Parks, Tourism & Recreation Management (PTRM)

PTRM 141Y - National Parks and American Culture. 3 Credits.

Offered autumn. This course introduces undergraduates to contemporary issues in managing the places and programs that make up the U.S. national park system. Students will learn about the variety of resources, values, viewpoints, and ideas that are represented in the more than 400 units of the national park system, which stretches from Guam to Maine and Alaska to the Virgin Islands. The role of the federal agency in charge of the parks, the National Park Service (NPS), will be explored, including its work in community recreation and historic preservation. Particular attention will be given to the social, cultural and historical context of how the National Park Service was developed and evolved. There are no pre-requisites.

Gen Ed Attributes: Democracy and Citizenship (Y)

PTRM 150 - Current Issues in PTRM. 1 Credit.

Offered autumn. This course will explore issues related to recreation and tourism in western Montana. This is a field based course designed to get students outside the classroom. Students will have a chance to visit outdoor recreation areas and meet recreation and tourism managers.

PTRM 191 - Special Topics. 1-6 Credits.

(R-6) Offered intermittently. Experimental offerings of visiting professors, experimental offerings of new courses, or one-time offerings of current topics.

PTRM 210S - Nature Tourism & Comm Rec. 3 Credits.

Offered spring. Introduction to the tourism and commercial recreation industries. Provides initial link between the natural environment and business operations. Combination of introductory business philosophies, economics, and natural resource management into a framework for future reference and course work.

Gen Ed Attributes: Social Sciences Course (S)

PTRM 217S - Parks & Outdoor Rec. Mgmt.. 3 Credits.

Offered autumn and spring. The management of land as an environment for outdoor recreation. Understanding the relationship between the visitor, resource base and management policies. Recreation planning on multiple use forest lands, parks, wilderness areas and private lands.

Gen Ed Attributes: Social Sciences Course (S)

PTRM 291 - Special Topics. 1-6 Credits.

(R-6) Offered intermittently. Experimental offerings of visiting professors, experimental offerings of new courses, or one-time offerings of current topics.

PTRM 300 - Recreation Behavior. 3 Credits.

Offere spring. Prereq., PTRM 217S. This course provides an understanding of recreation behavior in wildland and nature-based tourism oriented settings. Students will learn about theories/conceptual frameworks from social and environmental psychology and their application to visitor management issues in the wildland recreation and nature-base tourism fields.

PTRM 310 - Nat Res Interp and Comm. 3 Credits.

Offered autumn. Prereq., COMX 111A or THTR 120A, junior or senior standing in PTRM or RECM. Principles, concepts, techniques essential to providing high quality interpretive programs in natural or cultural history.

PTRM 345X - Sustaining Human Soc & Nat Env. 3-6 Credits.

Offered summer. These field-based, experiential classes focus on the environmental and conservation concerns, as well as the modern and traditional cultures, of Australia, New Zealand, or Fiji.

Gen Ed Attributes: Cultural Intl Diversity (X)

PTRM 353 - Tourism, Livelihoods and Sustainability in Mountains. 3 Credits.

Offered summer only. Coreq. NRSM 352. In this course we will explore the opportunities and challenges of development with particular reference to nature-based tourism and sustainability in an isolated but rapidly globalizing region of the Himalaya. Students will learn through extensive readings, class discussions, direct field experience (including living in a remote mountain village), meetings with development officials, sustainability activists and stakeholders in the region.

PTRM 355 - Wild. Med. And Risk Mgmt.. 5 Credits.

This course will train students in injury and illness prevention in a backcountry setting while emphasizing risk management principles. The course also trains students in the treatment and long-term management of medical emergencies in the backcountry, including improvised litters and splints. Instructors cover decision making involved in dislocation reduction, medication administration, and evacuation protocols. Risk management topics include participant screening, emergency response plans, risk matrices, and incident reporting. Co-requisites include HHP 332, Emergency Medical Technician and Incident Management; and PTRM 356, Wilderness Rescue and Survival Skills.

PTRM 356 - Wild. Rescue and Survival. 5 Credits.

This course is ideal for outdoor leaders involved in extended backcountry trips and those individuals seeking employment with search and rescue units, ski patrols and wilderness trip leading organizations. Students will be prepared to handle emergencies in high-elevation, winter conditions as well as in tropical and swiftwater environments. They will also be prepared for extended care of patients and rescuers in remote and challenging environments. Students will study navigation including landform interpretation of maps and use of map rulers to determine lat/long and UTM coordinates, as well as practical use of maps, compass and GPS. The course includes 3 days of Swiftwater Rescue training, as well as 3 days of Level I Avalanche training. An overnight, winter rescue scenario typically in conjunction with Missoula County Sheriffs Search and Rescue team, as well as training in rescue helicopter operations with St. Patrick Hospitals LifeFlight medics, complete the suite of practical experiences. Co-Requisites include HHP 332, Emergency Medical Technician and Incident Management; and PTRM 355, Wilderness Medicine and Risk Management.

