This week, most of the students from the MIMS class of 2014 are finishing up summer internships and preparing to return to South Hall for the second year of their master’s program.
We spoke with seven MIMS students from the class of 2014 about what they’ve been doing this summer, how their first year’s classes prepared them for their internships, and what they’re planning for their second year and beyond.
Eric Zan
Technology & Interpretation Park Ranger
Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico
Eric Zan has always loved America’s national parks, but it had never occurred to him that he could combine that passion with his computer science experience.
When Eric arrived at the I School last fall, he met several other park enthusiasts, including classmate Colin MacArthur, a former park ranger. He found himself working on a variety of park-based research and projects, including a class project exploring the experience of visitors to the California state park system in Info 214. Needs and Usability Assessment.
“Your classmates are the number one capital in the I School, to help you discover and follow your interests,” said Eric. Working with his classmates helped spark his interest in using information technology to engage and inform park visitors in new and innovative ways.
His classmates also helped him build connections. Colin put Eric in touch with the Head of Interpretation at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, where Eric has spent his summer as park ranger for technology and interpretation.
“In general, the mission of the park system is combination of resource management and interpretation,” Eric explained; ‘resource management’ involves protecting and preserving the park’s resources, both physical and cultural, while ‘interpretation’ includes the park’s visitor services, which educate, inform, and engage park visitors.
Eric’s summer internship has been an interesting combination of tasks. Half his time has been as a front-line park ranger, staffing the park’s visitor center, leading guided walks, and interacting with park visitors. In the other half, he has provided technical assistance to park staff and worked to develop effective approaches for designing products for visitors.
Parks everywhere are experimenting with ways to use new information technologies to engage visitors. Bandelier’s main resources are cultural; the site protects the homes and artifacts of the Ancestral Pueblo people, who lived there from approximately 1150 CE to 1550 CE.
“How can we use data to tell the park’s stories?” asks Eric. The park has begun taking high-resolution radar scans of the site’s cliff dwellings, both caves and houses, and Eric is thinking about creative ways for visitors to view and interact with that data, to connect the site’s geography with its history. “I'm trying to translate my understanding of the visitors into designing products and visual displays using principles that I learned at the I School,” he says.
His work with the park’s visitors provides him with valuable perspective for designing interpretive experiences. He is developing a first-hand knowledge of the visitors’ needs, expectations, and “pain points,” as well as the challenges faced by the park rangers. In a sense, he feels like he’s using the ethnographic approach to research that professor Jenna Burrell taught in Info 203. Social and Organizational Issues of Information.
After the summer internship, “I see the power of technology to inspire visitors differently and connect with them emotionally,” Eric says; but he also has a new appreciation for the challenges. “It’s been a new experience to have an inside view, where previously I only saw it from the outside,” he says. Overall, that experience has re-energized his interest in using technology in parks.
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Eric Zan
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For more information and statistics about MIMS students’ summer internships, see the results of the 2013 MIMS Internship Survey 2013 (PDF).