The Yellowstone-Bighorn Research Association (YBRA); maintaining a leadership role in field-course education for 79 years

The Yellowstone-Bighorn Research Association (YBRA) is a nonprofit research and teaching organization chartered in the state of Montana in 1936. YBRA maintains a field station south of Red Lodge, Montana, at the foot of the Beartooth Mountains at the NW corner of the Bighorn Basin. The YBRA Field Station has been host to a wide variety of primarily geological field courses and research exercises, including a YBRA-sponsored Summer Course in Geologic Field Methods, offered initially by Princeton University and subsequently by the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Houston. Enrollments in that course vary from year to year, an experience shared by other field-course programs. The YBRA field station does not depend exclusively on field-course enrollment; by diversifying its client base, YBRA has been able to operate effectively through high-amplitude variations in enrollment in traditional courses in field geology.