Faculty Profiles

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Dave’s passion for learning and teaching is the guiding force in his professional life. He is a learner-centered educator who constantly studies and reflects upon the art and science of teaching. He regularly adapts and experiments with his courses in order to gain new insights into how to best meet each learner’s unique needs.

Dave has been a professional outdoor educator for nearly 30 years. During that time, he has worked as a teaching naturalist, has directed camps and outdoor schools, and has taught a broad range of outdoor skills in diverse geographic areas from alpine mountain tops to tropical coral reefs. He has worked for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) as a senior field instructor and has taught over 70 courses as a WMI of NOLS wilderness first aid instructor.

Dave has focused his energy at Prescott College on developing courses that blend adventure pursuits with the study of the ocean environment. As an outdoor educator and naturalist, he facilitates highly experiential and integrated studies involving sea kayaking, scuba diving, freediving, marine natural history, outdoor teaching and leadership skills, and coastal expeditioning. Specifically, Dave teaches the courses Wilderness Explorations and Landscape Studies: Ocean, Sea Kayaking and Marine Natural History, SCUBA and Marine Natural History, Introduction to SCUBA, and the Origins and Directions of Adventure Education.

“I never expected that I would come to a liberal arts college in the middle of Arizona to spend most of my time teaching on the ocean! I love combining the aesthetic grace of sea kayaking and diving with building my students’ understanding of the 70% of our world covered by water. The beauty of a tide pool teaming with life, the underwater acrobatics of a sea lion, or dolphins leaping around our kayaks seldom fail to inspire a dedicated desire to study, understand and protect our ocean planet.”