Welcome to the Chancellor’s Point Project blog.

As this rather grassroots program continues to grow in both interest and momentum we hope that this web site will be a beneficial tool. Here members of Historic St. Mary’s City, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and the local community can learn more about and contribute to the process of bringing Chancellor’s Point Natural History Area back to life.

I hope that this will help connect us all to the ongoing discussions of this exciting project.

Please always feel free to contact me by any means.

Mike Benjamin

jmbenjamin@smcm.edu

j.michael.benjamin@gmail.com


Background

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2 comments:

  1. The Chancellor’s Point Project, also called a local immersion program, has grown out of a conversation that started on a piece of earth about as far from local as possible on the our planet. In January of 2008 a group of students, teachers, and staff from St. Mary’s College of Maryland traveled to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. 2,180 miles west of Chile, this world heritage site is a place where nature and culture meet with intensified intimacy.

    We came with two educators from National Outdoor Leadership School to practice and be trained in Leave No Trace wilderness ethics. This was an extraordinary circumstance for both the outdoor educators and our group because LNT (leave no trace) is typically taught in a backcountry setting. On Rapa Nui, an island only about 60 square miles in size, it is impossible not to run into the culture of both native people and the tourism industry. This experience raised questions within the group about ethics both natural and cultural that are typically not instigated by indoor classroom learning or pristine backcountry. These conversations came home.

    Back in St. Mary’s something clicked for many of us. Not dissimilar to Rapa Nui, we are privileged to be living and learning in a place where nature and culture find great intimacy. Rapa Nui is a World Heritage Site and our own campus sits atop a National Historic District. We live in a landscape that has proven pivotal to human history. There was a sense of grounding in the conversations we had on the trip to Rapa Nui. Biologists, anthropologists, guides, teachers, student, and locals all engaged conversations with agency and purpose. What Chancellor’s Point offers is that grounding that is not just interdisciplinary but connects us with Historic St. Mary’s City and the local community.

    Jackie Mastny and Kathleen Kennedy, two LNT students who came to Rapa Nui, developed a course to be taught as a classroom approach to LNT with an interdisciplinary nature. This course was to provide the opportunity for students to get course credit here at home while being trained in LNT and connecting their studies to the local landscape.

    Spike Meatyard and Mike Benjamin, two more students who went on the trip to Rapa Nui, spent three nights camping in the marshes of Dorchester County. Invited by bay area writer Tom Horton and Chesapeake Bay Foundation outdoor educator Don Baugh, the two worked to develop their own LNT course on the bay via kayak. On their trip they paddled with some of the most influential environmentalists and outdoor educators in the bay area whose experience and encouragement pushed the project even further.

    In a conversation with President Maggie O’Brien, who has been extremely supportive in the pursuit of these ideas, Chancellor’s Point was brought up as a potential local site to practice Leave No Trace. Dr. O’Brien had worked on the board of National Outdoor Leadership School for some time, and has keen interest in the integration of outdoor education and disciplinary academia.

    In only six months the Chancellor’s Point Project has gained serious momentum at both the college and Historic St. Mary’s City. We are at a point where we are ready to start renovations at the site and think seriously about how we can programmatically make this place useful to suit ecological, museum, and academic components simultaneously.

    This is a link to the first proposal that was circulated through the community and has received strong support. More can be found with the links to the ecological, museum, and academic sites.

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  2. The link mentioned above and others can be found on the home page under their category.

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