Carolyn assisted with the AMD Sampling with the EPCAMR Staff in the Loyalsock Creek Watershed.

EC worked with the King’s College Office of Career Planning to offer King’s students the opportunity to apply for one of two EC Summer 2026 Scholarships. This EC scholarship allows King’s students to gain hands-on experience through an internship which aligns with EC’s mission. Furthermore, the work that students do in this internship counts for three college credits, funded by the scholarship, which helps students work towards earning their degrees. Carolyn has been selected as a recipient of the Earth Conservancy Summer 2026 Scholarship and has chosen to return to work with EPCAMR for this internship opportunity.  You can read about Carolyn’s initial time with EPCAMR in this previous news article. 

Carolyn tells us, “I’m so honored that I was selected as a recipient of this amazing scholarship! I never would have expected that such an opportunity would have been made possible for me so early in my college career. Without this internship, I would have needed to wait until the fall semester of college to return to work with EPCAMR as a Community-Based Federal Work Study student intern. I would have missed getting involved with all the sampling and monitoring that EPCAMR does throughout the summer, which I’ve really wanted to be a part of! Now, thanks to Earth Conservancy, I can focus on getting out in the field without worrying about falling behind with course work!” 

“I really like how this internship is run differently from my other college courses. There are virtually no assignments, except for updating my supervising professor, Dr. Brain Mangan, on my tasks and activities each week. Instead of me taking a midterm and final exam, Bobby has to complete a midterm and final assessment of the quality of my work. It’s more like I’m giving him homework! I’ll have to work hard so that he has only good things to say about me!” Carolyn joked. 

Carolyn organized the Holy Cross Day of Service EPCAMR AMD Tie-Dye Activity on Campus in Wilkes-Barre just before the Spring Semester came to an end with Bobby and Maria.

Carolyn mentioned, “In all seriousness, I’m very grateful to have been chosen for this opportunity. There are a lot of people who helped me secure this internship. Dr. Brian Mangan, who is the Director of the Environmental Program at King’s and my supervising professor for this internship, informed me of the opportunity and encouraged me to apply. I am so thankful for his unwavering support. The Office of Career Planning was extremely helpful in the application process, answering any and all questions I had. They were also partly responsible for deciding which students would be awarded the scholarship, so I’m grateful they chose me. EPCAMR has my gratitude for welcoming me back so soon after I finished this semester’s Community-Based Federal Work Study with them. I look forward to continuing to be a part of the EPCAMR team! And finally, a big thank you to Earth Conservancy, who proposed and funded this scholarship. This scholarship truly reflects their efforts to increase involvement in similar causes to their own.”

Carolyn attended the Schuylkill River Watershed Congress at Alvernia College in Reading to be a Room Facilitator, along with Maria, while Bobby was there to present.

Bobby stated, “Carolyn has been a valuable member of the EPCAMR team through her involvement in the Communit-Based Federal Work Study Program. It is very beneficial to us, since we often do not have the funds to create paid internships, unless grant funds are budgeted and can be allocated to support the internship positions. The students are paid through the Work Study Program, I serve as their Supervisor and Mentor, and they follow our activity description of tasks and work projects that we are currently working on during the time that they are with us. She will continue to get lots of hands-on learning and applied science activities during her internship over the next 12 weeks. This scholarship from Earth Conservancy is wonderful for her and for us. They have been a very strong advocate and supporter of our work over our entire time we’ve existed and we’ve been a part of their work in many capacities and still are. Carolyn already works very well with the rest of the Staff and our community volunteers and has already gained a lot of knowledge on the work that we do in the region to assess and restore our watersheds impacted by legacy AMD. She’s been very instrumental in helping to categorize my Google Contacts list to help EPCAMR target reaching out to vendors and partners of ours to invite them to attend our Fall 30th Anniversary Banquet and Dinner/Reception to celebrate this amazing milestone of ours. That’s no easy task with over 7000 contacts to be sorted and labeled,” Bobby joked.

Carolyn lives in Shickshinny, at the southern part of the Wyoming Valley, where we are working on completing a Coldwater Conservation Plan for the Shickshinny Creek, Rocky Run, and Paddy Run watersheds. She’s familiar with the area and is currently reaching out to the Shickshinny Historical Society and Museum’s Director, Jimmy Bach, to research any historical mine maps of the area that EPCAMR can scan and utilize in our report. Jimmy has an amazing YouTube collection on the site and his History with Jimmy videos are great! We’ve offered to scan the maps for Jim and provide them to him digitally for allowing us to borrow the maps and scan them to get them into our report and possibly into the Mine Subsidence Insurance’s (MSI) Mine Map Atlas and PA Historical Underground Mine Map Inventory System (PHUMMIS). We will be scheduling some days in June for additional stream and culvert assessments in both the Shickshinny Creek and following up with our partners in the Bowman’s Creek watershed too! Welcome back Carolyn! 

