do a backcountry expedition or a wilderness medicine course.
We have a lot of competition, from your cell phone to your students’ athletic choices. We're one of many, many choices.
HH: What drew you to NOLS in the first place, and what sparks excitement for you about NOLS as a school?
SC: I took my NOLS course in 1986. I was a kid from Baltimore, Maryland, and it absolutely changed the trajectory of my life.
It was really hard for me. It was a 30-day Wind River mountaineering course. It was rainy and wet. That summer, I think I lost a bunch of weight. It was hard, but it gave me this foundation of outdoor skills and experience that has followed me throughout my entire life.
What gets me excited about NOLS: I love our students. I love our instructors. They're humble. They're competent, they're kind and they're the kind of people that we want educating students.
I'll just say this. The most important thing I can say about NOLS [is] the world is a divisive place right now. I don't think anybody will argue about that.
I believe that NOLS students are needed more in the world now than ever before. People who can have disagreements and actually work their way through it, and they learn those skills when you're out in a remote and austere environment. You learn how to cooperate and work together as part of a team and that's what NOLS does so, so well.
HH: How would you say NOLS has impacted Wyoming and Lander specifically?
SC: I'll tease some exciting news for you that we are going to release at the 60th reunion, but we commissioned a report on the economic impact that NOLS has had on Fremont County and the state of Wyoming.
The economic impact that we have brought to bear on the state of Wyoming on an annual basis is really larger than I think anyone can imagine, and we're excited to share that because it's done independently. It wasn't like us, you know, self-promotion. We had a third party come in and do the analysis for us.
The other thing I would just say is that one of the less tangible pieces of NOLS is that when students come to NOLS and they come to Lander and they come to the Rockies and they come to Wyoming, so often it's the beginning of a lifetime relationship with the state.
They come back over many, many decades. Not just from the domestic United States, but from around the world. That includes instructors who come from all corners of the planet, from Brazil and Chile and India to East Africa.
We're bringing so many people to the state of Wyoming and those are economic impacts that are less tangible than the report.
HH: Earlier you spoke to some of the challenges in terms of student enrollment and competing with cell phones and sports. From your perspective, how is NOLS looking in terms of long-term health as a business?
SC: I'm an optimist at heart. I think the word that I'll be using a lot when we gather for the 60th is “momentum.”
NOLS has an extraordinary amount of momentum right now. We're working on a lot of strategic partnerships with colleges, universities and secondary schools. We're developing new programs.
We're very excited, for example, about a new semester program called the NOLS Global Healthcare Semester, where you take an EMT [emergency medical technician] course in Lander and then go off either to India or East Africa to practice medicine to practice those EMT skills and also to take an expedition.
We're developing new products, we're innovating. NOLS has been operating in the red for several years, and we've greatly reduced that year over year over year, and in addition, have had record fundraising. In combination, all of those things make me incredibly optimistic.
HH: I'm curious if NOLS is experiencing any impact or concern about how the state of the federal budget is going to impact NOLS?
SC: Fortunately for us, NOLS does not rely on federal dollars to operate. We're privately funded. We're a nonprofit, we're an educational organization.
Where the impact is really felt, I believe, is in cuts to the national parks and cuts in national forest areas and places where trails haven't been cleared or there are fewer rangers on patrol.
We feel those impacts directly and we're trying to do our best to support the community. For example, where we operate, where we're on trails, we've sent some crews in to try to help clear those trails.
The place where I see the biggest challenge is just slightly outside of our direct business as a direct education school and in what's happening in the wilderness classrooms where we operate. We are worried about that and we're focused on it in a big way.
HH: What are some of your hopes for the next 60 years of NOLS?
SC: A giant focus of ours is to get out to colleges and universities, community schools, secondary schools and high schools, and tell the NOLS story and make them know that we have financial aid available, that we have courses for all ages. To get the NOLS story in a wider community, that's one of my top priorities.
I want to make sure that I leave NOLS in an incredibly healthy position. We still have work to do. I will not be happy or satisfied until we have a fully balanced budget and that NOLS is strong in that way. We're close. We're very close, and we have lots of resources to get it done.
The last thing I'll just say is that, I just think that the NOLS experience transforms lives in so many different ways and the vision of our school is to elevate the leader in everyone.
What we hope is that you come back from a NOLS course and you take your leadership skills wherever you want to. It might be in your synagogue, your church, your school, your family or in your company. You can lead in so many different ways.
That's the fundamental thing that we do at NOLS that I would like to make sure we continue doing for the next 60 years.
