Growth and Leadership in the Land of Augusta

Whether you’ve worked at 4 other summer camps or never even been to one before, being a counselor as your first taste of Augusta immerses you in the heart and spirit of our unique camp, setting you up for success in fully embracing everything camp has to offer. Most of our core leadership team spent 1-3 years as counselors, and we find that staff thrive in non-counseling roles after this experience. They’re more deeply prepared and attuned to Augusta’s unique elements—its programming, philosophies, wisdom, and people.

What Makes Counseling the Ideal First Step?

• Full Camp Experience – Engage in every domain as a participant and experiencer, deepening your connection to camp’s purpose and magic, and understanding the integration of every facet of camp life.
• Skill Development – Get experience in many domains of camp and practice in a variety clinics that you love, rather than being limited to a few. These will be ongoing anchors of joy in years to come and provide variety to your schedule.
• Supportive Relationships – Establish bonds with campers, peers, and mentors who will become your support system and community as you grow.
• Leadership Preparation – Gain firsthand experience with living and practicing the unique philosophies of camp (LOTS of them). Practice with campers and fellow staff to build your skills and confidence!
• Personal Insights – The counseling role gets the most active and consistent support of any role. Start your second year with personalized feedback, insights into growth areas, and practice on growing in them. Whether it’s organization practices, behavior guidance, professional feedback, time management or more, you’ll have time (and insight) to practice and grow in these specific to Augusta.

A First-Year Training to Remember

Camp Augusta offers SIGNIFICANT investment in the development of our staff – ~$10,000 worth*! We want all of our staff to be dedicated learners – forever. Our structure for explicit training includes:

• Curated Onboarding Course – No matter the role, all of our staff complete 70 hours of training before arriving, which offers a foundational understanding of the many pieces of Augusta. This includes videos, group chats, practice exercises, reading a 300-page staff philosophies manual, one on one chats with your scaffolder, and more. This introduces a whole bunch of new terms and ideas into your head so they are familiar when you arrive at
• Experiential Staff Training – At 3.5 weeks, our staff training is the longest in the country. This is 300+ hours of time training, and is broken down generally into 3 relatively equal parts:
  • Activity Training – Learn to facilitate your choice of our 150+ clinics and playstations to give variety to your day and acquire new passions and skills in your life.
  • Learning Camp by Doing Camp – What better way to try out our special wakeups, cabin activities, evening programs, and evening embers than by doing them with our other staff? Side benefits include fun and lifelong friendships.
  • Practicing the Philosophies – Bringing your understanding to practice with modeling, role playing, scenarios, games, and more. Explore nuances and buld confidence in your application of foundational skills. Content includes rational-emotive behavior therapy, nonviolent communication, emotional intelligence, group facilitation, behavior management, child development, educational praise, and much more.
• Summer Practice – For 9 weeks, practice putting the training above into action, with a dedicated supervisor/scaffolder for your village (1:8 ratio) who emphasizes your growth and works with you to develop your camp (and non-camp) skills!

*Prescott College paid camp to offer the training above (pre-camp, at-camp, summer) to their students as the equivalent of three course credits. All of the students offered that the material in our training met or exceeded the academic standards they were used to.

At the end of your first year at Augusta, we’re confident you’ll walk away with tons of ideas, memories, and – most importantly – questions. About yourself, the world, relationships, community, conflict, and so much more.

Passionate counselors who have a clear plan to return to camp for the following summers are encouraged to experience our in-summer training programs where the last 3-5 weeks of the summer include conversation, planning, and experience around new positions and challenges to take on. They immerse themselves in the desired field and do hands-on learning with the support of experienced staff. 

Even if you don’t wish to formally take on this role the following summer, you can still get training in additional clinics or domains with the intention to spend more time supporting/leading those domains next year. It is very common that returner counselors take on leadership roles in clinics, campfires, village programming, and more. At Augusta, leadership is possible in every role.

The Many Benefits of Midsummer Training..

