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Classroom of students watching a powerpoint lecture in the Biome Center Auditorium at Itasca Station
Bring your class to Itasca

In addition to our own educational programming, the Itasca Station invites instructors from the University of Minnesota and outside higher education institutions to teach their course (or part of a course) at the station. The common thread in all visiting courses is a focus on environmental science and the natural world.

Our Campus

The station is a campus in its own right, but it’s also much more thanks to our prime location for immersion learning in a field setting in the north woods of Minnesota. Teaching amenities and facilities at Itasca include the following:

Technology-enabled classrooms

Some of our classrooms are housed in our LEED certified Biome Center (built in 2014). Others are located in historic buildings spread across our 49 acre campus. All of our classrooms have projectors and high speed wifi. 

Well-equipped "dirty" and "clean" teaching labs

We offer spaces to do clean laboratory-based teaching as well as spaces that are amenable to field-based teaching allowing instructors and students to bring “the outside in”, where tracking in dirt and examining field collections are not only tolerated but encouraged!

Computer lab

Desktop Mac and Windows computers are available for use, along with printing. 

Library 

The station houses a physical library with hard copies of student theses, books, maps, and other Itasca relevant resources. See our Publications and Digital Archives page for more information about our collections and the station's library.

Waterfront and boathouses

The station provides canoes, kayaks, and paddleboards for all users. Station motorboats are also available for teaching and research purposes. Instructors can take students out on Lake Itasca or trailer boats to nearby waterbodies. See our motorboat protocol for more information about access to our motorboats.

Research & Education Facilities         Equipment & Collections


Camp-style dining and lodging

Unlike a typical campus, students are housed in bunkhouses instead of dorms. Faculty stay in fully equipped cabins. Students eat in our dining hall alongside their professors, enjoying home-cooked style meals prepared by our caring staff:

Lodging        Dining


Recreation

In their downtime, students paddle station canoes and kayaks, bike and hike on state park trails, play volleyball and soccer on our fields, and play boardgames and ping pong in our assembly hall:

Life at the Station 


Teaching Support

Education specialists on station staff are ready to help you onboard your students into the learning environment at Itasca. Students may have some trepidation about taking field-based courses, and we have resources for instructors to share with their students to help alleviate some of the unknowns about living and learning at a field station and to orient themselves to Itasca State Park. We also can help instructors identify sites in the Park and surrounding area that are well suited for class activities:

Field Sites


Learn more

If you are interested in learning more about scheduling your course at Itasca, please reach out to us at ibsl@umn.edu, and we are happy to answer any questions and help you think through the options that are available.