Blue Mountains Conservancy > Education > Internships

The Blue Mountains Conservancy welcomes the opportunity to work with student interns at either advanced high school or college level. Students interested in areas of natural resource sciences, land use policy, environmental studies, multi-media arts, or other relevant fields, may contact the Conservancy to discuss opportunities for participating in research projects or other conservancy work. Students may receive transcripted school credit for their internship experience.



John DeVillier; 2009-2010 Academic Year

John is an honors senior at La Grande High School, with a strong interest in microbiology. He is helping with collection and testing of water samples to detect levels of coliform bacteria in three ponds at End Creek.

 

Douglas Rice; 2008-09 Academic Year

As an honors senior at La Grande High School, Douglas chose to undertake a field-based research project for his internship. In October, he helped collect aquatic macroinvertebrate samples from two, two-year-old perennial ponds on the End Creek wetland. He compared species compositon and population numbers of organisms between the two ponds. These data are helping the Blue Mountains Conservancy to document the development of these new aquatic ecosystems and to establish baseline data for continuing assessment.

Douglas presented the results of his research in a poster at the annual Spring Research Symposium at Eastern Oregon University in May, 2009.

Douglas graduated in June 2009 and is now studying biology at Clark University.


Ella Antell; 2007-08 Academic Year

Ella was our first high school intern. She worked with the Conservancy during her senior year at La Grande High School. Ella assisted with several projects on the End Creek wetland; she created research specimens of vascular plants for the Eastern Oregon University herbarium; planted 112 seedlings of Douglas' Clover on the wetland and assisted with field sampling to assess water quality of both End Creek and South Fork Willow Creek.

Ella graduated in June 2008 and is now studying history and Russian language at Lewis and Clark College.