Park Break Perspectives: Students learn to look at a park management issue through new eyes

(July 20, 2010) — The tenth paper in the GWS's Park Break Perspectives Series illustrates what happens when you bring together budding practitioners from different disciplines and ask them to work as a team on a real-life park management issue.  The result?  Team members step outside their boundaries and find ways to see the issue in a fresh light.

This is one of the main messages of Voices of the next generation: Perspectives from participants in the 2010 conservation policy Park Break session, the newest PBP installment.  It is the work of seven 2010 Park Break participants: Heath Garris, Jessica Goodrich, Annamarie Leon Guerrero, Matthew J. Heard, Meghan Lindsey, Archi Rastogi, and Rodney J. White.  The paper summarizes an issue at Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area on whether to designate a park road as a scenic byway.  The authors take turns analzying the issue from management, interpretive, ecological, and social science perspectives.  Several admitted that the exercise took them out of their comfort zone — at least initially.

Park Break Perspectives is a series of papers that offers a fresh look at perennial and emerging issues through the eyes of up-and-coming scholars. Park Break Perspectives puts the spotlight on research papers and essays written by graduate students participating in the Society's Park Break alternative spring break program.  The papers were developed in consultation with faculty members, park scientists, and other park professionals.