Liz Riggs Meder

Guest Speakers

Liz Riggs Meder is a learning and cognition nerd who loves combining her education interests with her love of traveling through the mountains. As the Director of Recreation Programs at AIARE, she is responsible for all aspects related to the development and delivery of AIARE’s recreational education programs, which includes curriculum development, instructor training, and overall program growth and evaluation. Liz is an AIARE Instructor, occasionally works as a guide in the Cascades, and holds an M.Ed from the University of Washington. In a previous life, she worked as an engineer designing large commercial airplanes and brings an engineer’s design approach to solving complex public health education problems.

Lifelong learning in avalanche terrain: The AIARE Risk Management Framework as a model for avalanche education

When Avalanche education in the US split into two tracks to better serve the specific needs of recreational backcountry travelers and avalanche professionals, AIARE further refined its recreational avalanche curriculum by developing a new tool to more clearly spell out a repeatable risk management process for recreational travelers. The AIARE Risk Management Framework is a process made up of daily and seasonal routines to both manage risk and more intentionally learn from experience.

AIARE believes that avalanche education is a lifelong pursuit and that some of the most valuable learning experiences actually happen outside of formal courses. The AIARE Risk Management Framework stems from this philosophy and provides a process that supports building consensus and managing risk as a group while also learning from experiences in and around avalanche terrain.