Audubon Expedition Institute

Higher Education's Most Extraordinary Journey!

AEI's Mission Statement:

Audubon Expedition Institute offers higher education that fosters ecological awareness and personal and societal transformation through immersion in a variety of environments and cultures, critical reflection, and experiential learning communities. As learners, we awaken to a deeper sense of participation within the web of life and engage in lifelong ecological and social justice and responsible global citizenship.

What We Do:

The Audubon Expedition Institute at Lesley University (AEI) is a fully accredited traveling undergraduate and graduate degree program. For more than thirty years we have educated and inspired compassionate and creative environmental leaders and activists.

AEI immerses students into the issues behind textbooks and the media through direct experience. Students are asked to challenge their intellect and assumptions through real life experiences. While our students learn about subjects such as biodiversity, geology and natural history, they also learn first hand about issues such as environmental justice, sustainable economics, conflict resolution, ethics and environmental psychology.

Our students meet the people who are part of the solution.

AEI has developed an extensive network of professionals and specialists throughout North America who teach, inspire and share with our students their experiences, perspectives, and wisdom. Some of the people we visit include grassroots activists, government officials, lobbyists, professional environmentalists, industry leaders, laborers, scientists, and authors. AEI offers a powerful education for students who are serious about protecting the environment, and exposes students to a broad network of career possibilities and people working within these fields.

AEI students also learn from the land itself. Dorms are replaced with sleeping out under the stars. A portion of each semester is spent in the backcountry. Our teachers include fjords, coral reefs, ancient forests, barrier islands, desert canyons, Pacific Rim volcanoes, and alpine valleys. But our students also see, first hand, environmental impacts on these areas. They visit places such as oil fields and mineral mines, nuclear waste repositories, hydro-electric dams, clear cut forests, paper pulp mills, and inner-cities.

Our students learn from each other.

Each learning community consists of up to twenty students. Students of all ages join AEI's learning communities, resulting in a rich mixture of experience and insight. Two to three AEI faculty facilitate the learning community and its activities, guiding students as they take charge of their education. Participatory decision making is emphasized, and students gain valuable conflict resolution skills by learning to mediate between different viewpoints.

The Audubon Expedition Institute is on the progressive edge of both environmental education and philosophy.

The program is based on the assumption that the best way to truly learn about the environment is to experience it directly.

As W. B. Yeats once wrote, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." This belief permeates every aspect of the AEI program.