The Association for Experiential Education, or AEE, is a nonprofit, professional membership association that promotes experiential education.^[1] Currently based in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, it was founded in the early 1970s in Boone, North Carolina by a group of educators who believed that the core of learning is enhanced by experiential forms of education.

Membership

AEE members have affiliations in education, recreation, outdoor and adventure programming, the environment, mental health, youth development, programming for people with disabilities, service learning, and organizational development. Professionals, organizations, and students who share the mission and vision of AEE join to benefit from and contribute to the network of resources championing experiential education. This includes the publication of an academic journal, as well as regional and international conferences.

Publications

The association publishes the Journal of Experiential Education in collaboration with SAGE Publications.^[2]

Conferences

AEE hosts eight regional conferences and one international conference annually, which jointly serve more than 1,800 attendees with hundreds of workshops, prominent speakers, continuing education units, regional and networking opportunities, and entertainment.^[3] Educators, practitioners and students from around the world come together at these events with the goal of developing professionally, and promoting, defining, and applying the theories and practices of experiential education.

Accreditation

After a rapid increase in the number of adventure programs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the need for standards of program quality, professional behavior, and appropriate risk management became imperative. In 1994, AEE responded to that need by developing the most comprehensive standards for common practices in the adventure education industry, becoming the nation's first recognized accreditation process focusing on adventure education programming. Since then, the AEE Accreditation Program's standards-based evaluation process by objective, independent reviewers has become the industry-accepted level of professional evaluation for adventure programs. AEE recently added an accreditation program focusing on Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare.

Awards

Among other awards, AEE has presented the Karl Rohnke Creativity Award since 1997.^[4]

Past recipients

• 1997 – Sandy Carlson
• 1998 – Mobile Team Challenge
• 1999 – Jim Cain
• 2000 – Sam Sikes
• 2001 – Rufus Collinson
• 2003 – Thomas A. Shearer
• 2005 – Tom Smith
• 2006 – Clifford Knapp
• 2007 – TA Loeffler
• 2008 – Chris Cavert
• 2009 – Brent Bell
• 2010 – Kim Wasserburger
• 2011 – Maurie Lung
• 2012 – Marilyn Levin
• 2014 – Madhu Sudan
• 2015 – Gary Stauffer
• 2016 – Amy Climer
• 2017 – Michelle Cummings
• 2018 – Jude Hirsch
• 2019 – Seth C. Hawkins

[No award given in 2002, 2004, and 2013]