Steppin' Out builds community and confidence while exploring new friendships and new vistas. No experience with the outdoors is required and all are encouraged to join.
Steppin’ Out
- Nurtures friendships with classmates
- Facilitated by upper-class mentors
- Supported by partner faculty and staff
- Builds a strong and supportive community through shared experience and challenge in the outdoors
This system that encourages belonging, trust, and connection to peers helps students throughout their collegiate careers. Some research even suggests that students in similar orientation programs achieve increased GPAs, completed their degrees, and successfully persisted at their schools at higher rates than peers who did not participate in these programs. But mostly, the lessons learned in these adventures transfer to students’ broader lives, instilling grit and confidence in the face of challenge and uncertainty. The confidence achieved supports each student’s successful transition to their new home as a Bearcat at Willamette University.
Steppin’ Out 2024 – Oregon Coast Basecamp
- Dates: Saturday, August 31 – Monday, September 2
- Cost: $250
- Registration: Opens June 7 and closes when full.
(Spots limited to 24 first-year and transfer students.)
On this three-day Oregon Coast Basecamp experience participants will hike on the coast, paddle on a 600-acre lake, and camp just off the beach. Small groups of students will set up a basecamp in a state park campground. During the day, teams will embark on new adventures, traveling to new hikes, paddling locations, or beach exploration and each evening teams have an opportunity to interact with other basecamp teams also camping at the park.
Days will be filled with adventures like hiking, beachcombing or paddling, including possible options of kayaking and paddleboarding on Devils Lake, hiking local treasures like Cape Lookout State Park’s quintessential cape, making nature sightings of whales, birds, tide-pooling invertebrates, other wildlife, and picturesque views, as well as taking a cold dip in the Pacific Ocean. Throughout, students can enjoy building new friend communities through shared camp games or just hanging out with your new classmates. Nightly, participants return to the campsite for interactive meal prep, activities, bonding, conversations, and sleeping under the stars.
All hiking, paddling, and exploring activities are for beginners, at a low intensity, and will include instruction as needed. No outdoor experience or advanced fitness is necessary, but a willingness to participate is required. To prepare, try some physical activities such as swimming, hiking, walking, or biking prior to your arrival. Get plenty of rest and hydrate prior to this trip. Most importantly bring a great attitude and willingness to learn.
Community Context and Land Acknowledgements
Throughout the entire program, we will be recreating on land where various indigenous groups were violently removed. Leaders will be discussing this intersecting history, and the contemporary issues surrounding outdoors equity. Participants should be willing to engage in these conversations during their experience.
