Danielle Server
Staff Writer
The University of Wyoming is sending 15 outdoor recreation and tourism students to Fremont County this semester to complete their senior capstone project.
This will be the first professional semester of the degree’s new program. It includes not only an opportunity for these students to apply what they have learned, but to also give them a taste of what their careers will look like outside of college.
“I believe [Fremont County] has the most opportunity to go in and help them with different outdoor rec problems [they were] having. It was fairly easy to come up with a project to help out,” said Dana Even, one of the 15 students.
The students have been split into groups in order to complete three different projects during the semester as they continue with their classes. Their classes also include a capstone project and a business class to further their education.
The first project is an assessment of the Fremont County outdoor recreation. These students will be working on finding opportunities that can help shape and enhance the county’s recreation program.
“My project is the outdoor assessment of Fremont County. We are waiting for the Wind River outdoor recreation collaborative to figure out what they want out of the project, but we do have a bit of what we want to lean towards,” said Even. “We are going to do a flat analysis of the main outdoor recreation opportunities in Fremont County and then we will report to the Wind River Outdoor Recreation Collaboration (WRORC). From there, they are going to put together a collaboration with the Wyoming outdoor recreation office.”
The second project gives the students an important role in Wyoming’s future outdoor recreation collaborations. The students will be given the chance to create a toolkit for future collaborations across the state as they continue to find ways to improve on the state’s outdoor recreation.
An outdoor recreation collaborative toolkit gives stakeholders in the state the best ideas in regards to promoting outdoor recreation in Wyoming. These groups are trying to go about this in the most sustainable way by focusing on areas that would otherwise not be considered for outdoor recreation.
“They are starting outdoor recreation collaborations throughout the state of Wyoming, such as the Big Horn basin collaboration which has already begun.” said Brynn Hirschman, a student working on the toolkit project. “They have been around now for two years, but it has taken them this whole time to get where they are today.”
The third project focuses on more specific outdoor recreation opportunities, including the “Bus Loops” and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) trails. These students will be studying these opportunities with the help of public feedback in order to form a better solution for this popular outdoor recreation opportunity. The student’s research will help contribute to the Lander BLM’s National Environmental Policy Act.
