California Trout, Source Water Initiative Internship, Summer 2023
Every summer, The Bill Lane Center for the American West offers many opportunities for Stanford undergraduates (including graduating seniors and co-terms) to work with organizations throughout the West. Through these internships, students can explore careers in natural history, conservation, land use, museum curation, resource management, energy and more.
All internships are full-time and last ten weeks during the summer. They are fully funded by the Lane Center.
The Lane Center has placed over 200 interns in positions across the West since 2005. As such, we have developed strong relationships with host organizations and work hard to ensure interns have successful and enriching experiences.
For more information about our internship program, please visit our FAQs page, or email Education Manager Corinne Thomas.
Read more about past interns' experiences.
Stipend Information:
The Bill Lane Center will provide a base stipend of $7,500 with additional funding for student financial aid and cost of living adjustments for the internship location, if applicable.
Description of the Organization:
California Trout's mission is ensuring healthy waters and resilient populations of wild fish for a better California.
At California Trout, we work to ensure healthy waters and resilient wild fish for a better California. It's our belief that abundant wild fish indicate healthy waters and that healthy waters benefit all Californians. With more than sixty large-scale conservation projects underway, in tandem with public policy efforts in Sacramento, our six regional offices work tirelessly to advance our cause through a three-pillared approach to conservation.
Our vision is of a California where water flows free, clean and cold from headwaters to sea – a vision of watersheds teeming with native, wild fish whose resilience and diversity match that of the people throughout this great state we call home.
Internship Overview:
Join California Trout, California’s largest river restoration team, to explore and study the spring-fed rivers draining Mt. Shasta and Mt. Lassen. During the internship you will dip your boots in some of our most pristine rivers and collect information that will be used as a basis to protect them. If you are passionate about sustainable water systems in California, join us for this change-making project in one of the most beautiful places in California.
This position will be instrumental in advancing our understanding of the spring-fed rivers in the Mt. Shasta Region by providing a scientific basis for legislative protections for these rivers – CalTrout’s Source Waters Initiative. The intern will be working as part of the Mt. Shasta-Klamath Team.
The intern will join a team that is conducting research and assessments of key groundwater basins to establish existing aquifer and spring flow conditions and measure status under changing hydrologic conditions. The student will engage several components of a larger ongoing effort including study design, data collection, data processing/analysis and reporting. Specific on the ground data collection efforts include developing continuous streamflow and temperature measurements at springs, water quality and geochemical analysis, collecting information on aquatic species composition and fish growth rates. The incumbent will work with cold water fish ecologist Dr. Rob Lusardi from UC Davis and project managers from CalTrout to collect and process the information. This information will be used to compare change under the recent mega-drought by comparing to similar information collected over a decade ago to evaluate change from the ongoing drought. Information will also be compared between rivers with and without springs. The effort will be overseen by CalTrout Regional Director Damon Goodman and guided by CalTrout’s Legal & Policy Director Redgie Collins.
Location: Mt. Shasta, California
Internship Work Environment:
This internship will be in person only with 30% field work and 70% office work.
Housing:
There is no on-site housing available, but Mt. Shasta is a small community, and the team will support the intern with their housing search, including providing options and reaching out to the larger community for low-cost and appropriate housing options that may not be advertised. The team will do its best to make this process as supportive as possible to the intern.
Car: It *will* be necessary to have a car.
- Compile existing regional environmental information such as streamflow records, precipitation, air temperature.
- Review and compile associated literature and planning documents. Develop list of aquatic species dependent on each focal spring system.
- Collect field data on a focal set of springs including continuous streamflow and temperature, collect water samples for water quality and geochemical analysis.
- Analyze fish otoliths to study growth rates of fish from spring-fed and other river systems.
- Compile information, develop numerical and graphical summaries and create a presentation on tasks 1-4.
Bill Lane Center internships are part of Cardinal Quarter opportunities and students from all disciplines are encouraged to apply. The opportunities are full-time (35-40 hours a week) for 10 consecutive weeks during the summer. Specific start and end dates can be coordinated directly with the supervisor.
Please note:
- Students are not permitted to engage in another full-time internship, job, or volunteer opportunity (whether funded by Stanford or otherwise) during this full-time, summer internship.
- Student athletes should confirm the impact of any awarded stipend on their athletic eligibility by contacting the Compliance Services Office prior to committing to an internship.
All undergraduates, including graduating seniors, are eligible. Coterms are eligible only if they hold undergraduate status.
For more helpful application advice, please visit the BLC’s FAQs page.
Application Guidelines for this Internship:
Ideally the intern would be in junior or senior year of undergraduate study through to graduate programming.
Required Skills:
- Strong organizational skills
- Ability to work well in a team
- Basic data organization such as graphing and analysis skills in excel, R or other programs.
- The student should feel comfortable working outside, hiking, walk in rugged terrain and along rivers, swim and snorkel in rivers for data collection, etc.
Desired Skills:
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The student should be interested in environmental conservation and aquatic environments.
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Ideally the student has some experience with GIS including ArcPro software.
Selection of applicants:
Complete applications are screened and finalists are contacted for an interview with staff from The Bill Lane Center for the American West. The top candidates for the position are forwarded to the organization for direct interviews with their potential supervisors and other staff.
Host organizations will then notify the Lane Center of their preferred candidate and that applicant will receive an internship offer from the Bill Lane Center by email.
The applicant is expected to respond promptly (within 48 hours) via email to the offer or the offer will be rescinded.
Once an applicant accepts an offer, they should promptly notify all other Stanford and non-Stanford programs to which they have applied that they have accepted another offer and withdraw their candidacy from those other opportunities.
