A Summer of Outreach
by Kaitlyn Peine
Community Health & Wellness Agent
The summer months are a busy season for our programs reaching youth audiences. From May through the beginning of August, Douglas County K-State Research and Extension hosted three summer engagement interns. It has been several years since K-State Research and Extension has offered a statewide paid internship program. The summer engagement program placed 60 interns in local Extension units across Kansas. Douglas County was fortunate to host three interns.
The Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) funded the summer engagement program. The Kansas 4-H Program provided leadership
and administrative support. The primary goal for the program was to make up for COVID learning loss by providing direct educational programs for youth. Our three interns, Kalen Dressler, Rachel Pratt, and Hannah Riedy did exactly what we set out to do through their 12-week internship experience. This summer our intern team reached an astounding 1,480 youth through our healthy living and S.T.E.M. (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs.
At the end of the internship program, I asked the interns to reflect on their experience. A common theme was that all three believed their intern experience exceeded their initial expectations as they were much more hands on than they believed they could be. Our intern team did a phenomenal job of adapting and flexing to meet the needs of our youth summer programming efforts. By the end of the 12-week experience each intern had mastered the art of creating lesson plans, facilitating programs, and evaluating program outcomes.
The KSDE summer engagement program not only funded three intern positions but also included a $15,000 programming budget and supplemental curriculum and program supplies. Collectively the interns worked 1,231 hours. The intern program allowed our team to build staffing capacity during one of our busier seasons for youth programming.
Many of our summer programming efforts were hosted in collaboration with our community partners. Working in tandem with community partners allows K-State Research and Extension Douglas County to reach new audiences. The three major programs we hosted were Field to Fork, Feeding Eudora, and USD 491’s Summer Academy.
Field to Fork program was a collaborative effort between all our program areas: community health and wellness, agriculture, horticulture, and natural resources, community development, and 4-H youth development. Field to Fork offered 30 youth the opportunity to explore soil conservation, animal science, nutrition, and botany through a three-day summer camp experience. The capstone included a field trip day visiting producers to learn about local food production.
Feeding Eudora is a summer feeding program hosted by community partners. Each week our intern, Rachel Pratt, hosted a S.T.E.M. lesson for Feeding Eudora participants. Youth practiced the engineering design process, explored electrical concepts, and explored numerous science topics.
Summer Academy was a summer day camp experience hosted in June by the Eudora School District for 364 elementary and middle school students. Twice a week students were guided through a S.T.E.M. lesson hosted by our intern team.
Looking ahead to next summer, we hope to again host the summer engagement intern program. The program was a great opportunity to build our staffing capacity while increasing our direct education efforts for youth audiences.
