Last updated: March 25, 2025
Article
Internship Opportunities for Students in National Parks
- Lisa Gerloff, Executive Director, Rocky Mountains Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, University of Montana
- Jennifer Harrington, Director, Native American Natural Resources Program, University of Montana
- Diana Elder, Director, Colorado Plateau Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Northern Arizona University
- Chase Kurbat, Coordinator, Public Lands Internship Program, Northern Arizona University
NRIC and PLIP provide a streamlined way to offer meaningful paid internships and job training for college students that may lead to agency employment after graduation. For parks, these programs provide access to student interns who are a good fit to assist with projects in the fields of conservation, cultural resources, tourism, park management or science, communication, and more. Parks are a direct participant in the training of these future employees.
NRIC and PLIP provide overall organizational and administrative support. Internships can involve multiple partners to match the needs of the organizations and people involved. As the administrative leads, NRIC and PLIP staff advertise, recruit, hire, and are the official supervisors of student interns, and faculty assist by providing academic internship credits. Therefore, this model allows agency mentors to be just that—mentors. Agency staff provide agency- and position-specific training and orientation for interns, guide interns in their daily tasks, and support the practical education of students.
Under the authority of the CESU agreements, the sponsoring agency can fund internships through UM or NAU. Beyond a sustainable wage and fringe for the student, and perhaps project specific travel or other costs, NPS pays no more than the CESU indirect rate of 17.5%. The RM-CESU has a draft task agreement template for setting up internships available on the NRIC webpage. Key sections such as background, objectives, partner responsibilities, and public purpose are provided in this template. Sections are flagged where the agreement technical representative or park host can add in the details for specific internship opportunities.
In building our internship programs, UM and NAU have looked at the model set by the Interagency Internship Cooperative (IIC) at Southern Utah University (SUU). The IIC began in 2007 with 14 interns and since 2017, has funded and placed over 200 interns. Dr. Briget Eastep and others at SUU have been very generous with sharing their successes and lessons learned so that other collaboratives can build successful programs.
After extensive outreach with 13 NPS units on the Colorado Plateau, the PLIP was established in June 2020 to formalize this relationship and facilitate parks and programs ability to recruit high quality interns more readily from NAU. PLIP is housed within NAU’s College of the Environment, Forestry and Natural Resources, although it is a university-wide program with high-level support. To date, NPS has committed to 10 interns and 1 coordinator. Although the emphasis of PLIP is on opportunities for NAU students, it has been necessary for PLIP to advertise with other universities in the region to increase the pool of interns.
In building our internship programs, UM and NAU have looked at the model set by the Interagency Internship Cooperative (IIC) at Southern Utah University (SUU). The IIC began in 2007 with 14 interns and since 2017, has funded and placed over 200 interns. Dr. Briget Eastep and others at SUU have been very generous with sharing their successes and lessons learned so that other collaboratives can build successful programs.
Public Lands Internship Program (PLIP)
After extensive outreach with 13 NPS units on the Colorado Plateau, the PLIP was established in June 2020 to formalize this relationship and facilitate parks and programs ability to recruit high quality interns more readily from NAU. PLIP is housed within NAU’s College of the Environment, Forestry and Natural Resources, although it is a university-wide program with high-level support. To date, NPS has committed to 10 interns and 1 coordinator. Although the emphasis of PLIP is on opportunities for NAU students, it has been necessary for PLIP to advertise with other universities in the region to increase the pool of interns.
As an environmental science student at Northern Arizona University, I was excited to consider the biological science technician internship at Grand Canyon National Park. My parents took me to visit various national parks across the country, as I was growing up. Here, I developed my love for nature and the sciences. I admired the park rangers I met and aspired to be one of them.
What interested me most about this position was that it celebrates women in science. I will be highlighting the work of Rose Eudora Collom, the first paid botanist in Grand Canyon National Park. I will be following in Ms. Collom’s footsteps by backpacking and hiking in the canyon to collect plant voucher specimens. These specimens will then be cataloged in the park’s herbarium to contribute to the park’s plant inventory.
I thought this internship would be an amazing opportunity to gain experience presenting interpretive ranger programs to the visitors of the Grand Canyon. This internship incorporates two of my favorite things: exploring nature and interacting with and educating people. I am excited to gain more knowledge of the flora of the Southwest. The skills I will learn during this internship will prepare me for a future career working in public lands conservation.
Northern Rockies Internship Collaborative (NRIC)
UM’s NRIC is offered under the umbrella of the RM-CESU and is housed in the W. A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, with student internships open to all academic partners. NRIC is reaching out to partners and launched during summer 2024 with 8 internship placements in the U.S. Forest Service.As a collaborative effort, NRIC is working with a steering committee of faculty and agency partners to build a program that supports student success in their internship and prepares them to step into agency professional positions in the future. This effort includes an orientation and 2 soft skills training sessions for students prior to heading out to their work location. The soft skills training includes topics such as how to network and build work relationships and how do you navigate and communicate when things are not going well with your supervisor or work colleagues. Another component of the program is career guidance. Besides working closely with their agency mentor, students are required to schedule an appointment with an appropriate agency representative to discuss topics such as career paths in the agency and whether students are taking the right courses for their career interest. It is crucial for a student in a productive internship to have a great mentor. Being an impactful mentor takes time and effort and to this end NRIC provides our agency partners with a mentor orientation that includes overview of the program, expectation of a mentor, risk management, and communication flow.
UM’s Native American Natural Resource Program (NANRP) within the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, has a history of partnering with Yellowstone National Park, which has funded the Center for Resources Native Student Internship Program since 2009. NANRP has placed Native students recruited from UM and campuses across the country in internships that have covered vegetation management, youth education, fisheries, and archaeology. The RM-CESU host office was actively involved in launching this program, and now under NRIC, we will work with the NANRP director to expand internships with NPS and other agency partners for Native students across RM-CESU campuses, especially Tribal colleges.
Thank you so much for a rewarding three months as the archeology intern for Beth Horton, Yellowstone National Park.
I really appreciated how I got to explore all the aspects of being an archeologist. I participated in CRM (Cultural Resource Management) work, and did research regarding trail re-routing, got to do surveys, artifact cataloging and more. I gained skill in diverse cultural resource management tasks, such as: writing site forms, data entry, site evaluations, planning workshops to teach the other staff how to handle a discovered artifact (geologist, trail crew, museum interns, law enforcement/rangers, and Montana Youth Corps), shovel testing/test excavations and other field activities. This internship has opened doors for me and has helped me decide what I really want to do with my life.
In addition to giving students professional experience and parks help with resource issues, partnership programs like PLIP, NIC, and IIC offer opportunities for NPS and other agencies to engage directly in the training of their future workforce. Looking forward to 2025, NRIC with U. S. Forest Service will offer 5 internships covering the fields of forestry, developed and dispersed recreation, and wilderness. To learn more on how NPS can set up internships, see the resources below and contact any of the authors.