PTRM 380 - Rec Admin & Leadership. 3 Credits.

Offered spring. The theories, principles and practices that shape the administration of recreation opportunities offered through public, nonprofit and private agencies and organizations. Course content includes leadership roles of recreation managers, organizational structure, management, legality, risk management, staffing, communication and public relations.

PTRM 391 - Special Topics. 1-12 Credits.

(R-12) Offered intermittently. Experimental offerings of visiting professors, new courses, or one-time offerings of current topics.

PTRM 392 - Independent Study. 1-6 Credits.

(R-6) Offered every term. Course material appropriate to the needs and objectives of the individual student.

PTRM 394 - Seminar. 1-4 Credits.

(R-4) Offered intermittently. Variable topics by visiting scholars.

PTRM 398 - Internship. 1-6 Credits.

Offered every term. Prereq., consent of instr. Extended classroom experience which provides practical application of classroom learning during placements off campus. Prior approval must be obtained from the faculty supervisor and the Internship Services office. A maximum of 6 credits of Internship (198, 298, 398, 498) may count toward graduation.

PTRM 407 - Mnging Rec Res in Wilderness. 3 Credits.

Examination of strategies to management recreation in a wilderness setting. Addresses management of visitor use and experiences, measuring and monitoring biophysical and social impacts, effective education and interpretation, and law enforcement.

PTRM 418 - Winter Wilderness Field Studies. 3 Credits.

Examination of wilderness values, management issues and strategies, winter ecology and snow science, risk management and group leadership, and traditional skills. Winter field course in the Swan Valley and Mission Mountains Wilderness.

PTRM 450 - Pre-Practicum Prof Prep. 1 Credit.

Offered spring. A pre-practicum class to provide orientation for the practicum, PTRM 495 (RECM 460).

PTRM 451 - Tourism & Sustainability. 3 Credits.

Offered autumn. Prereq., WRIT 101 or equivalent, one intermediate writing course and PTRM 210S, or consent of instructor. Theories and conceptual models are applied to analyzing relationships between the integration of planning theories to sustainability concepts.

Gen Ed Attributes: Writing Course-Advanced

PTRM 482 - Wilderness & Protected Area Management. 3 Credits.

Offered autumn. Prereq., WRIT 101 or equivalent, one intermediate writing course and PTRM 217S, or consent of instructor. Examination of the origin, evolution, and application of the park concept on state, federal, and international levels. Evaluation of legislation, philosophy, and policy leading to consideration of goals, objectives, and strategies for wilderness and protected area management.

Gen Ed Attributes: Writing Course-Advanced

PTRM 484 - PTRM Field Measurement Tech. 3 Credits.

Offered autumn. Co-req. with either PTRM 485 or PTRM 451. Field measurement and management techniques critical in park, tourism & recreation management. Includes measurement of impacts on biophysical and social attributes of park, tourism & recreation settings.

PTRM 485 - Recreation Planning. 3 Credits.

Offered spring. Prereq., PTRM 217S and PTRM 300. Offered autumn. Needs of recreation opportunities and response to those needs through planning, demand assessment and resource analysis.

PTRM 486 - Commercial Recreation, Marketing and Tourism. 3 Credits.

Offered spring. Prereq., PTRM 210S and PTRM 217. Together, commercial recreation and tourism represent a large portion of the economies of many cities, counties, states and countries. As such, the recreation and tourism industry contributes significantly to economies all over the world. In this course, we will examine breadth of commercial recreation and tourism enterprises and their economic impacts at all levels from the local to the global. In addition, we will explore the impacts of commercial recreation and tourism on our society and environment. Taking an entrepreneurial approach, we will explore and develop our understanding of business and marketing concepts as they relate to commercial recreation and tourism through real-world examples and case studies. Level: Undergraduate

PTRM 491 - Special Topics. 1-12 Credits.

(R-12) Offered intermittently. Experimental offerings of visiting professors, new courses or one-time offerings of current topics.

PTRM 492 - Independent Study. 1-6 Credits.

(R-6) Offered every term. Prereq., consent of instr. Individual study of research problems.

PTRM 494 - Seminar. 1-4 Credits.

Offered autumn and spring. Prereq., senior standing in wildlife biology or consent of instr. Analysis and discussion led by students of current topics in wildlife biology.

PTRM 495 - Practicum in PTRM. 1-6 Credits.

