Tayleur Baker, a first-year communications major at Oregon State University spent her summer before college interning in the Harney County OSU Extension and Engagement office, near her hometown of Bend, Oregon.

“I think my favorite part was probably getting to connect with youth. It’s fun to watch how unique every single person is and to be able to watch them grow in their leadership is so cool,” Baker said. “They just get so excited about doing something and it’s gonna make a difference.”

Harney County Extension and Engagement office is located in Burns, Oregon, and a part of the greater OSU Extension Service.

OSU Extension Service works throughout Oregon to keep rural communities engaged and informed, while also employing students starting out in the workforce.

During the internship, she spent her time writing press releases for OSU Extension and blurbs for her local newspaper. She was also able to spend time with the 4-H club in the area, a youth oriented organization that emphasizes leadership and other life skills.

Baker worked to organize events like the county fair, helped facilitate a trip to Corvallis with the 4-H students and said that she grew her own leadership skills along with the youth that she worked with.

All land-grant institutions, like OSU, have an Extension and Engagement program. However, OSU’s program started three years before it was established nationally in 1914, according to Wiley Thompson, regional director along the Oregon Coast.

OSU Extension Services is a part of Extension and Engagement. Thompson said that community outreach is a big part of what they do. OSU researchers can work with fishermen to learn about fishing spots, boats and other tricks those people might have, and return with their own researched knowledge of the ocean. The same can be done in the agriculture side of things as well.

“Everybody comes together and we have this co-creation of knowledge,” Thompson said.

According to Thompson, OSU Extension Service offers noncredit classes through the university that teach skills such as good canning practices, fertilizer methods, looking out for pests in trees and more. The classes are geared towards community members that may lack access to that information from other areas.

Extension Service projects have ranged from raising Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program value at farmers market, to working with the 4-H clubs, to starting the Juntos program, according to Thompson.

The OSU Extension program provides many internship opportunities in Benton County, Harney County and others throughout the state.

There are students like Baker, who are placed in a local Extension office to work with project planning and community engagement. However, other interns, like Alli Stephenson, are placed in the Corvallis office and are focused more on public relations and journalism type activities.

Stephenson graduated OSU in 2021 with an undergraduate degree in agriculture science, and the next year, a master’s in agricultural education. She is now the SNAP-Ed education program assistant at OSU Extension Service.

Before her employment, Stephenson interned with the OSU Extension Groundwater Quality Outreach Program Coordinator Chrissy Lucas.

During her 10 week internship, Stephenson did a lot of work educating people in rural areas about maintenance and possible hazards that come with wells and septic systems. This involved hosting a free nitrate screening booth at farmer’s markets and webinars.

“Not only did I learn so much about Groundwater Quality but I also learned so much about OSU Extension and professionalism in the workplace,” Stephenson said. “Such as how to make professional emails and phone calls, how to build and maintain partnerships, office etiquette and so much more.”

According to Thompson, the OSU Extension internship position has grown exponentially over the past five years, with 40 interns last summer.

Furthermore, in the Corvallis area, OSU Extension Service hosts events throughout the year, many of which currently focus on gardening.

Thompson said the interns in OSU Extension really open their eyes to all of the possibilities of a project. They bring new angles and a new liveliness to the workplace.