Acoustic Assistant AmeriCorps

POSITION DETAILS

Position (s): 4354

Position Title: Acoustic Assistant - Ameri Corps

Conservation Legacy Program: Scientists in Parks, Stewards Individual Placements

Site

Location:

Denali National Park and Preserve, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Denali Park, Alaska

Number of positions available: 1

Duration: 20 Weeks (not flexible)

Flexible

Start Date:

Yes

Start Date: 05/11/2026

End Date: 09/28/2026

Ameri Corps Slot Classification: 675 hours – this is the minimum number of hours the selected candidate must serve throughout the duration of their position.

• Segal Ameri Corps Education Award: $2,817.14 upon successful completion of position
• Weekly Living Allowance: $600.00 per week, fixed rate
• Relocation Allowance: $1,100.00 (distributed as a one-time lump sum with first paycheck)
• Student Loan Forbearance: if applicable (administered by My Ameri Corps , directly)
• Student Loan Interest Payments: if applicable (administered through My Ameri Corps , directly)

Preference given to applicants who submit applications before Sunday, February 15, 2026. Applications will be reviewed after the Final date to receive applications passes. Positions will close after receiving 60 complete applications, or at 11:59 p.m. EST on February 15, 2026, whichever occurs first.

acoustics, sound, backcountry monitoring, wilderness, transportation, GIS, geoprocessing, remote sensing, human dimensions of wildlife, physical ecology, sensory ecology, engineering, software, computer science, Python, data science, statistics, soundscapes

This Acoustic Assistant is an Ameri Corps position. Our field office provides technical assistance on a variety of management issues related to the protection of natural acoustic environments (soundscapes) in parks. The tourism relationship to park landscapes necessarily involves a journey. Fossil‑fuel based transportation dominates the U.S. at present, representing 30% of our annual energy consumption. Taken together, these two facts echo the scientific consensus: noise from combustion engines is both an extensive and avoidable impact to parks and protected areas.

Nevertheless, parks exist as some of the last quiet refugia available for humans and other species of animal. As such, natural acoustic environments are integral to the cultural and natural heritage of our nation. This is recognized in NPS Management Policies 2006, which states, “the Service will take action to prevent or minimize all noise” that affects park resources or values.

Your service in this position will enable multiple parks to quantify the condition of their resources, document the cause(s) of impacts to them, and indirectly inform potential management action(s). Previous interns have gone on to find employment in land management, GIS, remote sensing, software development. Yet others have used this experience as a springboard into a graduate research program.

The core experiences of this position involve working with acoustic data, transportation data and the scientific equipment necessary to collect them. We collaborate as field partners to wrangle incoming backcountry data from the entire NPS Alaska Region. You will conduct projects with other Backcountry Rangers to organize maintenance trips to remote sites in Denali. You will learn the skill of reading spectrograms (images of sound) and we will conduct projects in tandem to manually annotate noise events that occur in parks.

You will also assist in the repair of field equipment and help ship our remote park contacts needed items. We collaborate to complete many geoprocessing, cartography and reporting tasks. Contributions to any of a number of NPS software repositories should be anticipated, as able. You can expect to be in the office about 70‑80% of the time, in the field 20‑30% of the time, and in trainings the remainder of the time.

To hone your public speaking skills, you will develop and deliver a professional final presentation to a mixed NPS and academic audience at the close of the summer season. Several previous SIPs have commented on the enriching mix of…