Majoring in Camp
How Colleges & Universities Are Preparing Your Next Director
In some ways, the responsibilities involved in directing a summer camp have changed drastically in the last several years; in other ways, they remain remarkably similar. On one hand, your goal as a camp director is simple: make every camper’s summer great. But the knowledge required to accomplish that goal has become vast: business management acumen, classroom teaching experience, conservation know-how, visions of insurance, coaching skills, even an understanding of psychology.
There are two usual paths to gaining this expertise: (1) hang around a camp long enough and you’ll learn every facet of how it runs and (2) get a degree. But a degree in what?
Recreation management? J.C. Norling, an assistant professor in Adventure-based Management at Lyndon State College, said that, while the bulk of their students “are into ski resort management,” the department’s core classes focus on “management, legal, and leadership skills.”
Outdoor leadership? The schools that offer programs like that tend to have either an environmental focus or an athletic focus, though rarely both.
A business curriculum can gloss over the significant benefits of knowing teaching methodologies; a degree in education will often leave its recipient unprepared for fundraising, budgeting, and recruitment.
The most common background for camp directors is a number of summers at camp. Dave Peterson, Resident Camp Director at Cape Cod Sea Camps, said, “I think spending every summer of my college years as a camp counselor and then two years as a teacher and athletic director in a high school provided a great foundation.” There are other career paths that supplement that situational education — Ellen Flight, Songadeewin’s director, said, “Being a classroom teacher and learning how to work with parents was most helpful to me in my early years as a director.”
Some see the classroom as the perfect place to begin grooming camp directors. Thayer Raines, Director of Roaring Brook Camp for Boys, is also the Director of the Youth Development & Camp Management Program at Green Mountain College. In just its second year, it already boasts ten majors. Among the advantages of learning in an academic setting, Thayer listed several, among them the “ability to take minors in areas of focus that compliment career interests: environmental studies, business, religion, therapeutic adventure;” one-stop shopping for classes with experts and certification courses in “hard skill areas of specialization” like aquatics, Leave No Trace, and mediation; and the wealth of resources available in a college setting that allow “exposure to the big picture of youth development through practicum and internship opportunities.”
The program was developed in part by using the ACA’s Certified Camp Director (CCD) curriculum. It’s gained popularity, according to Thayer, due to its focus on youth development, which separated it from a more traditional recreation studies major. “Day camping is the fastest growing segment of the camping industry,” he said, and any town recreation program worth its salt has a day camp now.
Brandeis University has also established a fellowship through its Heller School for Social Policy and Management specifically for Jewish camp leadership and management. Jonathan Sarna, Director of the University’s Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program, said they’ve awarded two fellowships so far and are currently recruiting for a third. It made sense for Brandeis to build on their faculty’s “unique expertise in the field of Jewish camp,” including Amy Sales, who wrote How Goodly Are Thy Tents?, a survey of twenty Jewish summer camps in the US. The fellows at Brandeis are in a program “that gives them an MBA, as well as Jewish training.” At both Brandeis and Green Mountain, all students thus far have had rich camp experiences, either as campers or counselors, and often as both.
While there are still few schools offering majors in camp management, several offer individual courses. Ann Marie Gallo, Director of Summer’s Edge Day Camp, is an Associate Professor at Salem State College, where she teaches an elective course called Camp Administration as part of the Leisure Studies curriculum. “Like experience in camping is invaluable, but the administrative skills that I lacked included the financial aspects, risk management, and marketing,” she wrote. “I feel a great sense of pride to be able to share what I learned ‘on the job’ before new camp leaders actually encounter it!”
The learning experience runs two ways in the classroom; Thayer noted that, “To really get to know any subject well, you need to teach it to someone else.” For example, he became a mediation trainer in order to teach it at Green Mountain, but has started to train his own staff at Roaring Brook, too, to empower them to resolve conflicts.
Check out our professional calendar for information on upcoming training. It might also behoove you to attend our annual conference, full of workshops and seminars.