Special Initiatives

The National Parks Business Plan Initiative (BPI)

SCA Partner: National Park Service

Purpose: To help the NPS more clearly communicate its financial status with its principal stakeholder, by helping National Park managers to develop business-like practices, particularly financial management skills.

Project: In this unique public-private partnership, graduate students from top business, public policy, and environmental management programs perform 11-week summer internships at US National Park units across the country. They work to analyze and understand all aspects of their park's business, including resource management, visitor services, administration, and infrastructure maintenance. The results are used to develop operational cost estimates toward the crafting of a forward thinking business plan.

Congressional National Parks Internship Program

SCA Partner: Unilever Corporation, Congressional Offices, and the National Park Service

Purpose: To allow interns to experience both the public policy process on Capitol Hill and gain an in-park perspective as an intern in a National Park.

Project: Each year since 2001, six student leaders have gained real world experience through summer immersion in a National Park, complimented by a spring or fall internship in a Congressional office on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

Cultural Resources Diversity Internship Program (CRDIP)

SCA Partner: Cultural Resources of the National Park Service

Purpose: To help interns explore the cultural resources/historic preservation field, with resume-building positions.

Project: Each summer and academic year, the CRDIP offers 15 undergraduate and graduate students paid internships with National Park Service park units and administrative offices, other federal agencies, state historic preservation offices, local governments, and private organizations. Internships are offered during the summer (10 weeks) and fall/spring semesters (15 weeks). Projects include editing publications, planning exhibits, participating in archeological excavations, preparing research reports, cataloguing park and museum collections, providing interpretive programs on historical topics, developing community outreach, and writing lesson plans based on historic themes.

International Parks Program

SCA Partners: ICU (International Christian University, Tokyo) and NPS sites throughout the western US

Purpose: To provide Japanese college students with hands-on and educational conservation internships in US National Parks.

Projects: Interns serve in Resource Management, Visitor Services and Interpretation positions for 8 weeks during the summer. Their service teaches them about conservation theory and practice, and encourages them to carry the NPS and SCA missions home with them to Japan. There is no cost to sites for these interns except for housing and supervision. Learn More About the International Parks Program >>

Special Initiatives Fellowships

SCA partners: All partners (federal, state agencies and nonprofits) that make a special request

Purpose: Allows partners to work on unique and specific projects that regular and permanent staff cannot allot their time to.

Projects: The fellowship program offers interns; full paid housing, a subsistence allowance and upon completion of the prerequisite hours, an AmeriCorps Corporation Educational Award. Fellowships are drawn from requests of unique and specific projects from nonprofit organizations, state and federal agencies. Internship lengths can be from 12 weeks to a year.

Junior Ranger Ambassador Initiative

SCA Partner: the National Park Service

Purpose: For a Junior Ranger Program to exist at all National Park Service sites.

Projects: Since 2006, during twelve weeks over the summer interns work along side National Park Service staff to develop a Junior Ranger (JR) booklet and activities at their assigned National Park. Interns will be assigned to National Parks that currently do not have a JR program, or host weak JR programs, to implement and improve their outreach to local youth and program materials. Junior rangers programs are one way to introduce children, youth and families to the National Park Service.

Houston and Dallas Conservation Collaborative

SCA Partners: Houston and Dallas, Texas based federal, state agencies and nonprofits

Purpose: To establish a conservation network in the Houston and Dallas local communities of Texas

Projects: Partners that are a part of the Houston or Dallas Conservation Collaborative request interns for particular projects during the summer or fall. The Texas Conservation Collaboratives help build capacity for nonprofits and the federal and state agencies that participate. Interns also come together to work on local service projects and to discuss current conservation issues during annual and quarterly local SCA events.

Land Stewards

SCA Partners: University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of the Environment & Natural Resources and regional land agencies (i.e. The Nature Conservancy, Vermont Land Trust, The Town of Shelburne, Richmond Land Trust).

Purpose: To train undergraduates to steward private and public lands in “stewardship crews” and though team work.

Projects: 1,600 Land trusts now operate in North America, with the amount of private land under conservation protection exceeding an area 16X larger than Yellowstone National Park. These organizations are required to monitor these protected areas annually. The LANDS “stewardship crew” will serve as a physical labor force, saving land trusts’ temporal and financial expenditures.