UVM Summer Interns Live and Learn in the NEK

NORTHEAST KINGDOM – Lush vegetation, towering maples and pines, rolling hillsides, rivers, lakes and streams mark this corner of the Green Mountain State. Along with the Northeast Kingdom’s (NEK) abundant beauty come some very real challenges, including dangerous seasonal flooding that has increased with the effects of climate change.

But the Kingdom is a region with a deep sense of community resolve. UVM’s Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships and Department of Community Development and Applied Economics are working to assist those community efforts with student internships, building deeper, sustained connections.

The latest internship cohort, the 2024 NEK VT Community Resilience Summer Internship Program, is the second such group developed and funded by the Leahy Institute.

“We worked with businesses and organizations supporting community resilience in the NEK that hadn’t previously hosted interns, and that had limited connection with UVM,” said Kristen Andrews, UVM Intern Outreach and Engagement Professional. “Some groups were initially skeptical, wondering if these interns would be commuting from Burlington, how would they be supported locally, how many hours would they work, who would pay them. They told us interns needed to work a minimum of 20 hours per week to learn the job and [have] a place to live close by, but that doesn’t take housing away from locals.

UVM funding empowered these groups to hire and supervise an intern, and we insisted that interns be placed on an organization’s payroll, which the grant reimbursed at the end of the summer. This helped them see themselves as intern hosts that employ students now and in the future.”

The result was an eight-week program that supported 11 UVM students and one Sterling College student who immersed themselves in projects that focused on community resilience in the region. In addition to housing, the program provided each intern with a livable wage for the 20 hours per week they worked to support these local non-profits.

“The goal is to put community need at the center of the work,” said Patricia Coates, director of the Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships and the Office of Engagement at the University of Vermont. “That’s where we both show the best of ourselves; UVM shows the best of itself when it’s engaged with a community. We’re not coming to the NEK with solutions. We’re coming with capacity and a desire to learn and do things together.”

“There are students at UVM who’ve never been to the NEK, and throughout their four years, they’ll hear of this mystical place up in the far reaches of the state, and never actually go there,” said UVM Associate Professor Travis Reynolds, the faculty partner and the program’s co-coordinator. “One of the goals of this project was to make this place real and to make it accessible, not just to the interns, but to the broader UVM student body.”

For the interns, an important access point to the Northeast Kingdom was their living quarters. South House at Sterling College became their home on Craftsbury Common, a place for interns to unwind, socialize, and participate in activities together.

The students engaged with the Sterling College Farm through a work-share that provided them with fresh produce in exchange for a few hours of farm chores. Each Wednesday the interns gathered with their cohort for field trips and opportunities for professional development, networking and reflection led by UVM faculty and staff. Since South House would otherwise be vacant during the summer, the arrangement avoided additional strain on an already thin housing rental market in the area.

“I think it’s been very successful having that residence,” said Reynolds. “It brings all the students together to reflect on their day and support each other. It makes the logistics so much more feasible rather than trying to drive back to Burlington.”

With housing addressed, interns were scattered across the region to explore one of nine different sites, from Hardwick to Newport.

NEK local Lucia McCallum, a rising senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, spent her eight-week internship reporting and writing stories for the Hardwick Gazette. During this time, she focused on sharing stories on community resilience, a theme that had become increasingly relevant following the devastating floods in Vermont these past two summers.

Initially, McCallum’s work focused on various aspects of local life in the Northeast Kingdom. She covered the efforts of small-town school funding and the initiatives of local organizations, including AWARE, a domestic violence support group. McCallum was born and raised in Cabot and her lifelong connection with the community provided her with a local perspective, allowing her to connect more personally with the subjects and stories she covered.

“Local news is kind of divorced from the attention-grabbiness of [national] news,” said McCallum. “Coming from a small community, I know that there are certain things that just need documentation and need to be talked about for communities to have a strong, informed core.”

The recent floods shifted her focus to a different kind of resilience, one of ongoing response to natural disasters. McCallum documented the efforts of KURRVE (Kingdom United Relief and Recovery Effort), a community-based organization formed to assist long-term flood recovery. Through her reporting, she highlighted the ongoing struggles of local residents, such as a 78-year-old woman whose home had been repeatedly flooded.

Hardwick Gazette Editor Paul Fixx, said, “Lucia has been a great asset, allowing us to expand our coverage during the busy summer season. Her connection with the area, other interns and their hosts helped her find stories highlighting some of the smaller things that add up to create a more resilient community. All of the Gazette staff enjoyed working with her and knowing she found the experience valuable.”

McCallum’s experience at the Gazette reinforced her belief in the importance of local journalism. She sees it as a vital tool for documenting the struggles and resilience of small communities, offering them a voice in a media landscape that is often dominated by larger, more sensational stories.

“Resilience means seeing, documenting, being a witness to tell these stories,” said McCallum. “Resilience also is understanding the problem too. You need to have a picture of what the problem is before you can address it.”

The experiences of the community resilience cohort across the summer were vastly different from one another, ranging from hosting a farmers’ market in Hardwick (and salvaging it as flood waters rose) to creating a miniature golf course at Greensboro’s Highland Center for the Arts.

A main goal of this pilot program is to build a system that could be replicated and supported in the future.

“We’re thinking about this as building a longer-term relationship with some specific partners in the NEK,” Reynolds said. “But when we provide housing at a local site, it becomes possible to have 20-hour-per-week internships not spending half the time driving or missing shifts because of travel difficulties. That’s something that we hope could be done in a way that would broaden UVM’s impact across the state.”

At the interns’ final presentations in August, members of the hosting organizations praised the interns, and pointedly asked how UVM would ensure the sustainability of this program.

Peter Koerella is the UVM Career Center’s strategic communication mnager.