Kaylene A. Wright ’17

Selecting Hood was an impulse decision. Being from Colorado, I’d always planned to attend a school in state. One day, after I’d already applied to the colleges I’d chosen, someone mentioned how they wanted to explore “new perspectives.” This statement really impacted me, and that day, I did research on colleges in the Washington, DC area. I explored DC my senior year of high school and figured I’d quickly swing by Hood College on the last day of my visit. During that visit, it immediately became obvious that I needed to attend Hood College. Everything seemed so right when I stepped on the campus, and I knew it was where I belonged. I’ll never forget that feeling.

I double majored in Communication Arts and Political Science, and both majors help with my job as a park ranger. Every skill I learned from Communication Arts comes to play – public speaking, writing, editing and creating webpages, managing social media accounts, photography, videography, and much more are relevant to me every day in my career. For Political Science, my knowledge of how government works and how it affects the National Park Service helps in my understanding of my work as a federal government employee.

I wouldn’t identify a single professor as being a main mentor, but there are several that come to mind when I think of my career development. Liz Atwood in particular was very helpful to me, as was Tamelyn Tucker-Worgs, Lynn Staininger, and Janis Judson.

I am an interpretive park ranger, which means that my job is to interact with and assist visitors as they come to enjoy the park! For my job, it’s less about describing a typical day and more about describing a typical week. I staff the visitor center all throughout the week. One day of the week I give tours of our historic ranch building, another day I give evening programs on a variety of topics, and another day is dedicated to “roving” – spending the day hiking the trails and talking with visitors as I see them! At times where I’m doing none of these things, I’m researching topics to develop my own interpretive programs, or brainstorming social media ideas. (Follow @chiricahuanps on Instagram…I manage it!) 

The pandemic has definitely affected the National Park Service and all park rangers nationwide. At Chiricahua we closed our visitor center and campground, cancelled all interpretive programming, and at one point the park road was completely closed. My job is centered around the visitors, and suddenly, I couldn’t interact with any of them. We redirected our attention to social media efforts, where I developed a series of “Monument Minute” videos of us explaining park topics. We also directed attention toward program development and other projects that we’d been putting on the back burner.

My favorite aspect about working at Chiricahua National Monument is how peaceful it is. We are a small park located in rural southeast Arizona, and hardly anyone has heard of us. Chiricahua was established for its incredible and unreal rock pinnacle formations. Because not a lot of people know we’re here, it’s peaceful and you can really feel like you have the park to yourself. No matter how busy it is on a given day, you can hike on a trail and see no one else for a long while. Visitors frequently call Chiricahua a “secret hidden gem” and I couldn’t agree more.

If I could work at another national park, I would choose to work at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado. I love Colorado so much and feel it’s where I belong, and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP is my favorite park in the state. I often call this park the most underrated national park in the country. Not a lot of people know about it, but it’s absolutely amazing.

The most important message I hope visitors take home after their visit is a desire to preserve and protect our nation’s wonders. In visiting such an incredible place and having such a wonderful experience, I hope visitors realize that it’s up to them (and all of us) to make sure these places are preserved and protected for years to come. I hope visitors are able to connect personally in some way to the resources we protect and have a newfound appreciation for the nature, wildlife, or stories that they didn’t have before their visit. That’s what I hope to do as an interpreter – connect people to the park in ways they didn’t know or hadn’t thought of.

I wouldn’t go back and change my majors. They both help me so much in my job. It’s kind of funny because when I tell visitors what my degree was in, they are often taken aback. “Political Science?! What are you doing as a park ranger?” they often tell me. Park Ranger isn’t the typical route for someone studying politics, but I chose to take it and have no regrets in doing so. (Psst…I didn’t even consider a career as a park ranger until my last semester of college!) I also bring different knowledge to the table in the workplace having this background that not a lot of other rangers have.

My advice to current students at Hood is to be involved in clubs and activities on campus. I was involved in so many of them (perhaps too many!) and they provided me with fun things to do, great friends with the same interests as me, and leadership experience through participation on executive boards