NOAA VetCorps: Creating Jobs for Veterans

NOAA VetCorps: Creating Jobs for Veterans

0:00:01.1 John Sheehan: Supporting veterans is a societal responsibility that goes beyond just recognizing service. It requires action. And for a federal agency, supporting vets is an imperative.

0:00:15.9 Speaker 2: It's not easy coming back from a deployment. Every day I was putting applications in. I could not find anything.

0:00:18.2 Speaker 3: They've served our country. This is the least we can do for them to kind of get them out here and train them in certain skills.

0:00:24.3 JS: This is Dive In with NOAA Fisheries. I'm John Sheehan. And today we're highlighting NOAA Vet Corps, a program giving veterans the training and tools to follow a career path in habitat conservation and restoration.

0:00:36.6 Laurel Jennings: Veterans have already served their country. They've already committed to public service. And for them to come back into natural resource management I think is a really natural fit for many folks.

0:00:49.2 JS: I have two guests, one on the program mentors...

0:00:51.9 LJ: I'm Laurel Jennings, a marine habitat resource specialist with the NOAA Restoration Center. I'm a former NOAA Corps officer.

0:01:00.2 JS: And a participant.

0:01:00.3 Garret Engelke: And I'm Garret Engelke, working in the same office as Laurel as the veteran intern. My job title is Salmon Recovery Specialist.

0:01:10.2 JS: NOAA Vet Corps began in earnest on the West Coast in 2012.

0:01:13.7 LJ: Two Restoration Center colleagues, Bob Pagliuco and Leah Talley, put ideas into motion. They had looked carefully at some startling numbers where they work in California and realized that there was a 44% unemployment rate among veterans under 24 years old, and they knew that there was more that we could do.

0:01:35.4 JS: Vet Corps grew out of an existing internship program that was part of a partnership with the California Conservation Corps and it was a success.

0:01:43.1 LJ: Since then, we've expanded up the coast. We're now working in Washington and Oregon. And then just this year, 2023, we included Alaska. And this model of West Coast Vet Corps program, that was actually part of the consideration for a different program on the Gulf Coast called GulfCorps, and that was started in 2018.

0:02:05.6 JS: And while there are regional differences, they're all basically the same in the sense that it's giving veterans these opportunities for internships, to get in the door at NOAA Fisheries and conservation work.

0:02:19.9 LJ: Exactly right. Yeah, we are focused on finding the right fit of a partnership and achievement, finding opportunities for these veteran interns. The interns all retain the core principles of inspiring the leaders of tomorrow so that they can carry a conservation ethic forward and also promoting the recovery of listed species and their habitats.

0:02:42.2 JS: And what kind of work is being done? And Garret, I'd like you to chime in here too. What kind of projects are the veterans tackling?

0:02:48.4 GE: So based on the work that I do, I review salmon habitat restoration projects for funding, I assist Laurel with Endangered Species Act consultations with some of our project proponents, I review fish passage structure designs and I make recommendations. And I engage in some fieldwork, too. I do presence and abundance monitoring for juvenile salmon throughout the Puget Sound.

0:03:14.1 JS: And Laurel, is that pretty representative of a lot of the work being done? Or are there differences across the regions?

0:03:20.0 LJ: There are some differences across the region, but what Garret just spoke of is really ringing true to me as core elements of all of these internships. We are very much interested in having our interns gain fieldwork experience and see what it is to work in natural resource management in a hands-on way. We want them also to get a good feel for work within the federal government and understand the role and responsibilities of kind of federal resource management. And we want them to build a great partnership with local restoration practitioners, folks who are doing the work in all these different locations and know the nuance and change and kind of feel of how regional priorities and regional responsibilities look as they conduct themselves during these internships.

0:04:10.8 JS: Is that a big part of the job too, sort of navigating those relationships between federal, state, local conservation groups, I'm assuming tribes as well?

0:04:22.2 LJ: And in addition to that too, community and youth groups trying to really feel for the needs and the expectations of all these different groups and our role with them. So they absorb a lot of information very quickly and we're really proud of all their achievements.

0:04:39.5 JS: So Garret, what's your background? What's your history? And what got you interested in conservation and environmental work in the first place?

0:04:48.4 GE: Yeah. So I was born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota. I went to school at North Dakota State University for natural resource management and civil engineering. So my interests lie in environmental protection and water resource engineering. For water resource engineering, for people that don't know, it's on the municipality side, that would be making sure that people have access to clean water. But for the purposes of habitat restoration, it means reshaping watersheds through channel excavation, installation of log jams or beaver dam analogs or building culverts and bridges that don't impede fish passage and are resilient to climate change. As far as my interest in conservation, I've been passionate about conservation since I was a kid. I grew up fishing, hunting, camping all throughout North Dakota and Minnesota. So it was kind of drilled into my head the importance of having responsible interactions with nature.

