Continue to Grow and Serve (2024)

Evolve Your Leadership & Military Experience

You’ve dedicated your life to service. A NOLS course can honor your experience and create opportunities to take your skills to new heights.

Born in part from our founder Paul Petzoldt’s service in the 10th Mountain Division in World War II, today NOLS is a leading source of expedition-based leadership training and wilderness medicine certifications and has been serving military members for decades.

With NOLS, service members will find course options for every phase in their career, from ROTC and officer candidates to active duty members to veterans. We are committed to offering experiences that complement and enhance your training—and your life.

U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY ALUMNI AND FRIENDS MOUNTAINEERING EXPEDITION

This course is open to all Alumni of the U.S. Naval Academy

This summer: Join your fellow Naval Academy "Alumni and Friends" on a 7-day mountaineering expedition in Alaska's Chugach Range. Challenge yourself to learn the skills needed to climb the mountains you've always dreamed about. Learn to make a glacier your home and let the mountain air clear your lungs each morning. We hope you'll join us on this expedition with like-minded, motivated USNA Alumni.

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Expeditions

Explore remote wilderness areas around the world, structured around NOLS’ respected leadership curriculum.

Wilderness Medicine Courses

Learn to recognize, treat, and prevent emergencies in the outdoors and earn valued certifications.

Veterans & Transitioning Service Members

You’ve already proven you’re a leader. Now, apply your skills to new challenges.

You can use your veterans benefitsfor a Wyoming-based expedition or wilderness medicine training, EMT training, and career-focused outdoor educator courses. These offerings are gateways to new careers, exploration, and personal growth.

Wilderness medicine certifications are credentials employers value and will prepare you to respond to emergencies in remote, resource-limited environments.

Expeditions are an opportunity to explore some of the most remote wilderness in the Lower 48 while developing interpersonal and outdoor skills. You’ll finish your course with a certification that employers respect, a sense of community, and the skills to take on new adventures.

Active Duty & Reserve

ROTC/Service Academies

NOLS has programs designed for you. Since 2004, over 2,000 midshipmen and cadets have joined NOLS on Service Academy Leadership Expeditions. Our 22 to 26 day Service Academy expeditions are structured to give you opportunities to test the leadership concepts you’ve learned in your officer training.

Living in a close-knit group in the wilderness, you’ll focus on key lessons of self-reliance, team dynamics, and the value of following as well as leading. You will put these skills into practice in an environment that has real consequences. When you finish your course, you’ll be ready to thrive in adversity and take on a variety of leadership roles in any group.

NOLS creates custom expeditions for service academies & ROTC programs.

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Customized Training for Military Units

As a GSA Authorized Federal Supplier, NOLS offers customized expedition and wilderness medicine training to military groups that include service academy students, test pilots, and the special operations community.

Wilderness medicine courses can be tailored to your group’s priorities and take place at a location of your choice. With an emphasis on decision-making and being self-sufficient in resource-limited environments, wilderness medicine training can complement and enhance a team’s unit and knowledge.

Expeditions center on improving interpersonal skills, practicing leadership in a remote, resource-limited environment, and learning alternate strategies for risk management and group decision-making. While meeting the challenges of living in the wilderness, from river crossings to paddling remote shorelines to summiting high peaks, participants learn both the personal and group skills to be effective leaders. Participants complete their courses prepared to be leaders and to serve their teams.

NOLS & the Military

NOLS founder Paul Petzoldt honed his educational philosophy while serving with the 10th Mountain Division during World War II. While stationed at Camp Hale, he distinguished himself as a talented skiing and climbing instructor. Private First Class Petzoldt quickly became Second Lieutenant Petzoldt, and was instrumental in developing rapid, large-scale cliff casualty evacuation procedures.

Since Petzoldt’s time, NOLS has connected many active and former service members with careers and new opportunities. For some, such as Army Special Forces veteran and NOLS instructorJoe Kim, NOLS offered a pathway to a second career in the outdoors. Others have found the tight-knit communities our courses provide ideal settings to aid transition to civilian life.

We are proud that current and former service members have chosen to become NOLS alumni and instructors, and hope to add many more in the future.

My NOLS semester was a great opportunity to translate my leadership skill set as a veteran for the wilderness of the civilian world.

Bryan Sarg Wilderness Medicine and Rescue Semester 2017, USMC Helicopter Pilot