New Center Aims to Lead

More than 300 people, most of them students, signed up to try the challenge course during the grand opening on Wednesday, May 22, at the center, which is located north of Coussoulis Arena on campus. Frank Rincon, the university’s vice president for Student Services, said the center would help teach students about leadership, team building, friendship and physical skills, tools that would be especially crucial to succeed after college. The state-of-the-art center, which is part of the Cal State San Bernardino’s Recreational Sports program, provides unique team-building and leadership development programs for CSUSB students, departments, clubs and off-campus organizations from communities throughout the region, said Mark Oswood, CSUSB Recreational Sports Outdoors programs coordinator, who will oversee the center. “The Leadership Challenge Center is unlike any other challenge courses in the area,” Oswood said. “The center will be the first in the Inland Empire built specifically to encompass the needs of groups by allowing multiple participants to experience the high elements together.” The Leadership Challenge Center consists of not only the 50-foot-high structure, but also other challenge sections built lower to the ground. A team elements section allows teams of two to eight people work together to support each other in problem-solving, as well as an individual/partner portion that emphasizes support and goal-setting. Programs are designed to help teach a person how to build appropriate trust in others; empower a person to develop skills necessary to be part of a healthy community; and increase individual, interpersonal, social and physical skills. The center will provide a safe environment that allows participants ages 10 and older to “step outside their comfort zone and take a risk,” Oswood said. “I look forward to the thousands of students and community members who will take a step outside their comfort zones and have an intense and positive learning experience,” said Oswood. He has extensive experience as a challenge course manager and began leading experiential education and challenge course programs in 1995. He was the founding director of the University of California, Riverside Challenge Course program in 2002. “With the addition of a challenge center to CSUSB, the students, faculty and staff will be able to learn about themselves and group cohesion in a new and exciting way. They will be granted the ability to challenge themselves in ways they never thought possible,” Oswood said. Funding for the course comes from a collaboration of CSUSB Recreational Sports, an Associated Students Inc. Class of 2012 gift, and the university’s Student Success Initiative. As a result, costs for CSUSB students and campus groups to experience the Leadership Challenge Center will be kept minimal. Challenge Works Inc. of Scotts Valley, Calif., which constructed the course, has installed hundreds of challenge course elements, zip lines and climbing towers and has trained thousands of facilitators worldwide.