Dreams come true for students in the environmental sciences
With support from the NSF ASCEND Engine, MSU Denver helps build the green workforce of the future through funded internships.
Growing up in Durango, Peter Ferraro was keenly familiar with mountain ecosystems. But it was a trip to Pawnee National Grassland northeast of Greeley that had the most profound impact on him.
“All of a sudden, I was just totally immersed in that system, and I’d never really felt like that before,” said Ferraro, a senior majoring in Environmental Science at Metropolitan State University of Denver. “I was like, ‘Wow, these are really important ecosystems that a lot of people disregard, and I think it’s really important not to disregard things just because you can’t see the importance of them immediately.’”
As an intern in Soil Health and Carbon Storage in Short Grass Prairies with MSU Denver’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Ferraro has since become a lot more familiar with grassland ecosystems.
Through the National Science Foundation Advanced Sensing and Computation for Environmental Decision-Making (ASCEND) Engine in Colorado and Wyoming, students such as Ferraro receive scholarship awards for internships in this emerging field. Since last summer, over 45 MSU Denver students have participated in environmental internships, with 11 receiving funding from the Engine.
“Being the workforce-development partner for the ASCEND Engine is a great example of how MSU Denver continues to be an indispensable and agile provider of talent and skill that drives Colorado’s economy, especially in this emerging area of environmental decision-making,” said Maluwa Behringer, executive director of MSU Denver’s Industry Partnerships.
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Ferraro’s internship involves taking soil samples from Daniels Park in Sedalia and testing the nutrient levels to develop a baseline before a team at the Denver Zoo releases rainbow scarab dung beetles into the ecosystem. The beetles will help remove bison dung, which, Ferraro said, has been piling up.
“The end goal is that we get a population of the rainbow scarabs back in Daniels (Park), working to keep that ecosystem sustaining itself,” Ferraro said.
Zoo staff members will monitor soil health once the beetles are released to ensure ongoing sustainability. While the work may seem unglamorous to some, Ferraro chose it because he loves being outside in nature — and because restoring ecosystems gives him hope.
“The difference in restoration for me was it was something positive that you could do,” he said. “It was inherently good, and it was something where you could contribute to fixing a problem instead of trying to figure out what’s wrong.”
As Ferraro tends to the soil, another MSU Denver student turns his attention to the skies. Gage Gibson, a senior majoring in Meteorology, serves as the Evaluating Experimental Weather Simulations intern at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Systems Laboratory in Boulder.
Put simply, the internship involves determining how accurately computer programs predict the weather. A storm chaser in his free time, he has seen firsthand how predicting weather patterns has real-life applications.
“It’s a big ‘pinch me’ moment to actually help develop this model that two or three years ago, when it first became available publicly for experimentation, I would use for storm chasing,” he said.
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He has also helped a postdoctoral researcher train a machine-learning algorithm to identify extreme precipitation and developed a user guide for Global Systems Laboratory employees on how to use model-analysis tools. The work may sound intimidating for people who aren’t as familiar with the science behind weather prediction, but since he was a kid, all Gibson has ever wanted to do is meteorology research.
“The internship is a very key way to develop those very necessary computing and coding skills in the field right now,” Gibson said. “It’s kind of just been a dream come true to just even be a fly on the wall at GSL, let alone actually actively working with these people and contributing to GSL’s mission.”
As they near graduation, Gibson and Ferraro are in luck when it comes to job prospects. A 2024 Green Skills Report from LinkedIn revealed that demand for talent in fields and positions that promote sustainability is growing faster than supply. To keep pace, the pool of people with expertise in environmental decision-making needs to at least double by 2050, the report says.
“MSU Denver students continue to be at the forefront of blurring the boundaries between postsecondary education and workforce and expanding how leaders think about economic development,” said Will Simpkins, vice president of Student Affairs. “The internship funds support MSU Denver’s efforts to grow our strategy in the environmental sector.”
Over 10 years, the funds are poised to help over 5,000 people train for more than 22,000 job openings and aim to stimulate the economy by over $1.5 billion.
Learn about internship opportunities through MSU Denver’s Classroom to Career Hub.