(R-15) Offered every term. Prereq., PTRM 380, PTRM 450, senior standing, and consent of instr. Supervised pre-professional practice in approved parks, tourism & recreation management agencies.

PTRM 498 - Internship. 1-6 Credits.

Offered autumn and spring. Prereq., consent of instr. Extended classroom learning during placements off campus. Prior approval must be obtained from faculty advisor and Internship Services office. A maximum of 6 credits of Internship (198, 298, 398, 498) may count toward graduation.

PTRM 499 - Senior Thesis. 1-3 Credits.

(R-6) Offered autumn and spring. Prereq., consent of instr.; senior standing. Preparation of major paper based on study or research of a topic selected with an advisor according to needs and objectives of student.

PTRM 500 - Conserv Social Sci Methods. 3 Credits.

Offered autumn. Prereq., a course in statistics or consent of instr. The nature of scientific research, planning research projects, organization and presentation of research results. Level: Graduate

PTRM 510 - Professional Paper Research Methods. 3 Credits.

PTRM 511 - Risk management and leadership in PTRM contexts. 3 Credits.

Offered Autumn. This course is to provide students with an understanding of the interface between risk management and leadership concepts in the field of parks, tourism, and recreation. Working in outdoor settings presents a variety of challenges that can have diverse types and scales of risks. This class will orient students to the best practices in managing risks across PTRM settings and help students craft their own risk management plans. Effective leadership is critical in managing risk and to achieving desired outcomes. This class will focus on leadership models and provide students with opportunities to demonstrate effective leadership through critical thinking and application.

PTRM 512 - Human Behavior in Outdoor Recreation and Tourism. 3 Credits.

Offered autumn. This course is to provide students with an understanding of the social, psychological, and behavioral constructs in the field of parks, tourism, and recreation management. The course will encompass historical, theoretical, and empirical foundations of relative to human behavior in park, recreation, and tourism settings with a focus on the attitudinal, social, and motivational theories as applied to leisure-related contexts.

PTRM 517 - Advanced Visitor Mgmt. 3 Credits.

Managing visitors in protected areas is an increasingly important. The U.S. National Park Service, for example, receives about 275 million visits per year. These visits impact both the parks and society on numerous levels. Many of the most perplexing issues associated with Protected Area Management are also visitor experience or access related. Visitors are managed to fulfill mandates, build constituencies for protected areas, generate income and improve the human condition. In the past four decades several visitor management strategies and tactics have been developed and evaluated. Examples of these strategies include changing physical places or facilities to accommodate use, changing the character of uses and visitors, emphasizing education or law enforcement, developing concessions etc. Within those broad strategies are also numerous tactics that have been tried in numerous contexts. Charging user fees, rationing use, using passive vs. active interventions into the visitor experience are tactical examples.

PTRM 525 - Evolving Foundations of Protected Area Management. 3 Credits.

This course is about why the concept of nature protection has grown to a global phenomenon and how the idea of protection or preservation has evolved over time. Level: Graduate

PTRM 526 - Protected Area Planning in an Era of Turbulence & Complexity: Concepts & Principles. 3 Credits.

In this course we will explore the varying dimensions of protected area planning in the world of 21st century change and complexity, providing participants with perspectives useful in assessing new ways of developing the processes underlying effective plans. Level: Graduate

PTRM 527 - Global Ecology, Conservation & Natural Resource Management in a Changing World. 3 Credits.

This course will first examine biological and physical environmental processes, then exploring these processes within the context of resource management and conservation, and finally focusing on the application of these learned skills to case studies, students will understand how to apply ecological theory to real world challenges in protected areas management and global conservation initiatives. Level: Graduate

PTRM 528 - Tourism & Protected Area Management: Striving for Sustainability. 3 Credits.

This course will explore ideas of development and sustainability as they pertain to tourism in the context of protected areas. We will critically assess, through case studies and other readings, the opportunities and challenges for implementing sustainable tourism in protected area context from an economic, social and environmental perspective. Level: Graduate

PTRM 529 - Applied Principles & Concepts for Protected Area Management. 3 Credits.

This course is intended to be a capstone course for the Protected Area Distance Education Program. As such, the course will be the last in the sequence and will draw from the principles and concepts introduced in the previous courses. These principles and concepts will be applied in a real-world context in order to address a challenge or opportunity in a given protected area. Level: Graduate

PTRM 554 - Geographies of Tourism. 3 Credits.

