My name is Adam Auerbach,

...and I am tremendously excited and honored to be recognized as a Grossman Scholar to support my graduate studies in Environmental and Natural Resources Policy through the CU Boulder Masters of the Environment Program.

My journey in conservation and service began in 2013 when I took a year off from college to join an AmeriCorps program with the Nevada Conservation Corps. Previously, I had been unsure of my path professionally and felt rather directionless in school. In Nevada, I was assigned to a chainsaw crew and completed fuels mitigation and habitat restoration projects on public lands across the state. While I did not fall in love with running a chainsaw in the desert for ten hours a day, I did fall in love with the idea of working on and on behalf of public lands. With this newfound passion, I transferred colleges and earned by Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies and American History from Bates College in Maine with an eye towards a career in conservation.

Some highlights of my time in Maine include leading student maintenance trips on a section of the Appalachian Trail, an internship with the National Park Service (NPS), and serving as an NPS Campus Ambassador to promote inclusivity in access to the outdoors on my campus. I was also privileged to publish my undergraduate thesis, “A Century of National Park Conflict: Class, Geography, and the Changing Values of Conservation Discourse in Maine” and to win the Maine Historical Society’s Baxter “article of the year” Award for my work.

The day I graduated in Maine, I began driving west for the first of many fulfilling seasonal jobs in conservation in Colorado, a position in interpretation at Rocky Mountain National Park. During this chapter, I held other jobs in environmental education, outreach, and volunteer coordination with agencies like Boulder County Parks and Open Space and Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW). I also parlayed my own transformative experience in AmeriCorps service to develop and lead the Mile High Youth Corps’ first ever Generation Wild crew, a new service pathway for young people interested in supporting work around connecting youth and families from underserved communities in Northeast Metro Denver to the outdoors. Similarly, in the years prior to my return to school, I developed and led internship programs in partnership with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in my position with American Conservation Experience.

I have always remembered how impactful to my own life trajectory stewardship and connecting with public lands has been and have thus been motivated to use my career to provide similar opportunities for others. While I am proud to say I have done this, I have unfortunately also learned all too well about the realities of inadequate funding and staffing that face public lands agencies and other systemic barriers that today mean access to public lands is not equitable for all. I therefore decided to return to graduate school to better understand the relevant policy landscape. I hope to thus equip myself to have greater impact in my career to advocate on behalf of public lands issues and to ensure that all have the opportunity to have their lives transformed by stewardship and connection to public lands, as I first experienced in 2013.



           Outside of my studies, I have been volunteering doing water policy research through the Acequia Assistance Project, a pro-bono environmental justice legal and policy clinic that supports Colorado’s acequia communities. I have also recently started my capstone project concerning CPW’s Regional Partnerships Initiative and also began a year-long fellowship with the National Forest Foundation to support their Collaborative Capacity program. This scholarship will help me reach my education and career goals by allowing me to focus on these opportunities without pressure to find another paid job on the side. This in turn will give me space to engage in further volunteering; I recently accepted a volunteer position as a board member with the Boulder County Parks and Open Space Foundation to support my community. I may not have felt I had the capacity to take on a meaningful but unpaid opportunity like this without VOC’s support, for which I am deeply grateful.