New SNRE recruiter starts work

In her first two weeks as the SNRE recruiter, Jori Welchans met
with the school’s students and faculty and representatives from Admissions, Student
Rural Services, Financial Aid and Residence Life. She also toured the Student Recreation Center
and participated in Major Mania, the Inside Out recruiting event and another
college fair attended by Interior high school students. 

“I’ve been busy,” she said.

Welchans wants to learn as much as possible about the School
of Natural Resources and Extension and the University of Alaska Fairbanks so
she can answer questions from prospective students and tell them about the
natural resources management degree.

She will be based out of Kerttula Hall at the Matanuska
Experiment Farm. Welchans will focus her recruiting efforts in Anchorage and
the Mat-Su areas at first. She expects to attend college fairs and meet with
high school students, maybe in biology and chemistry classes. Frequently, those
are the kind of students that might be interested in natural resources management
but probably don’t know about the interdisciplinary degree, she said. “It kind
of combines all sciences and they really don’t think that way.”

Interestingly, she discovered that all the NRM students she
talked to in Fairbanks transferred to the major after declaring another major
at UAF. They did not know about the NRM degree when they started college.

Welchans hopes to make the degree more visible and to
recruit more students. She believes her background will be an asset, since several
of jobs she has had are the kind of jobs individuals with a natural resources
management degree might get. Those include a nine-year stint as a seasonal park
ranger at Denali National Park. She did interpretive programs for visitors and
later trained and supervised other interpreters. She also worked as a science
technician at the park, a sports and recreation coordinator for the City of
Seward and in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she received undergraduate degrees in
anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. She later earned a
bachelor’s degree in parks and recreation management and a master’s in
recreation, sports and tourism from the University of Illinois. She has also
worked as a substitute high school teacher and tutor for several Alaska school
districts.

The recruiting job also seemed like a good fit because of
her interest in the outdoors, conservation and natural resources, she said.  “I am passionate about natural resources and
managing them in a sustainable manner.”

Her hobbies include hiking and playing hockey, which she learned
as a child growing up in a Detroit suburb. She looks forward to making more
connections with the university and trying to boost the school’s undergraduate
and graduate numbers.

SNRE Professor Dave Valentine, who also serves as the SNRE director
of academic programs, said he and other members of the hiring committee were
impressed with Welchans and her positive attitude. “She really has a lot of
enthusiasm for natural resources and our program,” he said. “We think we’ve got
a great program. We’ve just got to get ourselves better known.”