0:05:46.3 GE: Also, I remember the near extinction of the bison is a very important part of the local history where I'm from. And I remember being very moved by that as a child. So I think that's really informed my priorities and where I wanna take my career. I want my work to help protect vulnerable animals and ecosystems.

0:06:04.8 JS: And so, was this sort of this passion for service, for pitching in, is that part of what inspired you to enlist in the military?

0:06:14.5 GE: Yeah, absolutely. I was finishing up high school and I didn't quite know what my next steps were and I thought I needed some direction in my life and service is a great way to provide that direction. So yeah, I served in the North Dakota Army National Guard for eight years in the air defense artillery branch. I specialized in anti-aircraft Stinger missiles and this thing called the Avenger Weapon System, which is a turret that houses Stinger missiles and the.50 caliber machine gun. And I performed two years of active duty service in Washington, DC protecting the airspace around there.

0:06:54.4 JS: Wow. And so what was the process like of getting involved with NOAA Vet Corps?

0:07:00.3 GE: Yeah. So last year, I had separated from the army and I was looking to move out west and start my career in conservation. I found the Mt. Adams Institute and they're all about connecting veterans with conservation jobs and I figured that would be a perfect fit. So I applied to all of their positions with a bunch of different agencies throughout the Pacific Northwest and they looked at my background and they said working in salmon habitat recovery with NOAA would be right up my alley and I tend to agree with them.

0:07:29.2 JS: And I wanna back up a little bit real quick to explain the Mt. Adams Institute. Laurel, this is one of the entities that you partner with, correct, as a means of connecting with candidates for the program?

0:07:42.2 LJ: Exactly. Yep. Mt. Adams is one of our implementing partners to bring interns into our positions. But we do work with a few others. The California Conservation Corps, that's a great group. And then in Washington State, we have another partner. The Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs hosts the Veteran Conservation Corps and that's another implementing partner that we've been very pleased to partner with for a number of years bringing veterans in Washington State right into our program.

0:08:10.8 JS: Gotcha. So a lot of organizations sort of contributing to this pool of candidates. Garret, let's get back to some of your experience. And I wanna learn more about what a salmon recovery specialist is.

0:08:22.8 GE: Yeah. There are two other interns that have the same job as me but do very different work. I've spent a lot of this internship touring and learning about habitat restoration projects mostly in Western Washington, but all over the Pacific Northwest. I've consulted with project proponents on their culvert and bridge designs using my experience with civil engineering concepts. Now, for the rest of the internship, I'll be grading fish passage project proposals as they compete for funding through the bipartisan infrastructure law.

0:08:56.5 JS: And Garret, can you tell me a little bit more about your experience working with some of these local groups? We've mentioned tribal work is part of the job as well as youth groups.

0:09:05.9 GE: Yeah. I've worked extensively with tribal entities. They're sort of the main driver of a lot of our fish passage and habitat recovery projects. So there's plenty of interactions with tribal members and leaders. For instance, I've worked with the Yakama Nation on some of their fish passage projects, discussing their designs and touring some of the sites that are on sacred land that they only allow tribal members, which is pretty rewarding. My field work is half through the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, the NOAA organization, and the other part is through the Tulalip tribes which are located just north of Seattle. And I've done a lot of juvenile salmonid abundance and presence monitoring with them. So that involves throwing out beach seines or fyke nets and collecting fish and counting them and measuring them.

0:10:03.7 GE: And as far as youth groups, Laurel and I earlier this summer, we hosted a session with the NOAA Science Camp where we taught middle schoolers a little bit about our job and how we conduct habitat restoration. So we played a little game with them. Laurel's invention, if she wants to share a little bit about that.

0:10:24.0 LJ: I'll just chime in to say that Science Camp is a week-long opportunity for middle school students to come onto the NOAA Sand Point campus and meet scientists and learn all that we do. We show them the many, many facets of NOAA work. And for us at the Restoration Center, we have a really great game, as Garret just said, that very much models the work that we do. We're trying to bring in real dollar amounts, real considerations, real timelines that they might need to operate on and have them make decisions. And we find that those conversations are very thoughtful. The middle schoolers are taking it very seriously.

0:11:02.5 JS: So is this like a Model UN type situation where you're like, "Alright, kid, you've got these competing groups, you've got a budget of $1 million, but it costs $1.2 million. What do you do?"

0:11:12.7 LJ: Exactly. Yeah. And then we throw in at the end, right as they've just about finished their restoration project, we throw in the Cube of Chance, which is the good or the bad outcome, which is all based on real-life scenarios, opportunities to increase their dollar amount through contributions or problems and delays that have happened on the project site that are gonna cost money. And the kids moan and groan or cheer as they roll the Cube of Chance. So it's always a fun part of it.

