We are looking for a student with good hands-on GIS skills to work with us as one of our interns this summer.
The Fairfax County Park Authority’s Park Planning & Development Division, headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, 20 miles west of Washington, DC, offers summer internships in a sincere effort to provide a quality, diversified program in which students from the urban affairs, environmental and land use planning, landscape architecture and geography disciplines have the opportunity to apply traditional academic classroom learning to actual work experience within a local government planning agency, in order to develop personal and professional skills for future career development and placement. The Park Planning & Development Division has hosted up to three student interns each summer for the past decade and has found it to be a mutually beneficial program.
Park Planning Intern
Description: The Park Planning Intern will work with the Park Planning team on projects that support long range park planning efforts, individual park master plan projects, land development impact review, GIS mapping projects, and/or AutoCAD design of park sites. Responsibilities may include attending planning team meetings; assisting with logistics of planning public outreach meetings; evaluating rezoning applications and site plans for impacts to parkland; working on park master plan conceptual designs, updating park data layers and database information in GIS, making maps, conducting research, writing reports, and making presentations to staff teams and managers. Actual assigned projects will depend upon the student’s skills and interests. Depending on the areas of assignment, there may be an opportunity to interact with staff in other county agencies, such as Planning & Zoning, Public Works, and Community Revitalization.
Requirements: Coursework in geography, land use planning, public policy planning and analysis, landscape architecture, park and recreation planning, and/or natural resource management. Good research and writing skills, attention to detail. Microsoft Office computer skills. Some ArcInfo GIS and/or AutoCAD experience is required if the student seeks to work on GIS and CAD projects.
Schedule: The intern will be expected to make a commitment to work a minimum of 20 hours per week for about 12 weeks from mid- to late-May until early- to mid-August (start and end dates are flexible). The position is unpaid, but the Park Authority will work with the student on necessary paperwork if seeking course credit and a written letter of recommendation will be provided at successful completion of the program. Free temporary housing at one of the Park Authority’s historic properties may be available to out of state students, but the intern must provide their own vehicle for transportation to and from the office. Orientation will be provided to interns during their first few weeks on the job and a meeting with senior managers and the Park Authority Board will be scheduled for an evening in July.
To apply: Submit an application and resume prior to March 18, 2016 via the Park Authority’s web portal: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/
Thank you,
Andrea L. Dorlester, AICP
Senior Park Planner
Student Intern Program Supervisor
Fairfax County Park Authority
