Summer Internship Program: Wise County

Primary Program Area Focus:  ANR, FCS and 4-H  

1. Describe your plans for this internship.  (i.e. What specifically will the intern be doing?)

The intern will be conducting educational programming relevant to the county ANR, FCS, and 4-H Programs.  Examples of ANR activities will include conducting horticultural site visits and workshops for vegetable growers in the Grow Wise Program, plannng and conducting educational sessions for Master Gardeners, Virginia Master Naturalists and the general public and collecting hay samples for the Wise County Hay Contest.  He/she may also assist with citizen science, environmental education and/or stewardship activities of Virginia Master Naturalist volunteers.  These activities could include butterfly, bird or mason bee counts, trail maintenance or natural resource-related presentations.  A tradition of our internship is that he/she will work with Virginia Master Naturalist volutnteers to organzie a Moth Night during National Moth Week in July.

The intern will spend at least one full day helping at the Wise County Junior 4-H Camp.  The Appalachian Heritage Day Camp will take place in July and the intern will be asked to lead activities and/or support other presenters' activities with participating youth that relate to Appalachian culture.  In 2026, he/she may also be asked to lead educational activities during the weeks leading up to the Appalachian Heritage Day Camp as a means to promote it.  (One example that has been suggested is to lead barn quilt square-apinting workshops.)  Other day camps may be scheduled as well.

Because a regular Extension presence at local farmers' markets during the summer is a goal, the intern will have a table at the Norton Farmers' Market (and possibly the markets in Big Stone Gap, Pound, or St. Paul) peridoically, distributing agent-approved information on food safety, cooking, fitness, gardening, entomology or other topics as needed.

2. Describe the knowledge / skills you expect the intern to gain from this experience.

The intern will gain experience with Virginia Tech lab procedures (collecting and submitting soil, weed, insect and disease samples and interpreting the results).  The intern will gain knowledge related to home horticulture, nutrition, native plants, volunteer administration, food safety, food preservation, forages and beekeeping, among other topics that may arise based on local need.  He/she will gain experience in researching, organizing and presenting an educational workshop to both youth and adult audiences. Finally, he/she will become more familiar with the facets of master volunteer programs, from recruitment to recognition.

To fulfill a requirement of the Grow Appalachia funding, the intern will be asked to write a weekly entry for the Grow Appalachia blog on such topics as gardening, food preservation, local food systems or similar topics.

3. How will the intern learn about the breadth of VCE and our various program areas?

The goal is to ensure that the intern works with all program areas during his/her ten weeks, so time will be spent with ANR, 4-H and FCS personnel in any given week.  As we don’t currently have an FCS agent in the unit office, the intern will spend time working with the multi-county FCS agent whose coverage area includes Wise County.