For students who want more from a summer program than a classroom and a syllabus, Maryville College’s Great Smokies Experience offers something different: 10 days of living, learning and exploring inside one of the most biologically diverse places in North America.
Open to rising high school juniors, seniors, and recent high school graduates, the Great Smokies Experience (GSE) combines college-level coursework with immersive, place-based learning focused on environmental issues and sustainability. The 2026 program will take place July 9–20, and applications are now being accepted online through the GSE website.
“This program asks students to think carefully about how people and environments shape one another,” said Dr. Andrew Gunnoe, associate professor of sociology at Maryville College and coordinator of the Great Smokies Experience. “The Smokies are a powerful setting for that work because ecology, culture and community are so deeply intertwined here.”
Participants will divide their time between the Maryville College campus and the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, a residential environmental learning center located on the Tennessee side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Students who complete the program will earn three hours of college credit for Environmental Issues and Sustainability Studies (ENV/SUS 101) through Maryville College.
Now entering its twelfth year, the Great Smokies Experience has introduced dozens of students to environmental study through a liberal arts framework — one that emphasizes both scientific understanding and lived experience.
“Students begin to see that environmental questions don’t belong to just one discipline,” Gunnoe said. “They’re connected to history, politics, sociology, biology, and ecology, and the Smokies make those connections visible in a very real way.”
While scientific inquiry is central to the program, Gunnoe said the experience is grounded just as firmly in place-based learning.
“We certainly engage with the science,” he said. “But we also ask students to think about sustainability at the human scale — what it looks like in their own communities and daily lives, and how those small decisions relate to larger systems.”
In addition to Gunnoe, instructors for the Great Smokies Experience include Dr. Mark O’Gorman, professor of political science and coordinator of the College’s Environmental Studies program; Jeremy Lloyd, manager of field and college programs at Tremont; and Tyson Murphy ’03, director of Mountain Challenge.
The cost of the 10-day program is $1,999 per student and includes tuition, fees, room and board, transportation to and from the Park, and all special events. Students will spend most of the program living at Tremont, with additional activities taking place on the Maryville College campus and at other key sites across Southern Appalachia.
Hands-on learning is central to the Great Smokies Experience, Gunnoe added. Activities include mountain hikes, nighttime exploration of the Park, kayaking on the Little River and Tellico Reservoir, exploration of the Maryville College Woods, and participation in Mountain Challenge, an outdoor program based out of Maryville College that focuses on teamwork, communication and problem-solving.
“The experiential component is what makes the program stick,” Gunnoe said. “Ideas like sustainability can feel abstract, but when students are hiking, paddling, and learning alongside one another in the Smokies, those concepts become tangible and memorable.”
In recent years, the curriculum has expanded to include a stronger focus on watersheds — a natural fit for a campus located within the Little River Watershed, which originates in the Great Smoky Mountains.
“Understanding watersheds helps students see how environmental systems connect people across a region,” Gunnoe said. “Being on the river itself reinforces those lessons in a way a textbook never could.”
Gunnoe said the immersive nature of the program often leaves a lasting impression on participants.
“Earning college credit is important, but what students remember is the experience itself,” he said. “Living outdoors with a cohort, climbing Mount LeConte, looking out over the Tennessee Valley — those moments shape how they understand this place and their relationship to it.”
Space in the Great Smokies Experience is limited, and the application deadline is May 1, though spots tend to fill quickly. Interested students are encouraged to apply early.
For more information, contact Gunnoe at andrew.gunnoe@maryvillecollege.edu or visit maryvillecollege.edu/gse.
