Mission Statement
Our purpose is to enable individuals and organizations to grow through experiences that foster insight and skill development. We encourage the application of these experiences to promote healthier, more fulfilling and productive communities.
Outdoor Wisconsin Leadership School
With over 30 years of experience, OWLS is one of the leading providers of experiential education programs in the Midwest. Offering custom designed programs; participants come to OWLS to experience learning, personal growth, and team development in an outdoor environment. The OWLS program utilizes experiential education methods to empower group participants.
An OWLS program will involve you…
- Intellectually
- Socially
- Emotionally
- Physically
- Completely
…creating the ideal conditions for learning.
OWLS is located on the beautiful, lakefront property of Holiday Home Camp in Williams Bay, WI., just outside of Lake Geneva, and close to Chicago and Northern Suburbs, Rockford, Milwaukee, and Madison.
Learn about our team and culture
We are a team of dedicated professionals, ready to do whatever it takes to improve the lives of OWLS Participants.
OWLS facilitators receive nearly 80 hours of technical training for the safe operation of the ‘high elements’ on campus and spend more than 100 hours in training to learn basic and advanced facilitation skills. In addition to formal training sessions, OWLS instructors also spend time shadowing one another in order to learn new facilitation techniques and to provide constructive feedback for professional growth.
OWLS staff are members of the Association for Challenge Course Technology (ACCT) and the Association for Experiential Education (AEE). ACCT is the primary challenge course industry trade group that develops course construction and operations standards. In 2007 ACCT completed a multi-year process of developing the first truly national standards for challenge course facilitators and managers.AEE exists to connect a global community of educators and practitioners and expand their capacity to enrich lives through Experiential Education. They fulfill that purpose by increasing member skills and knowledge, connecting members to each other, defining and identifying professional standards and best practices, measuring the impact and value of experiential education, and fostering career and employment opportunities for members.
OWLS facilitator certification: National certification is relatively new to the industry, and currently not mandated by any regulatory body. As industry leaders OWLS has been an early supporter of the voluntary certification process developed by ACCT. ACCT has developed standards for certifying facilitators in four classifications: Site Specific, Level 1, Level 2, and Challenge Course Manager. Over the years, OWLS has successfully trained many staff to pass the ACCT certifications (see full list of current certified staff below).
