Matt Claybaugh - Distinguished Contributor of the Month
Matt Claybaugh, Ph.D. completed his doctorate in American Studies from the University of Hawai`i, in 1998. The title of his dissertation was "America and the Sea: Maritime Traditions and Personal Transitions" which focused on the influence of the ocean and voyaging as a change agent in people's lives. He has been employed by Marimed for the past ten years as a counselor, coordinator, consultant, director, VP. and for the past two years as president and CEO.
The Marimed Foundation is a Hawai`i-based public charity that uses activities on and around the ocean to help Hawai`i's young men make the often stormy passage through adolescence. The Marimed Foundation offers a wide range of services to at-risk youth and their families, including a residential treatment program that combines the discipline of boat building, sailing, canoe paddling, and shipboard living with more traditional therapy and family counseling.
Matt will be presenting at this year's Association for Experiential Education Conference in Norfolk, Virginia. From the conference agenda, his workshop reads as follows:
# 266 The Sea-Change, Experiential Voyaging
Matt Claybaugh
This workshop explores the introspective and retrospective side of voyaging in an experiential context by considering the concept of the sea-change. Using experiential theory and models it seeks to uncover the elemental components of personal change and growth found in sea narratives. The central hypothesis is that sea narratives provide unique evidence of an evolving experiential understanding of personal growth and self-perception throughout American history. In testifying to personal growth, these narratives represent an American celebration of the experiential ideal that through personal testing in natural settings one might achieve profound self-understanding.
Dr. Claybaugh made the following comments to PsychSymposium.com:
“I have been involved in water activities my entire life, surfing, diving, sailing, fishing etc. I grew up on the island of O`ahu on the east side Kailua and Kane`ohe. I went to college at Northland College in Northern Wisconsin, an environmental liberal arts school where 60% of the graduates major in outdoor education. I participated and worked in the field of special populations outdoor ed. for years and came home to Hawai`i as a high school history and social studies teacher in 1987. When I was in grad school at UH in American Studies, I began to work with Marimed Foundation, who with the use of our initial Sailing School Vessel, TOLE Mour, were providing voyaging experiences to special needs students. Over the years, we have refined the voyaging model to become more and more therapeutically designed.”
”The basic component is the building of teams, crews and watches, who sail the vessel(s) under the tutelage of the professional crew and treatment staff aboard. My dissertation 'The Sea-Change in American Sea Narratives', became a cornerstone of how we both perceive of and design transformational elements in our program, particularly in the voyaging component. It explored the relationship between personal narratives of voyaging and basic experiential theoretical models (Outward Bound's for example). As I followed several voyagers autobiographical narratives I was able to identify significant similarities to those courses designed to elicit participant's personal growth and those ‘transformations’ individual voyagers speak of in their writings.”
”Marimed's various programs try to design these elements into the ‘voyage’, which include in our model 1) Welcome Aboard/Preparing for Sea, 2) Departure/Commitment to the Voyage, 3) Challenge/Windward Leg, 4) Mastery/Wayfinding, and 5)Reflection/Storytelling. These phases of a voyage or individual watch are design elements that we feel encourage growth especially when drawn out or focused upon by trained staff.”
”We currently are doing research through an independent evaluator for 3 federal grants we receive, most of the current data is raw and we have not completed a final report, the first of which should be completed around September 2005. The work of running these types of voyaging experiences for High-Risk youth takes most of our efforts. I would like to have more time to reflect upon and write of the almost ten years of experience we have in this area, as time allows I plan to do just that.”
”Please explore our website at www.marimed.org, most of the basics of our design can be found there.”
