2024 Paid and volunteer positions available on VT Zoning Atlas team

Join the Vermont Zoning Atlas team and help uncover keys to big challenges like housing affordability and availability. Paid positions for both graduate and undergraduate students are available. These generally entail 10-20 hours each week and last for at least a semester (or the summer), with potential academic credits for an internship or independent study.  Vermont is one of many states across the country contributing to the path-breaking National Zoning Atlas.

The project which started in 2023 is being led by Yoshi Bird, a UVM PhD student in Complex Systems and Data Science in collaboration with researchers from Middlebury College and a steering committee of state and regional agencies, including Vermont Housing Finance Agency, Vermont Agency for Commerce and Community Development, the Vermont Agency of Digital Services, the Vermont Association of Planning and Development Agencies, the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and the Fair Housing Project of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity.

If you are interested or have questions, please contact Yoshi Bird at [email protected]. For graduate students interested in working on this project as a Vermont Housing Fellow, please contact Vermont Housing Finance Agency at [email protected].

This is an exciting opportunity to join a national data standardization project, be part of a grassroots team and be among the first researchers to work with raw zoning data across Vermont.  Each team member helps build a statewide database of municipal zoning regulations that will map to GIS shapefiles and integrate with other similar projects across New England and the US.  It is a wonderful opportunity to build real-world experience in data curation, housing policy, and/or geospatial coding.