Recreation, park, and tourism management student leveraging internship experience in sustainable recreation

From production to purchase and place-based education to land management, Isaac Brackbill, a fourth-year student majoring in recreation, park, and tourism management (RPTM) with a concentration in outdoor recreation, is gaining real-world experience in sustainable recreation through an internship at Shelburne Farms in Vermont.

Brackbill’s internship focuses on the sustainable production of cheese and how best to connect it to the farm’s mission and visitors. As a cheesemaking and processing assistant in the farm’s cheese department, he helps the lead cheesemaker in the make room — a specialized space for turning the milk from the farm's Brown Swiss cows into cheddar.

“I am grateful for RPTM and how versatile the degree is,” Brackbill said. “Even though food production seems distant to RPTM, it connects at a place like Shelburne Farms. It connects at a place like Penn State's Student Farm. RPTM can be applied wherever education, fostering curiosity, or connection to people and nature surround the organization’s mission and goals.”

As an RPTM student, Brackbill leveraged the experiential learning he received while at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. At Shaver’s Creek, he took an “Interpreting Maple Sugaring to Families” course that allowed him to delve into food and sustainability. The course offers an overview of the natural history of maple sugaring and teaches methods of the maple sugaring process. This experience culminates with the Maple Harvest Festival hosted by Shaver’s Creek, where students teach the community about maple sugaring.

Brackbill also participated in a Student Engagement and Experiential Discovery (SEED) semester, where he worked alongside experienced outdoor educators, team-building facilitators and naturalists to obtain a holistic set of outdoor leadership skills.

“I highly recommend the SEED experience to any student interested in RPTM, outdoor education, natural history interpretation, wildlife, team development facilitation or anything along those lines,” Brackbill said. “For me, SEED was the experience that made me feel like I was in the right place with the right people and studying something that I truly wanted to pursue.”

Brackbill said he credits RPTM classes — Recreation Resource Planning and Management as well as Principles of Environmental Interpretation — in helping him gain knowledge about different perspectives in recreational resources and strategies that connect products to people’s everyday lives.

“I have really enjoyed applying what I have learned from studying RPTM to the management of the farm,” Brackbill said. “RPTM fostered a level of care within me that I see at Shaver’s Creek and Shelburne Farms. This degree has many opportunities that allow students to explore people and places.”

Originally published April 2025.