Green Mountain College is located on 155 acres of land between the Adirondack and Green Mountains, featuring an organic farm, a ropes course, and trails. The College is very environmentally centered, with tons of outdoor trips, and degrees offered in natural resources management, environmental studies, and sustainable food systems. Coupling hands-on learning, the outdoors, and a liberal arts curriculum, Green Mountain College seeks to “foster the ideals of environmental and personal responsibility, civic engagement, entrepreneurial spirit, and global understanding.

Outdoor clubs at Green Mountain include Farm Crew, Equestrian Club, Rowing, the bike and ski shop, the outdoor recreation alliance, skate club, ultimate, rugby and quidditch. The campus opened a biomass plant in 2010, installed a wind turbine and solar panels for the student union. This allowed the campus to become the second college in the nation to become carbon neutral in 2011.

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Situated on 37 acres on Mount Desert Island, College of the Atlantic is a small liberal-arts college that offers bachelor’s and master’s degrees solely in human ecology. College of the Atlantic is fairly experimental in its teaching methods, with tons of field-based learning, and lots of community involvement. The campus centers around two organic farms, and two off-shore island research stations. The school’s environmental focus is particularly evident in campaigns to increase sustainability. College of the Atlantic was the first campus to make a multi-year commitment to being powered entirely by renewable energy, and the first school to hold a zero carbon footprint graduation.

Though only a few hundred students in size, College of the Atlantic offers many outdoor orientation programs that explore Maine’s wilderness. These trips range from rock climbing, sailing, sea kayaking, cycling, diving, to backpacking. For those wishing to explore the wilderness on their own, much of Mt. Desert Island (home to College of the Atlantic) is covered by Acadia National Park, with scores of beautiful harbors, sounds, lakes, and ponds.

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San Diego is home to some of the best weather in the US, access to the Pacific, and a number of great local state parks. UCSD’s Mission Bay Aquatic Center is one of the largest waterfront instructional facility in the world. The center teaches over 15,000 participants a year in wakeboarding, sailing, surfing, stand up paddling, waterskiing, rowing, kayaking, and windsurfing. The center offers private lessons, public classes, as well as rentals.

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography–a department at UCSD– is one of the largest ocean and earth science research centers in the world. Particularly for educational opportunities in the field, UC San Diego is second to none.

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Middlebury is housed in Vermont’s scenic Champlain Valley, with the Green Mountains to the east, and the Adirondacks to the west. Due to the beautiful surroundings and high quality buildings, the campus is known as “Club Midd” by some students and alumni. As tribute to the college’s idyllic setting, and the learning benefits provided by the outdoors, Middlebury has recently changed their mission to incorporate sustainability policies, vowing to become carbon neutral by 2016. Features of Middlebury’s sustainability initiative include a biomass gasification plant, organic farming, a recycling center, and environmentally friendly buildings.

Middlebury houses 17 of its own ski trails in its College Snow Bowl ski area. The school also hosts the country’s oldest winter carnival, featuring music and a ski competition. Outdoor Clubs are prevalent on campus including skiing, log rolling, fly fishing, trap and skeet shooting, mountain club, nordic skiing, cycling, crew, sailing, and quidditch (as well as other more traditional sports). For those who want to go farther afield, a variety of state parks are within a short drive from campus, including Chimney Point State Park, Weybridge Care Natural Area State Park, and Branbury State Park.

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Bozeman mixes one of the best ski locales in the nation (2010 winner of Outdoor magazine’s “best town for skiing in the west”) with a PhD per capita ratio more than twice the national average. MSU is the state’s agricultural college, and was originally placed in Bozeman due to its healthy soils and verdant surroundings. Though out in the Montanan wilderness, the valley surrounding Bozeman is known as the “valley of flowers.”

