Natural Science 200/300 (3 credit hours)

This course develops the students’ wonder and knowledge of the natural world through extensive field study of all the major habitats of the American West. Students will learn to identify the principal trees and vegetation, as well as the common birds and mammals of the area stretching from Glacier National Park to the High Plains of New Mexico. Understanding the causes of weather patterns and habitat formation and change will also be woven into the daily assignments. The common text is the Audubon Field Guide for the Western States in addition to generous readings from the great explorers and naturalists of the West, including Audubon, Muir, Roosevelt, Leopold, and Abbey.

Humanities 200/300 (3 credit hours)

What is the role of friendship in the quest for happiness?  Is happiness found in community or alone?  How can literature help us to clarify human actions and deepen our understanding of character and the purpose of a life lived well? This course allows the students to consider these questions and the theme of the quest in the Western tradition as they reflect on their own passage across the Western landscape. Readings are drawn from such canonical texts as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Owen Wister’s The Virginian, as well as short readings from philosophical texts in the virtue ethic traditions of Aristotle and the Stoics.

Politics 200/300 (3 credit hours)

How does one make the transition from a vision of a leader (in literature, for example) to developing the traits of a leader? What made the men of the West worthy of admiration in terms of skills, habits of thought, and resilience? Readings will be drawn from Lewis and Clark, Parkman, and Roosevelt, as well as the readings undertaken in other classes. Field work will include practical testing of the aspirational vision offered by literary authors against every changing challenge of the frontier.

Theology 200/300 (1 credit hour)

Alongside reading Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, students will consider the place of the wilderness in the formation of Catholic theology and prayer. The course will involve a careful and active study of the shorter versions of the Liturgy of the Hours as well as devotions maintained by the Catholic communities of the American Southwest.