Become a NOLS field instructor

The application is made up of the following sections:

• Resume
• Trip Log
• References
• Questionnaire
• CPR/Med Cert upload
• Applicant Information
• Scholarship Form

The questionnaire is the most weighted part of the application, so please take your time answering these questions. If you wish to apply please fill out the entire application and submit it on our website.

We will open the application process in late boreal summer, and the application will be open for 2-3 months.

Note that, at a minimum, you'll need to have at least two references who've completed their Letter of Recommendation by the deadline. Any Letters of Recommendation we receive after the deadline will not be considered. It is your responsibility to make sure your references have sufficient time to complete their end of the process prior to the materials deadline.

The Instructor Course application is available online. Please use the current online application. Do not mail or fax us any paper material!

Yes! Please fill out the scholarship application within the online IC application. The vast majority of applicants apply for some assistance with tuition. We do our best to use our scholarship money to make the IC accessible. The majority of students who ask for financial assistance receive funds toward their tuition.

We do not look at scholarship applications when selecting applicants for an Instructor Course. Selection onto the IC is a need blind process.

You can also use 529 Education plans and/or AmeriCorps awards to pay for your Instructor Course. Currently one Instructor Courses (Rocky Mountain Hiking Instructor Course) is approved for VA benefits use.

No. The selection process and admission to any Instructor Course do not include access to financial information. This means we do not consider scholarship applications until after we select candidates. Our advice is to ask for the amount of scholarship money you need in order to make the Instructor Course possible for you (see above for scholarship information).

The IC selection committee is looking for well-rounded individuals who are excited to teach and mentor students to facilitate exceptional educational experiences.

When selecting candidates, we look for the following:

• Experience working in outdoor experiential education
• Backcountry or outdoor skills from personal trips
• Experience teaching in traditional or nontraditional settings
• Leadership experience—volunteer service, community engagement, military service, or leadership training
• Strong recommendations based on your leadership, communication, teaching, and mentorship from colleagues or supervisors
• A willingness to receive feedback and build awareness surrounding diversity, inclusion, and equity best practices
• Investment in the student experience

The IC is primarily a field-based course, with a three-day in-town classroom based leadership and education component. Throughout the course, you will have the opportunity to receive instruction, coaching, and feedback from senior NOLS instructors and peers. You will receive both informal, and verbal feedback during the course as well as a written evaluation at the end of the course.

The goal of these evaluations is for us and you to get a sense of your strengths and areas for growth. If you are selected to participate in an IC, we want you to be an instructor and work with students in the field. The IC is meant as training and not a “job interview.” Some people can feel stress or anxiety in an evaluative environment. We hope the IC is a rich educational experience to welcome new instructors into the NOLS community.

On the first read of all of the Instructor Course applications, we remove protected class statements related to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, genetic information, disability unrelated to admission requirements, or veteran status. This is a step that helps balance the potential subjective biases of the NOLS application readers. Names and contact information are reintroduced to the selection committee once applicants have made it past the first qualifying round for the purpose of scheduling phone interviews.

If you have any questions about this, please contact us at [email protected](opens in new tab)

We require a minimum of a 70-hour Wilderness First Responder (WFR). A current Wilderness EMT (WEMT) is more than adequate; a Wilderness First Aid (WFA) or Wilderness Advanced First Aid (WAFA) certification is not adequate.

We also require a current adult CPR certification to apply for an Instructor Course. The training must include a hands-on component.

Your medical certification (WFR or WEMT and CPR) must be current through August 31 following your IC. This means that you will have a current medical cert in order to work for NOLS the boreal summer following your IC, which is a non-negotiable qualification. If you do not have a WFR/CPR yet, or if it expires soon, you can submit proof of registration for a course or recertification course, so long as your certifications would be valid from the start of your IC through August 31.

When applying to an Instructor Course, you should apply to the course(s) for which you are most qualified. If you have gone sea kayaking for one day in Prince Williams Sound, Alaska and totally love it—you probably are not qualified for the Sea Kayaking Instructor Course. However, if you have spent three seasons as a sea kayak guide, then you are probably qualified to apply for the Sea Kayaking Instructor Course!

The majority of our applicants are most qualified to apply for a hiking IC. That’s great because we run a lot of backpacking courses, and need instructors to work those courses!

