Yellowstone Forever, the nonprofit and fund-raising arm of Yellowstone National Park, offers more than 600 visitor-enrichment programs each year—everything from biologist-led seminars on wolf behavior to historian-led tours of the park’s ghost hotels. Most of the courses are designed to give park newbies a more meaningful take-home than the obligatory Old Faithful selfie, but this summer, Yellowstone Forever is upping its education game with the addition of field programs for serious students. Led by experts in the fields of photography, filmmaking, science, and ecology, the three-day Yellowstone Masters Series field seminars offer advanced instruction for serious students. Enrollment for each of the three programs is strictly limited to 12 participants, and tuition includes private cabins and catered meals.
The Art of Yellowstone Science merges photography and ecology for a three-day field seminar through Lamar Valley and Mammoth Hot Springs, led by noted nature and landscape photographer Tom Murphy and geologist Bruce Fouke. July 25-27; $1,680 per person
Capturing the Spirit: Wildlife Filmmaking in Yellowstone takes participants to the park’s animal-rich northern range to refine their technical expertise and visual storytelling skills under the guidance of Emmy Award–winning wildlife filmmaker Bob Landis and Theo Lipfert, the director of the MFA program at Montana State University’s School of Film and Photography. August 7-10; $2,250 per person
From Yellowstone to Africa: The American Serengeti offers an up-close look the grasslands of the Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley—the so-called Serengeti of North America—led by Joanna Lambert, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Colorado Boulder, and Joshua Theurer, a naturalist who leads Yellowstone Forever’s Citizen Science program. August 18-21; $2,250 per person
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