Research Symposia

About the Symposia

In 1992, CEO's research committee organized its first biennial research symposium at Indiana University’s Bradford Woods, which hosted the event through 2018. Due to unfortunate circumstances, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the 15th symposium was delayed until 2022. The committee selected YMCA’s beautiful Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain, North Carolina, as the new host of the symposium.

The aim of the symposium is to assist outdoor educators in advancing the philosophical, theoretical, and empirical bases of outdoor education through several ways. First, the symposium enables scholars to present their work to one another and to others in the field. Second, the symposium fosters conversation and builds a community among researchers in outdoor education. Third, the symposium provides a forum to address areas of new or ongoing concern to researchers and scholars in outdoor education. Three decades after its inaugural meeting, the purpose of the CEO Research Symposium has remained the same.

The symposium is small and has retained an informal and highly interactive atmosphere. It attracts scholars and practitioners from a wide variety of academic disciplines and outdoor education professional settings and has maintained a loyal attendance, drawing researchers from across the country and around the world eager to discuss a diversity of topics.

Visit subpages for details of the 16th and 15th symposia.