• Experienced Trainers – The people in those roles have a better grasp and flow that they can train you in
• Immersive Training – You get trained while seeing the parts of the role in action, as opposed to reading manuals before the summer
• Context to Learn – You have a strong base understanding of the moving pieces and parts of camp – as well as a different perspective
• An ‘Apprenticeship’ – There is the organizational flexibility to shadow (you watch them), scaffold (they watch you and give feedback), and do it on your own (including the failures!). You’ve got someone nearby to help you and show you the ropes before you step into the role next season.

See our jobs page to explore more about the different tracks of leadership focus and development for years to come!

Every role can be trained on in the summer. 

“You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who’ll decide where to go.”
Oh the Places You’ll go – Dr. Seuss.

We hired you (and rejected 10x more than you), we trained you (with 400+ hours and a summer), and we want you to return! Hopefully you want that too. We promise there is more to learn, and we want to make it possible for you to learn it. What might you be wondering…

What can I do in the off-season?
From teaching abroad to spiritual quests to seasonal adventures to connecting with your new ‘family’ in their home-countries, ‘seasonal work life’ offers huge opportunities for growth and exploration. We’ve compiled a huge list of opportunities to consider to make returning for multiple summers an exciting option!

Does Augusta Offer Off-season Learning Opportunities?
That makes sense; you’re an Augustan! We don’t want you to either. If your off-season work isn’t enough growth and learning for you, here are some things Augustans do in the off-season to gather no moss:

• Complete the 20 hours of returner onboarding aimed at fully processing the summer, making a plan for the following summer, and diving deeper into our philosophies with an NVC self-assessment and practice, readings and reviews of our Advanced Leadership Manual, and Advanced Manual discussions.
• Dive deep into the AMeaningOfLife.org website, which is content that was created over 10,000+ hours of hard work from Augustans and designed/developed by Randy. Or, if you lean more campy, explore any of the curated 258 GB of educational materials on our server, from NVC courses to camp administration trainings.
• Camp has paid the right Augustans to get Certifications and Attend Courses including ERCA and Level 2 ACCT ropes trainings, Gottman Institute trainings, Naka Ima, Landmark Worldwide, Wilderness First Responder, NVC, and many more. Have an idea? Talk to us about it, and ‘bring it’ back to camp. 🙂

An excerpt from one of the philosophy manual pieces we call “The U[niversity] of Augusta”

Can I Work with Augusta in the Off-season??

While it doesn’t make sense for everyone, we employ 7-9 year round staff to process the summer and then get ready to do it all over again (but better). In addition, we often have a handful of staff who help out/get involved in more nuanced ways according to their passions. This works is proposed, approved, and paid hourly. This can include:

• Writing or revamping Evening Programs or Village Activities
• Writing new Story Experiences, Playstations, Cabin Acts, Embers, or Special Wakeups that you dreamt of but never made the time to develop in the summer
• Go through the Risk Committee process to join the risk committee the following summer
• Join the App Review or Interest Call team to help bring on our next wave of staff
• Recruit other staff through referrals (we have a $1000 referral bonus for every referral of yours we hire!)
• In September stay late and help us pack down site
• In April come early and help us open up site
• Propose other developmental projects that you are passionate about. This has included:
  • New staff training lesson plans or revamps
  • Writing philosophy additions for our manuals
  • Improving the KM on certain internal processes
  • Write proposals to change existing processes

And much more. While we have limited budget and work hours, we also want to finance good ideas and passions.

Your 2nd, 3rd, and 10th Summer at Augusta…

Camp is a diverse ecosystem inside a forest home, and while everyone works together to make camp run, each domain is occupies its own niche in terms of responsibilities and focus. At what other workplaces do you have roles ranging from arts director to EQ to ropes to wellness counselor to office manager to scheduler to master of fun and games to (see more below). At Augusta, you can wear a lot of hats, acquire a lot of skills, and never get bored of what there is to do.

The Ecosystem of Augusta

Many staff are counselors and never take leadership roles. And that’s wonderful!
If you do pursue leadership, here are the ways that often takes shape:

As you can see, a lot happens here and many skilled leaders are needed to make that happen! It’s YOUR role to preserve and further the ever-growing and evolving ecosystem/mission of Augusta! 

