Glacier Institute Core Values

When I started as the executive director back in 2020, one of my first goals was to get our leadership team together and do some strategic planning. We started having meetings with board members, staff, partners, and the founders of the organization back in 1983. Writing the mission statement was both incredibly difficult and incredibly easy, because we all agreed on the concept and struggled to find the right words. What we landed on we are extremely proud of:

Strengthening connections to the natural world through outdoor education.

This encompasses the idea that people aren’t going to care about something that they don’t know anything about. We use education as the tool to get people to fall in love with the natural world. You may notice that it doesn’t say anything about Glacier National Park, Flathead National Forest, or even Montana, and you’re absolutely right. This was intentional. Not because we have huge plans to take this show on the road, but because we want people to find the spark here with us and take that passion home with them, wherever that is. 

In the process, we also started to define who we were as an organization. How do we operate? Through what lens do we make decisions? What makes us tick? This led us to write down some core values. These values fall into three pillars; Partner, Inspire, and Lead. P.I.L. We joked about swapping the order of partner and lead, but L.I.P. maybe comes with some undesired context. 

(P)ARTNER – We recognize that we are stronger together and are always seeking lasting partnerships.

Here’s the truth, my friends, this mission that we have is too big for us to do on our own, nor would we want to try. There are so many amazing organizations doing amazing things in the Flathead Valley, Montana, and the world. We want to be intentional about helping our friends rather than competing with them. Sometimes it takes more calories than if we had just done it ourselves, but we believe the pie will taste sweeter when we work together. That is, of course, a metaphor, not an announcement of our new pie making endeavors. Yet. 

(I)NSPIRE – We inspire connection to the natural world by creating meaningful experiences that broaden understanding and cultivate critical thinking.

I am constantly humbled by the experts we get to work alongside, the ones that have been leading our field courses for 10, 20, or over 30 years. I find myself realizing that the more I learn about Glacier National Park, the more I realize that I know nothing. There are not clear answers to a lot of these conversations. Heck, even the mission statement of the National Park Service is a clear dichotomy. To preserve and protect while also creating access? After passing the 14th pile of toilet paper on the trail back in 2021, we were all questioning if it was a good thing to be providing this much access. But, at the same time, this is exactly where everyone needs to be! 

All that to say, we want our camps, courses, programs, and classes to present the science in a captivating way that gets participants to think deeply about these topics. Sometimes awareness is the best answer we have, and that awareness shapes little decisions over time that add up to a bigger impact. Spoiler alert: you might walk away with more questions than you came in with.

(L)EAD – People are the strength of our organization, we intentionally invest in them; inspiring them to become effective stewards, leaders, and difference makers in the world.

This one is actually pointed inwards, towards our team. We realized a few years ago that we’ve got an amazing opportunity to invest heavily in a ridiculously cool group of humans that we bring in to work with us every summer, then send them out to be difference makers in the world. Don’t get me wrong, we want all of our team to stay forever or for seasonal employees to come back year after year, but we recognize that whether we are reaping what is sown or someone else is; it’s still worth it. Moreso, it is an opportunity that we ought not to miss, that we cannot miss.

These are more than empty words to our team because they were born out of who we are, not who we want to be. Every leadership meeting starts with the mission statement and core values. It’s rare that you’ll have a meeting with me that I won’t bring one of them up. 

This is who we are, thanks for joining along. 

Written by: Anthony Nelson, Executive Director for the Glacier Institute. 

*Anthony actually loves to write, and highly values the written word. No AI was used in the making of this blog post, but coffee was most certainly involved.