LEARNERSHIP/ STUDENT INTERNSHIP
With the HVA Campus Organization and Farmscape Ecology Program, Hawthorne Valley Farm,
Ghent, NY
Beginning late May/early June 2024 (8-10 week position)
The Hawthorne Valley Association comprises more than a dozen initiatives, including a
Biodynamic Farm, K-12 Waldorf School, Retail Farm Store and the Farmscape Ecology
Program. The Association’s mission is to renew soil, society and self by integrating agriculture,
education and art in a holistic, place-based set of activities. Situated on 900 acres in an
ecologically rich and biodiverse area of northern Columbia County, NY, the Association’s
beautiful landscape presents an extraordinary venue for research, education and personal
transformation.
For summer 2024, Hawthorne Valley is offering a hybrid internship opportunity in support of the
Association’s commitment to “Net Positive” activities on campus. The position will integrate the
intern into sustainability strategy, operational auditing, mapping and analysis work with the
Campus Organization’s Director (30 hours per week) along with hands-on field and horticultural
work with HVA’s Farmscape Ecology Program (10 hours per week). In this way the intern will
interface with a diverse array of leadership, operational and research staff, gaining a rich set of
opportunities to connect with other student interns, professionals and the natural world.
The HVA Campus Organization has taken up the Association’s commitment to “Net
Positive”—broadly understood as regenerative social, ecological and economic impact—as an
opportunity to strengthen connections across HVA and more explicitly embed goals around
carbon, waste, water and other areas under management across an extensive array of
buildings, vehicles, equipment and grounds. The summer intern will take on a given scope of
work (depending on their strengths and interests) to support the Campus Director’s definition of
metrics and articulation of Net Positive goals organization-wide. Activities might include:
– Auditing of physical buildings, infrastructure, utilities or assets
– Analysis of historical data (e.g. electrical, water, fuel)
– Building or expanding upon spreadsheet or dashboard tools for monitoring and analysis
– Project-specific feasibility studies, scoping or budgeting exercises (e.g. campus-wide
zero waste infrastructure)
The Farmscape Ecology Program (FEP) is dedicated to exploring the human and natural
dimensions of the landscape in and around Columbia County, NY through research and
outreach. The Program is comprised of a wildlife ecologist, a botanist, a
social scientist, a biologist, an entomology lab manager, a botany technician, and a staff dog.
The Program’s interdisciplinary research explores many dimensions of the historical, current,
and potentialfuture interactions of people with the land. An important part of the work is applied
farmscape ecology, which involves documenting synergies between agricultural production and nature
conservation, as well as creating, managing, and monitoring experimental on-farm habitats for
beneficial wildlife.
The intern will be spending time (about 10 hrs./week) learning about and helping with
horticultural activities focused on native plants. This will involve creating and maintaining
perennial beds in a native plant garden; facilitating weekly gardening activities with a small
group of volunteers; maintaining beneficial on-farm habitats like pollinator beds, beetle banks,
and hedgerows; and managing a small native plant nursery. The horticultural work will include
such tasks as hand weeding,pruning and string trimming, watering, planting/transplanting, and
seed collecting.
Depending on student interest, there may also be the opportunity to engage in other
programmatic work of the Farmscape Ecology Program, such as helping to map ancient forests,
or engage in outreach stemming from the forthcoming ecological and cultural field guide to the
habitats of Columbia County, NY.
We are seeking candidates who are self-motivated and looking to try a variety of activities under
the umbrella of a place-based, mission-driven non-profit Association. This is a truly unique
opportunity to support important internal and operational sustainability efforts as well as engage
in hands-on work alongside researchers with deep experience working in our corner of
Columbia County, NY.
Accommodations can be offered as a part of this internship