“Good morning Scouters! Welcome to the University of Scouting, 2014 edition. We are absolutely delighted to have you here today and thrilled that you are willing to give up yet another Saturday,” Dave Read said to a room full of around 200 Scoutmasters and troop leaders. 

Read, one of the coordinators for the University of Scouting event, was greeted with cheers and shouts from an enthusiastic crowd. You never would have guessed it was 8 a.m. on a Saturday.

“What we’re really here to do today is to inspire you to take what you learn back to your units. If you don’t take what you learn and use it, then we have not succeeded,” Read said in his introduction.

His eager attitude was contagious and the event almost felt like a fast-paced auction as he explained the itinerary.

University of Scouting is an annual event that was held on Jan. 18 on campus in Moody Hall, JBWS and some outdoor areas. Around 200-300 Scoutmasters and troop leaders attended, including those from the Capitol Area Council, which serves 15 counties in the Austin area stretching from Llano to Smithville.

The program is not for Boy Scouts, but rather the adults who supervise and teach them. Adult leaders learn how to better the scouting experience by taking classes on anything that interests them.

Some of the courses offered included Weird Science, Knot Just For Fun, Fire Starting and Flint Knapping. 

“This is also the first year that we’re running a Spanish-language program, because as you might imagine, there’s a large growing Hispanic community in Austin,” Read said.

The Weird Science course was taught by Jim Picardat, who demonstrated various experiments for the Scoutmasters to teach their troops. Picardat showed that if you touch a flame to a balloon filled with air, it will explode, but if you touch a flame to a balloon with water inside, it will remain intact and the water will boil inside the balloon. Troop leaders participated and took notes to take these experiments back to their troops.

The majority of Scoutmasters and Den Leaders are parents. Linda and Leighton Batey, who are married, are both very involved in Boy Scouts. Leighton is a Scoutmaster, while Linda is a Den Leader. For the Bateys, Scouting is a family affair: their oldest son Thomas is a Boy Scout, their youngest son Donnie is a Tiger Cub and their daughter Emily is a Girl Scout. 

“It’s all about boys learning to be men, leading, making decisions and failing in a safe environment,” Leighton  Batey said. 

Linda described her den as very high energy; she leads a den of 10 six-year-old Tiger Cubs. 

“They do a lot of fun stuff, like swimming, scuba diving, emergency preparedness, first aid, archery, camping. Just a lot of fun activities,” Linda  Batey said.

Another course offered at the University of Scouting was Knot Just for Fun, in which Read taught troop leaders three kinds of knots: the bowline, the taut line and the clove hitch. The bowline is often used to rescue people, since it will keep the same circumference and not tighten or become loose. This makes it safe to pull people to safety without the risk of the rope tightening around their chest.

Ruthie Reyes, a mother and a troop leader, practiced her knots multiple times while in class. 

Read explained that the trick to memorizing a knot was to do it five times, and then practice it every day. 

“I didn’t know much about Boy Scouts until I had boys. Scouting is an amazing thing, and I didn’t realize all that went into it,” Reyes said.