Latino Heritage Internship, National Park Service: Atlanta, GA: GIS Intern
Start Date: May 15th, 2023
End Date: August 4th, 2023
Compensation: $640 a week paid every two weeks. Travel costs to the site and back home are covered by the program.
Car is required
Application Due: February 6th, 2023
The Latino Heritage Internship Program seeks to engage ethnically and racially diverse young professionals in natural resource careers.
Must be a U.S. citizen or legal resident.
All interns must be fully vaccinated for covid-19 prior to the start of their internship.
Position Description:
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can involve large databases of geographic information and turn the information into maps and decision-making tools for problem solving. The National Park Service (NPS) depends on GIS to improve the protection of and prevent the impairment to significant park natural and cultural resources, as well as support park operations, planning, and facilities management. The NPS also trusts GIS to engage and inform the public of its interpretive themes, resources, and safety concerns.
GIS, as a modern technology, is constantly undergoing change and advancements. This is most evident with online GIS. At SERO GR, we are upgrading our technical infrastructure (servers and server software) to try and stay on top of this constant change. Because of these upgrades, how we serve out web maps and data needs to change as well. You might have heard about Park Atlas and the online web maps that effort produced. We need help not only to change the infrastructure behind our Park Atlases, but also to improve the look, feel, content, and navigation of our region’s basic web maps. Online web maps are used by park managers to make decisions about their work, and we need help to meet the need.
The main goal of this project will be to improve our Park Atlases. Currently, most of our Park Atlases only display operational data (boundaries, trails, roads, buildings, and points of interest). We need someone to switch the data to our new server, work with the parks to add the cultural and natural resource data they need, organize the data in the map, and customize labels, pop ups, etc. The expectation is that a professional ArcGIS Online web map will be easily available for park managers to use to go about their business.
Intern Qualifications:
Interns selected for the NPSCF Program should possess:
- Demonstrated leadership skills and experience
- Strategic thinking ability
- The ability to self-start/work independently
- Flexibility/resourcefulness
- The ability to adapt new skills and ideas to the public sector
This can be considered an entry-level position, so the minimum requirement is that the applicant will at least have taken an Intro to GIS class. We can accept current students, but it is preferred to have a college graduate. The applicant can have a bachelor’s degree in anything, but a degree in Geography or GIS is preferred. If the applicant has a certificate in GIS, that helps quite a bit. Additionally, preferably they will have had some sort of project (or job, volunteer effort) where they had to produce GIS data and maps. We will certainly take a look at folks who have a degree in a different field (like any of the Environmental Sciences), have some experience in GIS, but need to learn more in order to get to the next level; however, people who want to do GIS for their career are preferred.
Physical/Natural Environment: The Southeast Regional Office is located in downtown Atlanta. In the summer the weather will be hot and humid. Atlanta is a major metropolitan area, and there are a diverse selection of neighborhoods to choose from. There is a major Latinx community in Atlanta and there are pockets all around the metropolitan area.
Work Environment: This work will involve office work pretty much full time. During the summer, the team will consist of myself as the GIS Coordinator, a GIS Specialist, two full-time Interns, and hopefully two summer interns.