Fully complete applications are moved in our database from the "assembling materials" holding space (ICAP) to the "pending review" holding space (ICRV). If your application has been moved from ICAP to ICRV, you will no longer be able to see it/access it. This is not a cause for concern, it simply means your application has been moved along to the next step.

If you want to edit something before the deadline but can no longer see your application, please email [email protected]

On expeditions, we teach formal classes and activities on topics like building climbing anchors, ecological concepts, map reading, river dynamics, and leadership skills. We also spend lots of time coaching students on their technical skills, cooking delicious meals, leadership, and participating in the group. We work with groups to develop a positive and inclusive group culture, explore conflict productively, work effectively with people who are different from us, problem-solve in challenging situations, and set and achieve goals. Instructors are expected to build rapport with each student and create an inclusive learning environment. When we talk about “teaching,” we’re talking about all of this.

We value instructors who have:

• Environmental science knowledge;
• Experience teaching or facilitating diversity and inclusion curriculum;
• Taught in a classroom setting;
• Taken on a leadership role in another career—business, military, search and rescue, supervision, etc.;
• Experience with facilitation and debriefing;
• Experience teaching outdoor skills in the front country and/or the backcountry;
• Experience teaching wilderness medicine;
• Passion for facilitating transformational learning experiences on NOLS courses.

NOLS is a leadership school. By the end of a NOLS course, we expect our students will be proficient in a variety of outdoor living and travel skills and have leadership and communication skills they can apply to their everyday lives.

A NOLS course isn’t so much about reaching the summit, as it is about the journey and the attempt. Many students may never go mountaineering again after their NOLS course, but they will certainly work on a team and use the leadership skills they learned in their course.

If you are applying for a sea kayaking, mountaineering, horse, sailing or river Instructor Course, you need to have significant experience in that skill area in order to be accepted onto that IC. However, if you are applying for a backpacking IC, the technical skills you need to have are solid outdoor living and travel skills.

NOLS instructors do not need to climb 7,000-meter peaks in order to be effective educators for our students. If you want to work wilderness backpacking courses for NOLS, we are looking for people who are comfortable and competent living and traveling in the backcountry for extended periods of time, and who are excited about teaching and mentoring individuals and groups in leadership, environmental studies, and outdoor skills.

There are many paths to take in order to gain the experience necessary to qualify for an Instructor Course. Here are some ideas:

• Take a course with NOLS or Outward Bound, or another organization geared towards training outdoor educators. NOLS offers outdoor educator courses and semesters that provide great outdoor skill training, as well as experience in facilitating group learning.

• Work in outdoor education. There are lots of schools and companies that do great work out there: the Student Conservation Association, Outward Bound, Teton Science Schools, Wilderness Adventures, Deer Hill Expeditions, etc. Find more information at

  • Association of Experiential Education Jobs Clearinghouse: www.aee.org(opens in new tab)

  • Outdoor Ed jobs site: www.outdoored.com(opens in new tab)

• Go on a personal expedition. Plan a trip with friends or family to spend more time in the backcountry.

• Develop your leadership skills. Seek out more training through a leadership workshop, a community organization, or a volunteer opportunity.

Creating an inclusive culture and celebrating the inherent diversity of a group is an integral part of leadership. In order to lead others and be effective team members, we must have the self-awareness to understand who we are and where we come from, as well as show openness and empathy about others’ experiences.

At NOLS, we believe that an effective leader is able to leverage the diversity within a group to create a team that is dynamic, supportive, and honoring of different cultures and styles. When we talk about “inclusion,” this means we work to maintain course environments that support individuals being their authentic selves and engage difference for productive, agile teams.

NOLS believes that leadership is a skill that can be taught and developed. We define leadership as “situationally appropriate action that directs or guides your group to set and achieve goals.”

We teach leadership through seven skills and four roles. The seven leadership skills are expedition behavior, competence, communication, judgment and decision-making, tolerance for adversity and uncertainty, self-awareness, and vision and action. The four leadership roles are designated, peer, self-leadership, and active followership. At NOLS, we expect our students and instructors to learn to demonstrate all seven skills and to appropriately move between the four roles. Every individual has their own authentic leadership style that they will cultivate on a NOLS course.

Upon successful completion of your IC, you will be assessed to work in the skill area(s) in which you have demonstrated competency. For example, on a sea kayaking IC, you have the opportunity to be assessed to work sea kayaking courses (but not backpacking or climbing—even if you have experience doing those activities). Many of our instructors work just one course type, such as backpacking or rock climbing. However, if you want to work in other skill areas, you will then need to take a NOLS field instructor seminar in that skill area (10-14 days) to be assessed.

