Student Conservation Corps didn’t find their new crew leader so much as he found his way back to them.
Since graduating from Bainbridge High School in 2008, Ian Shiach had earned two environmental science degrees, taught leaf transpiration to high schoolers and phenology – that’s the study of seasonal phenomena in the life cycles of animals and plants – to undergrads, and led youth conservation groups in the field. Now back on the island, he’d started volunteering in island parks.
Run SCoCo, the Park District’s summer youth stewardship program? Yes, he could do that.
“When we hired him, I made them promise they wouldn’t replace me,” joked Morgan Houk, Volunteer Program Manager for Bainbridge Metro Parks and a fellow 2008 BHS alum. “He’s incredibly qualified to do what he’s doing, and he’s been an awesome addition.
“He brings a knowledge of plants and biology that’s really unique, and I think the kids really enjoy being able to ask him tons of questions, and he can just whip out these really awesome scientific answers.”
Said Shiach: “I really like taking high school students out into our parks and doing actual, good conservation work and at the same time doing educational activities. And I like to give back to these parks that I’ve spent so much time in and enjoyed so much over the years.”
If you’ve circuited Bainbridge Island parks on any recent weekday, you’ve probably seen Student Conservation Corps at work: young, energetic, neon-clad high schoolers armed with clippers and shears, beating back blackberries and tearing through patches of ivy.
By the end of the current 12-day session – the second of three this summer – SCoCo will have touched down at Meigs Park, West Port Madison and Moritani preserves, Blakely Harbor, Grand Forest, Waypoint Woods and more besides.
Where they go, park ecosystems are refreshed and mounds of noxious weeds left in their wake for disposal. It’s a good gig, vigorous outdoor work, environmental learning, team building, fun. And paid.
“Mostly I wanted a job where I can earn money,” said Connor Verharen, Eagle Harbor High School junior, “and also I don’t really like invasive species, and I like to destroy them.”
Check and check.
For Hailey Dunn, a recent college graduate and one of two assistant leaders hired for this year’s program, it’s a chance to put her own environmental expertise to work to make a positive impact with kids: “Who doesn’t want to influence the next generation of people out there?”
“I never got an experience like this back in Michigan until I got to college,” Dunn said. “I think it’s super cool that Bainbridge allows the kids to have an experience like this, get their hands dirty and see what the fight is.”
SCOCO IS BACK, BIGGER THAN EVER
Student Conservation Corps is now in its 12th year, a program of Bainbridge Metro Parks with longtime support from the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation.
The popular program was shelved by the pandemic in 2020 and made a tentative, scaled-back return last year with just a single small crew.
This year, boosted by the Washington state SEEK Fund – Summer Experiences & Enrichment for Kids – and additional support from the Bainbridge Community Foundation, SCoCo is back in a big way.
Four sessions were funded, a week at spring break and three 12-day summer sessions of up to 18 students each through August. SEEK and BCF support allowed the District to hire two assistants, Dunn and island native Kieran Patrick, to support Shiach.
“It’s allowed us to better manage each crew’s time, and divide and conquer in a way that we wouldn’t be able to without breaking up into smaller groups,” Houk said. “It keeps them safe, and keeps them focused.”
Patrick, heading into his senior year in psychology at Webster University in Missouri, brings past work as a YMCA camp counselor.
Dunn just graduated from Western Michigan University with a topical double major in environmental science and political science. No prospective employers wanted to relocate her, so she relocated herself to Kitsap County and landed with SCOCO for the summer.
Every lunch hour features a conservation-focused speaker, on topics ranging from mycology to holistic approaches to climate change.
A recent afternoon saw a presentation on sustainable home restoration by islanders Todd Vogel and Karen Hust, who turned their Hal Molstad-designed, Northwest Modernist house on Wing Point into the “the most ecologically ambitious home renovation on the planet.”
It was an affirmative message, resonant with Dunn, who prides herself on always focusing on the positive.
“This generation spending their whole life in world-altering events, back to back to back, they’re going to automatically want to think, ‘what can I do to make the world a better place?’” she said. “Obviously, they think that. They’re here working on conservation, taking out invasive species in their hometown.
“I think we have a bright future ahead of us, with kids like these being the future.”