Bozeman is embedded in nature, surrounded by mountain ranges, and many parts of town are within walking distance of trail heads that run all the way to Yellowstone some 90 miles to the south. The University’s outdoor recreation center is open year around, and hosts rentals and regular trips to local destinations (Yellowstone, Glacier, and Grand Teton National Parks), as well as trips father afield, to California, Mexico, and up into the Canadian Rockies. Student run outdoor-related clubs include the range management club, the science and natural history film making forum, alpine skiing, cycling, climbing, equestrian, logger sports, and ultimate. Bozeman is also home to the Museum of the Rockies, the largest collection of dinosaur fossils in the world.

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Besides the gorgeous weather, world class training opportunities and easy access to southern California’s natural offerings make UCLA a great outdoor school. Myriad classes from biology to geology to environmental sciences take advantage of outdoor offerings. The Marina Aquatic Center offers surfing, kayaking, sailing, windsurfing, stand-up paddling, and rowing, just minutes away in Marina del Rey.

Outdoor clubs at UCLA include Quidditch, dragon boat, rowing, rugby, ultimate, and a number of more traditional sports. Many compete at national levels, just as UCLA’s D1 teams, with which the school is the most decorated university in the nation (UCLA holds 108 national team titles). All the more reason to get outside!

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Humboldt State University features an on campus fishery and one of the most diverse greenhouses in the state of California. Located in Arcata, a charming college town in the far north of California, Humboldt State is within reach of redwood forests, mountains, and beaches. Curricular offerings take full advantage of the region’s pristine natural environment, with certification offered in swiftwater rescue, wilderness first response, and wildfire management.

Outdoor clubs and outings include skiing, cycling, rock-climbing, boat sports, surfing, and many other courses centered around wilderness skills. Crew, logging sports, cycling, and archery all provide other club-related excuses to traverse the outdoors. The University’s Marine Lab is a few minutes drive north. Though if you’re just into exploring on your own, the rocky beaches of the NorCal coast and the Redwood National Forest are both just a few minutes away.

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Lewis and Clark is located on 137 wooded acres in Portland’s southwest hills. Filled with beautiful gardens, a reflective pool, and views of the distant snow covered Mount Hood, it’s hard not to feel at one with nature on Lewis and Clark’s campus. The College Outdoors program boasts a wide range of activities that take students farther afield. Including activities such as cross-country skiing, backpacking, whitewater sports, sea kayaking, and hiking. Using the broad range of habitats on the west coast, College Outdoors trips span across the states of Oregon, California, and Washington.

A wide variety of student organizations and clubs also utilize Lewis and Clark’s great location for the outdoors. Club sports include Sailing, Ultimate Frisbee, Rugby and more traditional sports. The city of Portland itself is a great city for the outdoors, with over 152 miles of interlocking trails, great biking, and thousands of acres of parks.

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Bowdoin is an elite liberal arts school located on 215 beautiful acres in Brunswick, Maine. Bowdoin also owns a Coastal Studies Center 8 miles away on Orr’s Island, a centerpiece of the college’s oceanographic program. Many classes involve working in the field, there are a large variety of outdoor clubs, and Bowdoin’s Outing Club hosts more than 100 excursions a year.

Within striking distance of white water rafting, climbing, and two hours away from the Appalachian Trail, serious outdoor endeavors abound. Hamilton Audubon Sanctuary and Bradbury Mountain State Park also offer extremely close access to both inland and coastal natural areas (respectively). The school mascot is the polar bear for the school’s rich history of exploring the arctic. This legacy continues today through the arctic studies program, a branch of the department of earn and oceanographic science, sociology, and anthropology.

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Evergreen is a progressive, public, four-year liberal art and sciences college set on 1,000+ acres of forest next to the Puget Sound. Hiking trails, beaches, bike paths, and kayaking opportunities are abundant. Besides several closer outdoor locations, Olympic National Park–a massive protected wilderness of more than 900,000 acres–is an hour north. To the east are skiing and snowboarding opportunities. Closer to home students can get involved with community gardens, or the on-campus organic farm that provides food for the cafeteria.

For those interested, a number of trips are hosted by the Outdoor Program. Reservation-based study programs allow students to live and work in tribal communities, and there are a number of outdoor club sports in which to participate.

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