Consent of Instructor. This graduate level course will focus on geographic concepts such as place, space, and scale and their applications in tourism research. We will also cover spatial analysis techniques and their uses in tourism studies. The course will begin with an introduction to geography and its importance in tourism studies. Next, background on concepts and theories developed within the field of geography will be provided. From there we will begin to discuss ideas of space, place, landscapes and scale. In our discussion of scale we will focus on the politics of scale and ideas of globalization and the global-local nexus. This will lead into a discussion of networks and flows as they apply to tourism. We will also explore political geographies and gendered landscapes as they apply to tourism. Finally, we will explore some spatial analysis techniques used by geographers studying tourism. The course materials will be structured to give students information on how each topic is conceptualized by geographers, current theoretical debates relating to the topic and its applications in tourism research. The course will rely heavily on current literature, mainly from peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. Students will be expected to engage with these concepts through the literature in writing and discussion. Level: Graduate

PTRM 555 - Conservation and Development in Mountains. 2 Credits.

Offered in odd numbered years. This course explores concepts and issues related to conservation and development in mountain regions. The course covers mountain geography, concepts of conservation and development and then explores conservation and development issues in mountain regions around the world.

PTRM 562 - Manage Rec Res Wilderness. 3 Credits.

Same as FORS 562. Current research, theory, and management approaches to recreation management in wilderness, including monitoring and management of visitor impacts and experiences. Level: Graduate

PTRM 574 - Perspectives in Human Dimensions. 3 Credits.

Consent of instructor. This course will provide graduate students with an understanding of multiple perspectives in human dimensions of natural resources. The course is intended to be broad in nature in order to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the topics. Students will read and discuss foundational pieces by Orr and Leopold (among others) and explore newer readings on current research. The course will cover social psychological and sociological perspectives and discuss key issues such as scale, multidisciplinary research, sustainability and social diversity in natural resources. Students will be challenged to approach natural resources issues from multiple perspectives, not just the perspective they are most familiar with. Students will be able to communicate effectively among social scientists and be able to integrate diverse perspectives. Level: Graduate

PTRM 582 - Concept of Wilderness & PA. 3 Credits.

(R-3) Offered autumn. Theoretical and philosophical imperatives for the establishment of different forms of parks, wilderness and protected areas. In-depth discussion of the objectives and purposes for management of these areas, and of the current criticisms and attacks on their intellectual foundation. Level: Graduate

PTRM 583 - Research & Dev. Tourism & Rec.. 3 Credits.

This course will use Montana as a case study to understand tourism and recreation research and the tourism and recreation industry. From an applied research prospective, students will learn the intricacies of how to design a research program to support a tourism and recreation industry where the data and decision making tools for marketing professionals, land managers, planners, and political entities are generated. How do you build your relationships, work with advisory councils, pick your issues to study, design your methodologies, collect and analyze data, and tell the story so it is applicable to the industry yet objective and science driven? Level: Graduate

PTRM 584 - Sustainable Protected Area Management and Tourism. 3 Credits.

This course will explore the intersection of social, cultural, environmental, and economic aspects of protected area management in relation to sustainability of resources, tourism, visitor management, conservation, and community development. Case study examples from diverse contexts, settings, and types of terrestrial and aquatic protected areas within the U.S. and around the world will illustrate the complexity of protected area management in a time of rapid change.

PTRM 594 - Conservation Soc Sci Seminar. 1-2 Credits.

(R-3) Offered Spring. Same as NRSM 594. Prereq. graduate standing. Presentations by students, faculty, and associates on issues and topics in their field. Level: Graduate

PTRM 595 - Special Topics. 1-12 Credits.

(R-12) Offered intermittently. Experimental offerings of visiting professors, new courses, or one-time offerings of current topics. Level: Graduate

PTRM 596 - Independent Study. 1-10 Credits.

(R-10) Offered every term. Prereq., consent of instr. Individual study or research problems. Level: Graduate

PTRM 597 - Research. 1-12 Credits.

(R-12) Offered every term. Prereq., graduate standing. Independent graduate research in parks, tourism, and recreation management. Level: Graduate

PTRM 598 - Internship. 1-12 Credits.

(R-12) Offered every term. Prereq., consent of instr. Extended classroom experience that provides practical application of classroom learning during placements off campus. Prior approval must be obtained from faculty advisor and Internship Services office. Level: Graduate

PTRM 599 - Professional Paper. 1-15 Credits.

(R-15) Offered every term. Preparation of professional paper. Level: Graduate

PTRM 695 - Special Topics. 1-6 Credits.

(R-6) Experimental offerings of visiting professors, experimental offerings of new courses, or one-time offerings of current topics. Level: Graduate

PTRM 697 - Research. 1-15 Credits.

(R-15) Offered every term. Directed individual research and study appropriate to the back ground and objectives of the student. Level: Graduate

PTRM 699 - Thesis. 1-15 Credits.

(R-15) Offered every term. Prereq., graduate standing. Preparation of thesis/dissertation. Level: Graduate