While many outdoor enthusiasts visited Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) this summer to unwind and relax, one Colorado State University graduate student spent her summer at the national park learning and making a difference.

Maggie Moss Jones, a Vice President for Research Fellow, joined a vegetation restoration crew at RMNP as an intern during her summer break. She is a master’s student of public history – cultural resource management and environmental history.

“Alongside two other graduate students in the CSU History Department, we constructed an alpine boardwalk to protect the tundra ecosystem, planted over 15,000 plants, and moved nearly 12 tons of soil to restore native plants in Rocky Mountain,” said Jones.

The internship was funded through a joint partnership between CSU’s Public Land History Center and the National Park Service through a Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Units (CESU) program funding.

“Joining this crew was invaluable for furthering my understanding of the realities of environmental work and real concerns of the National Park Service.”

One of the most rewarding takeaways from her time on the crew was “seeing the interdisciplinary connections between history and ecological work, as well as the relevancy of environmental history for vegetation restoration on a daily basis.”