An introduction

To start things off, I would like to share just what exactly I will be striving to accomplish as I work throughout the summer at the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps as an Assistant Conservation Crew Leader.  This blog will act as a medium through which I will be able to communicate to the "outside world" what I am discovering about leadership, community, place, and how I fit into all of those with my co-workers and the Corps Members that I will be leading. The following text is what I submitted to the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources as my learning objectives and outcomes and is precisely what I will be doing this summer:

The most important and most difficult learning objective I hope to achieve during this internship will most likely be learning leadership skills.  Last year when I worked for the VYCC, I was on a Leadership Development Crew (LDC) and was given a few more responsibilities than other non-LDC crews.  Some of these responsibilities included facilitating certain leadership development curricula and even taking on the responsibility of Crew Leader of the Day and a three-day period of co-leading our Crew with another corps member.  This year, I hope to use many of the same skills I learned on the LDC in order to develop the inner leader within each of my Corps Members (as an aside, the VYCC is mostly made up of three groups of people: Head Quarters Staff, who consist of my bosses and oversee the whole program; Crew Leaders and Assistant Crew Leaders, who consist of people like me and the person with whom I will be leading a crew, my “Co-Lead”; and Corps Members, which is what I was last year).  Not only must I learn how my own Co-Lead wants to lead our group, how my own leadership style coheres with my Co-Lead’s, and how my own leadership style may have changed in the last year, but I also must learn and address concerns based on group dynamics within my crew, how my Corps Members own personalities cohere with one another and with their leaders’, and finally how our group dynamics must yield a safe, productive, and happy atmosphere that allows us to get our work done on time and also facilitate an educational atmosphere.

From a professional standpoint, I will be communicating directly with Project Sponsors and VYCC Head Quarters Staff (HQ).  It is important to have a good working relationship with HQ because I hope to stay in the VYCC “family” for a good time to come and would ideally like to have a job at Head Quarters once I graduate.  This summer will give me a great opportunity to practice many professional skills that I will have to maintain in a professional workplace.  Although all of my work will be outdoors and one may not think it a very professional job, I will be balancing a food budget, assuring safety at the campsite and workplace, completing Corps Members evaluations, upholding a certain code of conduct created by the VYCC, safely training my Corps Members in various skill sets and tool techniques, and as I mentioned before, communicating with Project Sponsors.  These Project Sponsors can range anywhere from small regional organizations like the White River Partnership to members of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation to employees at the Green Mountain National Forest.  Not only is it important to keep a professional appearance with these sponsors for the benefit of them and the VYCC, but it is also important because I have a personal interest in the field of conservation.  Any one of our Project Sponsors could be from an organization that could potentially be my future employer and networking with them and being a professional and courteous Crew Leader is of utmost importance.

I hope you enjoy following my blog!