0:11:42.6 JS: Laurel, let's talk a little bit about your background. You came to the Office of Habitat Conservation from NOAA's Commissioned Corps, sort of the military wing of NOAA. Can you describe your background a little bit?

0:11:55.6 LJ: Yeah. I had a really direct path through college. I knew I wanted to study life sciences. I was really eager to graduate and move into my next career and upon graduation, stumbled a bit, tried to figure out what those next steps were. Would I go immediately into work? Or was grad school my next choice? And that took me a little bit to sort through. What actually solidified it for me was a very fortunate meeting I had with the NOAA recruiting officer, the NOAA Corps recruiting officer back in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. That conversation led me to apply to the NOAA Corps as a commissioned officer. And it was a whirlwind of knowledge and information learning. I was taking some very focused time to come up-to-speed on all things officer, on all things marine, all things navigation and boats. It was a brand new world for me. Very exciting. It was right at the start of my NOAA career. And so that was, for me, 2005. And I was working at the US Merchant Marine Academy, which is in New York at the time.

0:13:03.2 LJ: And from there, I got my first ship assignment as a commissioned officer in the NOAA Corps, and that ship was in Alaska. So, I moved straight from the Boston area to Sitka, Alaska. And I picked up my ship and spent two years sailing in Coastal Alaska doing hydrographic survey work, bathymetry, charting the ocean floor and all the shallow areas around Coastal Alaska, and then some parts of Washington also.

0:13:30.5 JS: That's quite a change.

0:13:31.7 LJ: It was a big adventure for me. Yep. I was a zoology major, and then I got very deep into physical sciences right away. It was also my first real job out of school. And I loved it. It was the adventure of my life to get to go sail on the NOAA Ship Rainier and be a part of a survey team and also learn how to drive the boat. It's a really large research platform, 231-foot state-of-the-art research boat. And for me to be up on the bridge and being the conning officer, I was so proud, felt like I was really getting into science. It was a great fit for me. So, it was a very long, dedicated two years of shipboard life.

0:14:18.5 JS: That's really cool.

0:14:20.7 LJ: I know. I still can't believe I did it. I don't have military service in my immediate family. It's definitely through my extended family. But for me, this was a big step. And I, again, can't even imagine that I did it sometimes. It feels like a different life because the work I do now is still NOAA and still committed to science and service, but it looks very different. I'm much more office-based these days.

0:14:50.6 JS: Yeah. And that's something you both sort of touched on, which is these positions and this conservation work that you're doing now, there is a lot of fieldwork involved, but there's also a lot of office work. It's not exactly what maybe someone might expect of, you're not out in the field every day, sort of in waiters collecting samples. There's a lot of organizational administrative work that has to be done as well. Do you think maybe someone who's interested in getting involved needs to sort of temper those expectations of maybe what the program is?

0:15:26.8 GE: Yeah. I'll say that if you want fieldwork in this internship, you have to ask for it. That being said, it's a very flexible internship. It's not pre-structured. So there will be opportunities for fieldwork if you want them.

0:15:39.7 LJ: And I'll add that we are very excited to bring the interns fully into the work that we do. So I am a marine habitat resource specialist and Garret has seen all the ins and outs of the work I do so that he has a very full understanding of what this job is and can make a good informed decision as he's moving through his career, if this is something that really resonates with him or not. And he'll know for sure that he has seen it, all the highs and the lows of this type of work.

0:16:14.3 JS: What are some other qualities that you'd say make for a successful recruit?

0:16:18.4 LJ: I think one of the skills that Garret has highlighted, and it is one that we very much value is somebody who is willing to learn and ready to absorb a lot of information quickly and yet at the same time is flexible and able to pivot and adjust as the needs of the work year progress. Because there is some seasonality to the work. These are also project timelines that take many months or years to move forward. And so somebody who can roll with all of that and understand that they are part of a bigger picture, part of a team, is extremely helpful and valuable.

0:16:56.8 JS: Garret Engelke and Laurel Jennings, thanks so much.

0:17:00.7 GE: Yeah, thank you, John, for having us on, really appreciate it.

0:17:02.6 LJ: Our absolute pleasure. Really happy to share. Thank you.

0:17:06.2 JS: Laurel Jennings is a Marine Habitat Resource Specialist with the NOAA Fisheries Restoration Center. Garret Engelke is a Salmon Recovery Specialist and a Veteran Intern in the NOAA Vet Corps. As Laurel mentioned, there are several resources available online for more information through the Office of Habitat Conservation or...

0:17:24.4 LJ: Folks can also reach out to me if they're interested. I'd be happy to speak to them and let them know more about what these opportunities are and what they can expect.

0:17:34.3 JS: Her email address is laurel.jennings@noaa.gov. All of this, including Laurel's contact information, is at fisheries.noaa.gov. I'm John Sheehan, and this has been Dive In with NOAA Fisheries.