Students intern for the Valdez Adventure Alliance

by Vicki Heisser  |   

Valdez Adventure Alliance provides internship opportunities to PWSC students. Vicki Heisser recently met up with members of the Valdez Adventure Alliance to discuss the organization and their latest internship offerings for PWSC students.

PWSC: Thanks for coming together today for this interview. Can you all introduce yourselves and give me a little background about the Valdez Adventure Alliance. Let’s start with you, Lanette.

Lanette: My name is Lanette Oliver. I'm currently the executive director for Valdez Adventure Alliance. I came on as the events coordinator in November 2017 and then ran the events during 2018 and 2019. Now I'm the executive director.

We have a history of working with the college and we have an office there. One of our goals for the last couple of years has been to develop the internships, so we worked on the production of the paperwork end of it.  I am excited that this is the first year we have students working in the paid internships.  

PWSC: Thanks, Lanette. You mentioned the internships. I know these internships teach students about putting on outdoor events, and today we have one of the interns here with us, Haason Scott. Haason, share with us a little bit about your background; how you ended up at PWSC and how you heard about the internship?

Haason: Well, I saw an Instagram ad about the outdoor leadership program. After I saw the ad and I checked out the college, it seemed like a really good college. When I first arrived at the college, my professor Ben Rush told me that there was an internship opportunity. And he took me to meet Lanette and we talked about the internship.

PWSC: We also have with us today Riley, who works with VAA. Riley, give us a little background about how you got your position.

Riley: I'm Riley Ebel. I came into Valdez Adventure Alliance last year as an assistant to the events coordinator. I kind of went through the ice festival and the bike bash with Lanette as her right-hand man putting on the events. And I came back this year as the events coordinator as she moved into the executive director position.

PWSC: So Riley, are you going to be the direct contact for interns?

Riley You know, I think that Lanette and I will probably be sharing that contact. We work pretty closely on most everything we do.

PWSC: So, we have another intern here with us as well, Joe Kay. Joe, tell me a little bit about how you heard about the internship and your motivation for doing this.

Joe: I heard about the internship when Lanette came and talked to our Foundations of Recreation class about an internship. I love the flexibility of it that you can work as an intern and do classes at the same time. Once I finish my majors, I figured this would be a good way to kind of see the coordination side of outdoor events and see if that was something I would want to do.

I just started, so the one thing I've done, is I created the tickets for the ice climbing clinics.

PWSC: It sounds like it will be a really good, valuable networking tool, meeting people in the industry. Haason, you mentioned how you heard about the internship, but what drew you to the internship?

Haason: I want to learn about how these kinds of events are run. In the past I have worked on the events, but this will be a lot more and on a larger scale than the events that I've helped with.

PWSC: OK, so I'm going to wrap this up with one more question. So, Riley, what are some of your upcoming events that you're pretty excited about?

Riley: Well, we have the ice climbing festival coming up in mid-February. We're all hands on deck for the ice festival. It’s kind of go time. And then pretty soon after that we'll have the bike bash as well.

PWSC: That's great. We look forward to following up with you all this semester and hearing about how the events and internships are going. Again, thank you all for your time.