Field Studies: Placements

Most Northwestern students are placed at national park units in the American West, or in Alaska. But placements are possible wherever the National Park Service has park units. Past placements are a good indication of the range of possible opportunities. During summer of 2004 four students worked in Alaskan national parks. One worked at Virgin Islands National Park. There were also students at Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming), Mt. Rainier National Park (Washington), and Glacier National Park in Montana One student also worked in national forests and parks in Romania. There have been recent placements in states from Maine to Florida to Indiana So placements definitely need not be in Alaska or the West. The vast majority of placements have been in national park units, but not all of them have been in one of the four hundred plus national parks . There have been occasional placements with National Forests and National Wildlife Refuges. And in two recent summers students have had very rich experiences working and studying at the famous Navajo Indian tribal park in Monument Valley, on the Navajo Reservation.

For the summer program in 2005 we hope to add some additional placements in Alaskan national parks. We have been placing Northwestern University students at such Alaskan parks as Katmai National Park and Preserve, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve (the largest protected area in the world), and the Northwest Alaska National Parklands (four separate NPS units administered out of park headquarters in an Inupiat Eskimo village above the Arctic Circle). We have also placed NU students at Gates of the Arctic, Kenai Fjords, and Sitka National Historic Park. Some groundwork has been laid for new placements at such other Alaskan parks as Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.

We would also like to reactivate and expand placements in the southwest, particularly in the 'four corners' states of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. But we will try to place students wherever it is an appropriate placement that suits a student's needs and interests. Many Northwestern applicants will have some parks in mind that they have discovered and found particularly interesting on their own. So searching the list of parks is desirable. All national park units have home pages, and there is lots of additional material on individual parks on the Web. The basic guide and link to national park home pages is: http://www.nps.gov/parks.html