Southern Illinois University Carbondale
AC-5: Immersive Experience

The Environmental Education program at Touch of Nature Environmental Center runs programs geared toward the education of university, private organizations and the public in how planetary systems function and our changing human relationship to these systems by immersing people into the land to see and understand them firsthand. Considering how we have interacted as a part of the system in the past and how we are presently engaged provides us a basis for considering the future and our crucial role in the sustainability of all species. We employ whatever works to help get this idea across. In addition to hands on activities in the landscape we utilize literature, self-expression, ancestral skills, observation, and other techniques in the execution of our work. Hiking and paddling on the land and on the water to observe systems at work and the human intervention/management of these systems happens both on site and at locations further afield. Programming includes summer camps, community events, campfire programs, interpretive hikes and paddles, trailbuidling, etc.