Alyssa showing park goers a box turtle.
In the summer of 2021, Alyssa Chiascione completed her internship at Eden Mill Nature Center, located on a 118-acre park that is part of Deer Valley Creek in Pylesville, Maryland. The Park is home to a nature center, historic mill museum, a wetland, over 3 miles of hiking trails, a master gardener garden, picnic tables, grills, a canoe launch, and tons more.
Chiascione, an Institute Applied Agriculture (IAA) student at the University of Maryland plans to earn her certificate in Applied Agriculture in May 2022 and then pursue her bachelor’s in environmental science and technology. Although she does not come from an agriculture background, Chiascione has quickly taken an interest in agriculture while going canoe trips and maintaining over 3 acres of hiking trails during her internship. Denise Cicero, one of Chiascione’s coworkers says, “Alyssa was such an enthusiastic addition to our summer stuff at Eden Mill Nature Center. She was dependable, consistent, and happily volunteered to work all hours.”
Chiascione spent part of her time doing office work for the nature center, and says it helped her gained new office and communications skills. She was comfortable being in the office. It was the outside work that pushed her beyond her comfortable zone at first. For as long as she can remember, Chiascione has had a fear of bugs, but this internship required her to interact with the natural world on a daily basis. She faced her fears of spiders while on a canoe trip when one of the instructors killed a spider in the canoe. Unfortunately, the spider unleashed hundreds of baby spiders that terrified Chiascione who had nowhere to run, but she says that experience coupled with a summer working at the nature center has helped her conquer her fear of spiders.
Chiascione’s favorite part of her internship was the week in early August when she was a camp counselor! She educated children on photosynthesis and macroinvertebrates. This experience benefited Chiascione as she is keeping an educational pathway as a career option.
Chiascione’s internship gave her a refreshing outlook on working outside and having responsibilities her own. She gained a deeper love within her agriculture program along with basic office communication skills, applied hands on work, and more. While she readily admits that “In the beginning I wasn’t thrilled to commute to my internship, as it was a long drive, but by the end of summer I didn’t care about the commute because I loved what I was doing and enjoyed every day going into work.”
