Botanical garden seeking student workers

The garden offers jobs with beautiful views and fresh air

The Georgeson Botanical Garden, a research facility of UAF’s School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences located on the Fairbanks Experiment Farm, has job openings for students this summer.

Student jobs at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm have a venerable history with the university. Working at the farm can be a memorable experience. Leigh Dennison, for example, described his work there in the early fifties in the 2006 article, “Master of the Farmall tractor” (p. 11, Agroborealis 38.1 [pdf]). Hal Livingston, a geology student, worked various jobs around campus, starting out with weed pulling at the farm in 1951 (“Weeds, bones, and bees”, p. 13). And Barbara Greene worked at the farm as a tour guide in the 1980s (“Down on the farm: the first and last days of a summer job,” p. 14).


With these summer 2009 student openings, several opportunities exist for people who like working outdoors and getting exercise. Tasks include preparing seed beds, planting, maintaining, and harvesting research plots, collecting samples, and recording experimental data.

The workers must be able to perform strenuous physical labor such as lifting fertilizer bags and soil containers, hauling irrigation pipe, mowing lawns, moving rocks, and building outdoor structures. Working with volunteers and leading field trips may also be part of the job.

One opening also exists in the gift shop, where a student is needed to help manage retail sales, maintain inventory, enter data into the computer, perform groundskeeping and custodial tasks, work with volunteers, assist in the garden when not in the shop, help develop and present tours, and help coordinate special events.

To apply, visit the UAF student job website and search for position number 924706. Interviews begin March 7 and will continue after spring break.

See also:

"Sustainable Agriculture in Alaska, part 1: background", Aug. 13, 2008 SNRAS blog
•"Throw All Experiments to the Winds," senior thesis ST 2006-01 by Rochelle Lee Pigors, December 1996
•Like a Tree to the Soil: a history of farming in Alaska's Tanana Valley, 1903 to 1940 by Josephine E. Papp, Josie E. Phillips, 2007