Environmental Humanities Internship Opportunities

In the summer of 2018, Environmental Humanities @Rowan looks forward to collaborating with the South Jersey Land and Water Trust in the area of student internships! The spirit of the “Cultivating the Environmental Humanities” project is to build a culture of interdisciplinary learning and scholarship around environmental issues. Towards that end, we are pleased to announce an internship opportunity that aims to combine the ecological and conservation work of the SJLWT with a humanities perspective and highlights how these topics reinforce and enhance one another.

The Rowan University intern SJLWT will be working with during the summer of 2018 is Brooke Ottinger (senior, BA-Geography, Minors-Environmental & Sustainability Studies, Education). Brooke will work with SJLWT staff and Rowan faculty to research the natural and cultural history of the Oldman’s Creek Preserve. Brooke will conduct stream assessment and monitoring fieldwork as well as research into the cultural history of the Oldman's Creek area. By the end of the internship experience, Brooke and her collaborators will have developed an informational guide to the natural and cultural history of Oldman’s Creek as well as a map showing SJLWT’s stream monitoring sites that can be used in public environmental education programming.

Brooke's work, and the partnership between SJLWT and Rowan more broadly, examines the relationships between residents and their natural surroundings and how these have changed through time. The project outcomes will educate residents about the land’s history and help them understand how they can continue to protect it while also translating scientific data about the quality of water resources into a readily-accessible format.