What is Accreditation?

AEE accreditation is a process of organizational development that results in the international recognition of a program. Accreditation contributes to the professionalization of the field and the well-being of participants and program personnel worldwide. Accredited organizations often use this status to distinguish themselves from peer organizations and to market their programs to potential clients.

Attaining accredited status through the AEE Accreditation Program is solid evidence of an organization’s commitment to quality and safety, belief in professional standards, and allocation of resources toward continued excellence and improvement. Programs that achieve AEE Accredited status can be confident that they meet or exceed recognized industry standards.

Who Should Get Accredited?

AEE accredits a wide variety of adventure programs and organizations, including wilderness adventure programs, colleges and university outdoor programs, K-12 school programs, outdoor behavioral healthcare, youth programs, and corporate team building and training programs. See our current list of Accredited programs here

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Journey to Accreditation: A Quick How-To Guide

Why Get Accredited?

"Being accredited has solidified our status in high quality programming.  The exercise of going through the accreditation process has prepared us for almost everything on the planet.  I have never had more confidence in our programming."  -Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center, Accredited by AEE since 1996

When you achieve AEE Accreditation, you can have confidence that your program meets or exceeds industry standards. Accredited organizations report that this organizational development opportunity helped them evolve many areas of their organization. AEE works continuously with experts in adventure programming and outdoor behavioral healthcare to set the standards for risk management, safety, program success, and sound practices. Discover more reasons to get Accredited 

Contact Us

Please contact the Director of Accreditations & Certifications, Steve Pace, at steve@aee.org  for more information.

Through the AEE Accreditation Program, the public is served by:

1. a ready identification of quality programs from which to choose.
2. an objective, independent source of information about those programs.
3. a clear indication of the standards by which those programs operate.

The profession of experiential education is served through:

1. a safeguard of the reputation of the field.
2. elevating the practices of the field.
3. self-governance.
4. avenues for continuing education and professional development.

Services to the organizations pursuing AEE accreditation are many and include:

1. providing leadership within the profession through utilizing accepted industry standards.
2. improving the quality, performance, and risk management practices of programs with continuing education.
3. increasing the ability to attract financial and human resources through the recognition of AEE accreditation.
4. programs that have gone through the AEE Accreditation process have distinguished themselves in the growing field of experiential education. At the time of the accreditation review, programs must document and display compliance with the standards for adventure programs in experiential education. 
5. attaining accredited status through the AEE Accreditation Program is evidence of an organization's commitment to quality, belief in professional standards, and allocation of resources towards continuous improvement.

The History of AEE Accreditation

After a rapid increase in the number of experiential 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, the Association for Experiential Education (AEE) responded to that need by developing the most comprehensive standards for common practices in the industry, becoming the nation's first recognized accreditation process focusing on experiential adventure programming. Since then, the AEE Accreditation Programs standards-based evaluation process by objective, independent reviewers have become the industry-accepted level of professional evaluation for experiential and adventure programs.

In 2013 the Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare Council invited AEE to jointly embark upon the expansion of AEE’s existing standards to better reflect the field of wilderness therapy’s current practices with a goal of having AEE become an independent accreditor for these types of programs. This resulted in the creation of a set of ethical, risk management, and treatment standards developed by long-standing leaders in Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare (OBH), adventure therapy, and wilderness programming, with input from providers, clients, and critical incident feedback. OBH programming can be defined as programs that provide adventure therapy, i.e., licensed mental health therapists using adventure activities as part of their treatment.

AEE accreditation is an endorsement of the quality of an organization’s programming and risk management systems. However, this endorsement has limits. The site visit confirms that an organization has met, or appears to have met, specific requirements or standards at the time of the site visit. Therefore, AEE accreditation does not guarantee that clients and program personnel will be free from harm, partly due to the inherent risks associated with adventure activities and the environmental contexts in which these activities take place. It is also important to note that these standards are not intended to impose upon an organization or practitioner a legal duty of care that does not otherwise exist in the legal jurisdiction in which the organization operates.