Sarah Kafka ’12Journal 1
I am spending the summer in North Cascades National Park as part of the National Park Service Business Planning Internship Program. I am working with another MBA student to produce a strategic business plan for the park, and after one month of work we have made a lot of progress.
The internship program started with an orientation week in Grand Teton National Park with the 10 other interns in the program. The National Park Service Business Management Group has been running this internship program for a decade. This year six parks were accepted into the program and were assigned MBA consultants to assist with a business plan or more targeted analysis. We spent the week learning about the history, mission, budgeting, and management structure of the National Parks Service, working on case studies, and understanding park operations by getting out into Grand Teton and meeting with its staff. We were joined by the comptroller of the National Park Service, Bruce Schaffer, who said that he hopes this internship program will be his legacy and stressed the importance of getting MBA students and people with business skills into the Parks Service.
Once my partner and I arrived at North Cascades National Park in Washington State, we dove right in — getting to know the park and starting on our business plan. It was important to the park staff that we really understood the resources at North Cascades, so over the last few weeks we have attended the park’s seasonal kick-off, attended a designated-wilderness training session, stayed overnight at the Environmental Learning Center within the park, spent a day on Ross Lake on a boat with a group of high school students studying climate change, visited the Wilderness Information Center, hiked many trails, and spent three days in the remote community of Stehekin — an isolated area on Lake Chelan only accessible by boat or float plane.
We have also been spending many long days at headquarters meeting with the park superintendent, division heads, and other key staff members, conducting interviews and collecting information. Besides producing a 40-50 page business plan that the park with publish and use as an internal and external communications tool, we are also conducting a lot of analysis using budget, staffing, and visitor data. As the federal government and the National Parks Service face shrinking budgets, we want to ensure that North Cascades is prepared and proactive with a smaller budget. Looking closely into budget data and doing financial projections for a number of scenarios will be the first step in this process.
Journal 2
I have been in Washington for two months and I am finishing up the eighth week of my ten-week internship. I am happy to report that what seemed like an impossible amount of work in the beginning of the summer is now mostly completed.
After spending hours in front of Excel spreadsheets, my co-consultant and I were finally ready to spend hours in front of PowerPoint and start presenting our findings to the park management team. By spending time analyzing staffing and financial data, we have been able to identify trends and present this information in ways the managers here have not seen before. This data — which captures how the park allocates resources in terms of money and labor hours — was never investigated prior to our arrival, not for a lack of interest in the information, but because the staff is focused on their main goal of operating and maintaining North Cascades National Park. The analysis we presented surprised many members of the management team and sparked very interesting debate and discussion. Although much of the information is sobering in the face of the current budget climate, the members of the management team seem very appreciative of our analysis as it will help inform future decision-making.
As business school students, we are trained to approach problems in an analytical way, but this is not how everyone thinks or operates. Working at North Cascades, it is clear that our perspective and analytical skills contribute and complement the vast professional and leadership experience of the management team. It is gratifying to be able to work on a project that has such a direct impact on a great organization and have the work be truly appreciated by such an accomplished leadership team.