The post Carolyn M. Phillips, returns to EPCAMR, sponsored by an Earth Conservancy Summer 2026Scholarship appeared first on epcamr.org.

Katie has a background in researching Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) opportunities for students when she had a previous internship with Seaside Sustainability, Gloucester, MA remotely and worked on various projects with other interns and was a Project Manager for a marine trash collector called “Seabin”, mentioned Bobby Hughes, EPCAMR Executive Director. “EPCAMR is heavily involved in STEM and STEAM….where the “A” is for “Art”, because of our use of iron oxide pigment from AMD. Her familiarity with coastal cleanups will be helpful since we do a lot of inland freshwater cleanups and illegal dumpsite cleanups on abandoned mine lands and both our pristine trout water ecosystems and our AMD impacted waterways. The majority of our work is completed in the Chesapeake Bay Watershsed”, he stated enthusiastically. 

Katie was a part of a Committee Team with the National Model United Nations (NMUN), in New York City, New York in both March of 2018 and again in April of 2020, where she became a Committee member of the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA) and a lead delegate. The Environment Assembly embodies a new era in which the environment is at the center of the international community’s focus and is given the same level of prominence as issues such as peace, poverty, health, and security. She developed skills in the facilitation of debate, conflict resolution, and customer service while learning alongside delegates about emerging global issues. Her Committee set the agenda to discuss environmental topics followed by resolution writing. She also had the chance to attend a conference to debate energy topics at the National Model United Nations, Efurt, Germany in the Fall of 2019.

“I’ve always loved the environment and had a passion for it ever since I was little. I enjoy hiking and being out in nature. My mother and I love to kayak during the Summer and Fall months of the year. As I got older and understood the destruction happening to the environment, I developed a strong determination for preserving it. When it came to choosing a major for college, I had no doubt in my mind that getting a degree in the environmental field would be the right choice for me,”, Katie mentioned with a passion.

“During my first years at King’s College, I was really interested in environmental policy and law, but as the years progressed, my path changed direction. Every year, for about a week, the Environmental Department at King’s College takes a trip to the Chesapeake Bay for a class. I must say, that trip changed my entire career path. We learned so much about the Bay, as well as, many aquatic animals native to it, and experienced so many wonderful things. I learned a lot about the health of the Chesapeake Bay, blue crabs, oyster farming and so much more. I really opened up and my inner environmentalist came out on that trip because I had done things that I had never done before,” reflected Katie.

Katie Van Orden is holding a Diamondback Terrapin that she caught while crab scraping the underwater grass in the Chesapeake Bay.

“I want to make change happen, not by policy and law, but by being out in the field…out with nature. Ever since the Chesapeake Bay trip, my focus in the environment has been wetlands and water quality. I have such a passion to learn about the most diverse ecosystems in the world”, Katie proclaimed.

Katie will be putting in 10-15 hours a week through the Federal Work-Study Program to intern with EPCAMR and work on some of our upcoming projects including several cleanups such as Centralia, local cleanups in the region we’ve planned for the Fall, aquatic organism passage (AOP) culvert assessments for our NFWF Small Watershed Grant along the eastern flank of the Southern Wyoming Valley watersheds (Solomon Creek, Warrior Creek, Nanticoke Creek, and Newport Creek). She has already completed her on-line AOP Protocol Training and will be shadowed by the EPCAMR Executive Director in the field to obtain her 20 culverts she needs to assess to become a certified Lead Observer under the NAACC. She will be doing some AMD sampling and macro-invertebrate sampling as well. We will get her involved in some of our Environmental Education programming too with our lead Environmental Education Coordinator, Laura Rinehimer.

“I would love to gain the experience of evaluating and sampling streams and rivers, as well as, increasing my knowledge of water quality and Abandoned Mine Drainage (AMD) around NEPA. During my internship at EPCAMR, I hope to collaborate with some amazing people on several projects and accomplish my goals of learning more about water quality testing and AMD,” Katie stated with enthusiasm.

“It’s a small world,” EPCAMR’s Executive Director stated. ” Katie’s father, Clark Van Orden, is a local photographer who has been coming along and capturing hundreds of projects, programs, activities, and our environmental actions over the years and is a great colleague of mine. I made sure to let Katie know to tell her Dad that I said hello once she got home after the interview and was selected for an internship with EPCAMR,” Bobby Hughes, stated with a smile.

The post EPCAMR Brings on Katie Van Orden as a Part-time King’s College Federal Work-Study Intern for the Fall 2020 to Assist with a Multitude of Projects appeared first on epcamr.org.