USU Internship Supports U.S. Forest Service in Monitoring Thousands of Rivers in the West

Students from the Quinney College of Natural Resources worked alongside professionals this summer in paid internships to build skills and experience in their chosen field.

Some of these, including undergraduates Michael MacDonald and Eyston Kunz, performed stream and river monitoring across the Northwestern U.S. alongside the U.S. Forest Service. This work is in an effort to track water quality and habitat health.

Kunz, who is a Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences major, is now in his third year working with the program. He is also a USFS Pathways intern, a unique opportunity to enter federal employment while still a student, creating potential to convert directly to a permanent position after graduation. Kunz’s success in securing a competitive Pathways internship with the U.S. Forest Service was a direct result of his participation in the QCNR internship program in 2022, according to Carl Saunders, lead on the monitoring project and supervisory fish biologist with the U.S. Forest Service.

The QCNR internship program has partnerships with the U.S. Forest Service, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Utah Forestry, Fire & State Lands, National Parks and nonprofit agencies to provide these kinds of experiences to students as soon as their freshman year as an integral part of their academic program.