Teacher Owners
Chill
Chill (Crawford Hill) has been guiding students and adults on wilderness adventures since 1974, when he started a business in college, guiding climbing and backpacking expeditions in the Alps. Now, after 35 years of teaching biology, coaching wrestling and rock climbing, wilderness exploration and travel, he is well positioned to run this business. Over the years, Chill has lead 750 students and teachers on Costa Rican Adventures from The Episcopal Academy. His unique “Expedition Mentality” and his “Story Approach”, which have infused all his teaching and travel leadership, serve to further differentiate the Chill Expeditions/ Costa Rican Adventure experience. Chill brings to CE/CRA his unique combined experience as client, expedition leader, biologist, and educational innovator. Fuse that with his energy, passion, eye for talent, and vision, and you can see how Chill Expeditions is now able to offer the most profoundly exhilarating, fun and educational experiences imaginable—for students, schools, families, and friends!
- • The Episcopal Academy
- • St. George’s School ’70
- • University of Pennsylvania ’74
Read more of Chill’s bio >>
Chill’s interest in wilderness adventure and environmental conservation was stimulated by family backpacking trips in the sixties along much of the Appalachian, John Muir and Pacific Crest Trails, with his father and later his six siblings and mother.
He continued with climbing expeditions to California, British Columbia, Alaska, the Alps and Norway. When he summited Denali (Mt. McKinley, 20,300') in July of 1971, he was the youngest to have done so.
Chill eventually started leading his own trips with various family, friends, colleagues, and students; and has since backpacked all over the AT, the Northwest United States, plus Norway, the Alps and more recently the Spanish Sierra Nevada.
At Penn, he became fascinated by the brain and behavior and designed his own major, Psychobiology. Later at Episcopal, he became intrigued with Bioethics and continues to collaborate with Penn in their mutual interest in delivering to high school students authentic experiences in this intellectually challenging and important field.
Chill thoroughly enjoyed working with amazing colleagues and students for 35 years at The Episcopal Academy, outside Philadelphia, where he pioneered innovative curricula, as well as many experiential adventures, and had a lot of fun coaching successful wrestling teams. While at EA, Chill developed his travel and educational philosophies, Expedition Mentality and Story Approach, which are now essential aspects of the way we approach our business at Chill Expeditions. Chill also spent a lot of time at EA experimenting with various teaching, mentoring, communication, and learning styles with colleagues, students, and parents; and honed a collegial style, which distinguishes the culture at CRA and of all our clients’ experiences with us.
His wife of 32 years, Suzie, who resides with him in Ardmore, PA, is a fine teacher herself, and mother to their children: Hadley is a psychotherapist in Austin, TX and Connor is a musician and producer in San Francisco. Chill enjoys escaping with Suze to their Casa in southern Andalucia from time to time.
He gets a kick out of travel, biology, photography, good coffee, wilderness adventure, learning new stuff and turning folks on to experiences which are fun and educational, so... he totally loves his work!
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Eddie
Eddie Rodriguez, Partner and Director of Operations, was a teacher for 20 years, from 3rd grade to 12th grade, and a leader of many student travel abroad trips during his tenure. Eddie’s commitment to experiential education, language immersion, and cultural sensibility was a natural evolution from the classroom into the Chill Expeditions community in 2010. Eddie believes that a journey with an educational objective, led by an expert naturalist guide, will leave a global perspective in the lives of our clients and leave them with a sense of social responsibility towards all people and the planet. In his personal time, Eddie enjoys traveling with his family to visit world heritage sites, meeting new people, and eating the local food throughout the world.
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