NOLS offers field seminars for every skill type we teach. These seminars can be developmental for people newer to those skills (for example, a 5-day winter training trip to introduce folks to winter camping and ski touring), or for people who have significant experience and are seeking assessment in order to teach courses in that skill type (for example, a 10-day rock climbing seminar geared towards assessment). There is a basic seminar application process and we run technical seminars every year to ensure opportunities for development within skill types.

It’s complicated. Labor and immigration laws vary from location to location. For example, it is generally easy for non-U.S. citizens to obtain a work visa to work in the United States. Conversely, due to labor laws in New Zealand, it is challenging to obtain a work permit for non-Kiwi or Australian citizens.

We need to take citizenship and eligibility to work into account when staffing courses. This is especially true at our locations in New Zealand. We especially need Australians and Kiwis to work in New Zealand.

Newer instructors can expect to work in their country of origin and/or the United States during the boreal summer.

Yes. We select individuals for Instructor Courses who are strong candidates who will teach exceptional courses. One of the factors we take into serious consideration is whether an individual is close to a NOLS operating location, and possesses the experience to work in those skill types. For example, if you live in Chile or Argentina (Patagonia location), you need to be able to work glacier mountaineering or sea kayaking. If you currently live in Taiwan (regardless of citizenship), there is not a NOLS location that is close by, and therefore it is much less likely that we would be inclined to enroll you in an IC.

As a school, we need to take both travel costs and carbon footprint into account when selecting individuals.

If you have a question about whether your home location will impact your application to the Instructor Course, please contact us.

Many field faculty start their NOLS careers by working only in the boreal summer (June through August) for the first two years before beginning to work in the fall and spring. Based on current field enrollment trends, there are far fewer courses in the fall, winter, and spring than in the summer. This is especially true for backpacking (hiking) courses.

You do not necessarily need to want to work full time, year round as a NOLS instructor in order to be a viable IC applicant. In fact, we are very interested in having people amongst our pool of applicants who are only interested in field work in our summer peak season.

Yes. There are exceptions to this, but they are few and far between. (Largely based on skill types that only happen in the fall and spring.) This is our peak season as a school, and July is our peak enrollment month. We need approximately 400 field instructors to work courses during this time period. Also, we prioritize work offers in fall and spring for those instructors who have worked in the summer season. That goes for people who have worked for NOLS for one year or 20 years.

You are not required to work for NOLS following your IC. NOLS is an at-will employer. This means that we offer work to NOLS Expedition instructors on a seasonal, contractual basis. You can accept or decline any work that is offered to you.

Newly hired instructors with at least six weeks of contiguous availability between June 1 and August 15 will be offered at least one 2–3 week expedition contract.

Those with eight or more weeks of contiguous availability in that same timeframe will be offered at least one 4–5 week expedition contract.

We are only able to offer contracts following your successful completion of the IC. We know this level of uncertainty can be hard for some people and appreciate your flexibility and patience with this process.

This is true for all IC graduates who are available during the above-noted times.

The Field Staffing Office staffs courses on a seasonal cycle. We have three seasons: Summer (late May/June - August); Fall (late August - December); Winter/Spring (January - late May).

Approximately six months before the start of a season the Field Staffing Office will send out an email asking faculty to submit a WRAP sheet (Work Request and Plan). This is where you can share your preferences for skill type and location of work (e.g. backpacking in Wyoming), or alert us to any blackout dates you are unable to work during (“my brother is getting married October 11-13”). Then, the Field Staffing Office will take all of those WRAP sheets (between 350 and 500) and write a seasonal staffing plan for all of our locations worldwide. Then, approximately 3 months before the season starts, the Field Staffing Office will send out work agreement offers to field faculty.

NOLS is an enrollment-based school. The amount and type of work we offer differ from season to season depending on student enrollment.

New faculty are paid between $126-137/day for their first contract, depending on season and assessment level. Our current pay scale for experienced NOLS field instructors caps at $232/day.

The NOLS field faculty pay scale is based on position (there are lead instructors and assistant instructors), and on the total field weeks, you have worked in your career. (A brand new instructor is at 0 field weeks; you accrue 4.7 field weeks for a 30-day hiking course.)