Nick will be working as a Cartographic Technician in the Spatial
Analysis Center, Yellowstone Center for Resources.
Every internship/field experience has a "plan of work" prepared by
the student and approved by his or her supervisor. Nick's is
as follows:
The responsibilities of this job are to provide cartographic support
to park employees, researchers, and the general public, as well as
to collect and analyze field data for projects initiated by the
Spatial Analysis Center (SAC) to improve cultural heritage sites and
natural resources of Yellowstone National Park. Most of
the work day is spent in an office environment, working with
cartographic software and hardware to produce maps of the park.
I teach lunch seminars on GIS topics for other park employees,
assist other employees with mapping questions, collect field data as
necessary, and work every other weekend on-call for the park's
wildland fire department to assist in wildfire and search and
rescue operations.
I hope to further improve my skills as a GIS professional through
this field experience placement. As a returning NPS seasonal
employee, my knowledge of Park Service protocol will greatly assist
me in performing my job duties with a high level of efficiency and
competence. Working in a technology-related field, my main
goal is to increase my personal knowledge of know GIS technology and
improve my application methods to produce high-quality cartographic
products. I hope to improve my presentation skills during our weekly
luncheon teaching sessions with other SAC employees. As my
future employment plans involve government work, I also hope to
increase my list of contacts within the government to improve my
changes of post-graduation employment.
As a Land Use Planning student, much of my education has
concentrated on GIS and mapping technologies. I hope to be
able to use this experience to better myself as a student and apply
the methods and techniques into my classes. I also hope to use
the skills learned in my course work to be a more effective
cartographic technician. My goal is to be able to use the
technology skills I've learned to improve the way humans think about
land and its appropriate uses.
Nick got to visit Arches National Park on the way to Yellowstone.
