Camping in -40 c weather, conducting elk ecology research, working in oil and gas exploration in the Arctic and monitoring the impact of a major pipeline on wildlife are a few of the career experiences Chris Olsen shares with his environmental sciences students.

“When I’m teaching students in environmental sciences programs and describing things that happen in the field, I’m able to really speak from the heart,” said Olsen. “I’ve lived the life.”

Just out of high school and looking for a job and adventure, Olsen travelled to the Arctic to work for a company doing oil and gas exploration.

“It was the 1970s and there were summer students trying to grow grasses for reclamation. I knew then that the environment was an emerging field,” said Olsen, who worked in the north for three years. He later earned a Bachelor of Science degree specializing in zoology and received his Professional Biologist designation.

After an array of jobs that included elk ecology research, pipeline impact assessment studies, managing a wildlife research station, and consulting on wildlife production, handling and transport, Olsen joined the environmental sciences department full-time at Lakeland College in 1994.

“The greatest thing about working at Lakeland College is I get to create and deliver the kind of courses I wish I could have taken when I was in school,” said Olsen.

Teaching everything from GIS and GPS mapping, to petroleum fundamentals and ornithology, he uses a lot of stories from his years in the field to keep the content fun and interesting. He has a library of photos for classroom instruction (“if you don’t like photos you don’t want to be in my class”), uses an iPod to teach different bird calls, and frequently arranges field trips so students can live the learning.

“One of my favorite trips of the year is for a field skills module. I call it ‘The Far Side Tour’. I take the students to the far side of Wolf Lake and drop them off with a compass and a sketch map and they have to navigate to a specifific location for pick-up,” said Olsen.

Students say his methods work. “He always had thorough course notes and real-life examples on hand for every lecture,” said Gail McLoughlin, who graduated from Lakeland in 2001. “His feedback was always thoughtful and constructive. I really appreciated the time he put into his job; you can tell it is more than just a job for him.”