In all the roles above, if you ask many-year Augustans, it generally takes 2-3 years for a role to ‘click’ and to really understand it.

Being a Leader Beyond Your Role

As a small community and aspiring flat hierarchy, we encourage everyone to be involved outside of their domain as well. In fact, even if you’re not seeking it, responsibilities around camp have a way of finding and growing on you.

• Like climbing? – get the hours be a level 2 certified ropes specialist and help train and facilitate our staff in the ropes world
• Like hobbies/skills? – There are over 150 clinics you can learn, practice, and teach year to year
• Like teaching? – Lead clinics, seminars, programs, and trainings
• Like games? – We don’t re-run an evening program for 7 years so that campers (and staff) have unique experiences. We create new playstations and story experiences on an ongoing basis.
• Like variety? – if you become a year-round staff, your role in the summer will be very different in nature to your role in the offseason. Get 4 weeks of paid vacation after the summer, then settle into a flexible schedule of work in hiring and/or registration
• Like projects? We’ll get you involved in staff training, school groups, outreach/networking, fundraising, building and maintenance, etc.

There’s always something new to learn and lead at Augusta.

We have about 75 summer staff for 100 campers; that’s better than a 1:2 ratio! That’s a lot of leadership! 

Every leadership role at camp helps to power the many domains and sub-missions of camp. Here are some things you can expect in any leadership role:

• High expectations – There’s a lot to do, and it takes a well-coordinated and well-led team to get them done efficiently and effectively. We have the most extensive application process in the country because we seek and find wonderful, capable humans. We hire less than 10% of our applicants. We build a team that we believe will work together exceptionally well to keep the machine of camp well-oiled and humming along. We teach leadership values/strategies that align with Standford’s leadership institute.
• Organizational Wisdom – Our director has a PhD in Organizational Psychology and 40 years of experience in camping – almost 25 at Augusta! In that time, he’s helped curate and develop multiple terabytes of information/data/wisdom from people who did the role before you.
• Structural Support – Every one of our roles has a dedicated scaffolder who you schedule to chat with as needed and who will offer structured feedback throughout your summer. This person aims to support you personally and professionally throughout your journey at Augusta.
• Opportunity to Bring and Be Yourself – Whatever and whoever that may be. There are an infinite number of ways to succeed in a role; we want you to find the one that works for you and for camp. We support this intention by living a flat hierarchy, cross-domain participation and coordination, engagement in programming, and much more.
• Personal and Professional Growth – It seems like a buzzword at this point, but it’s true, and it’s what keep many of our staff coming back or at least still thinking about and applying camp to their lives outside decades down the line. 

So whether you’re looking at a meaningful and impactful start to your journey in academia, a fun way to learn more about classroom management, or a life in outdoors and mentorship, odds are you’ll find Augusta to be a pivotal start to that journey.

“You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so… get on your way!”
Oh the Places You’ll Go – Dr. Seuss

Eventually the time will come when you Leave Augusta. We’ve had staff who have gone on to be licensed therapists (many), authors, science writers, social workers, game company leaders, political canvassers and organizers, phd neuroscientists, and many more; we’re consistently told that the training that Augusta has provided was pivotal and foundational to who they are today and how they got there (yup – all of the ones above). 

And your time will come to (hopefully after many years). With big hugs, new friends, and plenty of camp knick nacks, you’ll be on your way. But the real impact you take from camp is not the things or even the community, it’s the skills you [now] have inside of you. 

When asked “What are some significant takeaways that camp has offered to your life?”, Augustans offer:

• “It felt like everything I did in grad school to become an MFT was review of staff training”
• “Aside from my husband… the capacity to manage the relationship with my husband!”
• “The ability and courage and excitement to be my weird self”
• “So much courage and confidence. That is just so important in every area of life and work.”
• “I just felt ready to enter life with the communication skills I never got in school.”
• “It redirected my entire career path; now I’m a professional jewelry either.”
• “Community. It’s been 8 years and my best friends in life are still my friends I met at camp”

How will YOU take all your years of camp into the world beyond?