Michael Riley

As an alumnus of Prescott College’s Adventure Education program, Mike was drawn back to the college by the opportunity to teach extended field-based courses. Mike currently teaches a variety of field- and classroom-based courses, including all of Prescott College’s rock climbing courses. These courses take him and his students to local Prescott area crags, the Red Rock National Conservation Area, Joshua Tree National Park, the Eastern Sierra, Indian Creek, the North Cascades, and climbing locations in Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador. Mike also guides in the Prescott area with AZ Climbing Guides and Granite Mountain Guides, and in the Pacific Northwest and the Red Rock National Conservation area with the American Alpine Institute. Mike is committed to continuing to grow as a climbing instructor and a guide and is working towards his AMGA Rock and Alpine Guide certifications. In addition to his teaching, Mike continues to actively research topics related to outdoor adventure education. Over the past year, Mike continued his longstanding research partnership with NOLS and, with a group of colleagues, examined independent student expeditions in outdoor adventure education courses. This study focused particularly on how independent groups of outdoor education students learn when they operate without their instructors. Findings suggested that outdoor education students used a variety of self- and group-regulation strategies, which allowed them to have meaningful learning experiences during this section of their course. The resulting publication, Helping Outdoor Education Student Groups Learn Collaboratively in the Absence of Instructors, was published in the Spring of 2026 in the Journal of Experiential Education.