Glacier Park Conservancy Highlights School-to-Park Education Program Bridging Classroom and Conservation

Speaking over Zoom last week before a virtual audience of Glacier National Park enthusiasts, siblings Mae and Otto Anderson didn’t bother blurring the background on their screen. Instead, they gave viewers a clear glimpse of the interior of Mae’s home, which she built, and described their experience learning the tools of the building trade during their separate stints in the School-to-Park program at Columbia Falls High School (CFHS), a partnership with Glacier that helps increase the park’s depleted inventory of employee housing.

“My boyfriend and I built the house we’re sitting in now, which required all of the skills I learned from this program,” Mae, a Columbia Falls High School graduate and School-to-Park alum, said. “I have no other background in construction. So, what you’re seeing behind us are the benefits of the program in real life.”

Since 2019, vocational arts students at CFHS have been constructing cabins for employees and working to complete other infrastructure projects through a youth and community engagement effort modeled after a similar program in Denali National Park. The program is supported with assistance from the Glacier National Park Conservancy, but its student participants are the program’s beating heart. Meanwhile, the school’s woodshop instructors and the park’s backcountry carpenters instill lifelong skills in the program’s graduates while furnishing Glacier with needed housing for seasonal employees, as well as helping with other infrastructure improvements and building restoration.

On Dec. 11, during a presentation organized by the Conservancy, nearly a dozen current and former students of the School-to-Park program were on hand to describe their experience and highlight the benefits of the partnership.

“I remember signing my name on the roof of a cabin and and then covering it up and thinking that some day maybe someone will unearth this,” Otto Anderson said. “It was pretty cool being part of that project. The cabin was build in the 1920s, so restoring it was special.”

Doug Mitchell, executive director of the Glacier National Park Conservancy, which functions as the park’s nonprofit fundraising partner, said he grew up in a house built by a local shop class in his hometown community, although he joked that “some of the hallways didn’t lead anywhere.”

And although students in the School-to-Park program are encouraged to learn from their inevitable mistakes, Manolo Victor, the school’s vocational arts instructor, said they are quick to grasp the new skillset.

“Ultimately, we are here to teach the students and we’re here to create a good project, and with that mistakes have to happen,” Victor said, adding that if mistakes do happen, or when students are stuck on a step in the project, “we try to steer the students back to the plans rather than just give them the answer.”

Currently, there are 15 students in the program under Victor’s instruction, with park-side assistance from Bob Jellison, the backcountry carpenter for Glacier National Park.

The students have the option of earning college-level credits through Flathead Valley Community College’s Running Start program, and can also enroll in the state of Montana’s registered apprenticeship program as pre-apprentices.

According to Mitchell, the Glacier National Park Conservancy provided initial funding for electrical service at the school’s shop facility, and has annually provided funding for tool bags and hand tools that are gifted to students as a thank you at the completion of each school year. They are also fundraising partners for the Granite Park trail crew cabin, the Two Medicine administrative office and the 2025 crop of summer student interns, all of which sprouted out of the School-to-Park program’s humble beginnings.

The impetus of the program grew out of an effort piloted by Glacier Park Chief of Facilities Management Jim Foster, who was trying to figure out a way to address the park’s shortage of employee housing. Without enough units inside the park to rent to employees, and with the surging cost of rentals in gateway communities, the housing shortage inside and outside the park has become a perennial problem, interfering with early-season staffing and operations during peak visitation season.

Understanding that funding is always a challenge, Foster got creative.

After learning of a School-to-Park program that was started in 2001 in Denali National Park in Alaska, Foster approached Columbia Falls High School administrators in 2018 with an idea to reproduce a similar program. Former Columbia Falls High Principal Scott Gaiser and former Superintendent Steve Bradshaw, along with CFHS woodshop instructor Jeff Remiker, embraced it and began planning the new program for the 2019-2020 school year.                

Since then, 76 CFHS students have built 13 structures, including several entrance stations and other auxiliary buildings while learning carpentry and related trade skills. Each student logs around 350 hours per school year working on the builds, for a combined total of more than 26,000 hours of instruction and labor.

“Our primary focus is on learning and practicing construction trades while meeting some of Glacier’s structural needs,” Victor, who took over as program lead from Remiker, said, adding that students are introduced to most common construction tools and work on all aspects of the build — framing, siding, roofing, electrical, plumbing, fire suppression, window and door installation, and finish trim.

“We go the entire school year, so we work all winter long,” Victor said. “We start on day one with an introduction to the basics and safety, and within two weeks we’re doing flooring on the cabins. The goal is to have the project or projects completed at the end of the year.”

For Mae Anderson, the experience was especially novel when she first started out as the only girl in the class. A junior at the time, she and her classmates laid sheetrock in the bathroom, sanded the tongue-and-groove ceiling and set the windows, among numerous other tasks.

“I was in the program for two years, and the first year I was the only female,” she said, adding that she was also enrolled in the school’s welding program. Anderson said the experience of developing skills in a traditionally male-dominated field was empowering.

“The second year there was one other girl and it was so amazing,” she said. “I love her and still keep in touch with her. But honestly, all the guys I worked with were so nice and didn’t treat me any differently.”

Although the students could be taught to build, equipment and infrastructure were more elusive in the program’s nascent stages, according to Mitchell, who had developed a relationship with Jellison and the park’s crew of backcountry carpenters in 2017, when Sperry Chalet burned down in Glacier and needed to be rebuilt. The existing tools and woodshop space at CFHS were equipped for jewelry-box construction, but couldn’t meet the specific needs of building homes and cabins.

The park was willing to provide students tool belts and building materials while recruiting Jellison to offer classroom instruction on the finer points of backcountry carpentry, as well as the skills needed to handle specific tools. With funding and support from School District 6, the school’s administrators and maintenance department brainstormed ways to make new space. By 2019, they’d constructed a 50-by-80-foot pole barn outside behind the shop classroom.

Since Victor came on board, the students have improved the workspace, including by framing, insulating and sheeting the walls for the facility “so we could finally heat the shop,” he said.

Following in his sister’s footsteps, Otto Anderson, who is now a senior at CFHS, was so enthralled by his School-to-Park experience during his junior year that he enlisted last summer as the inaugural historic preservation carpentry intern at Glacier, which received funding support from the Great Basin Institute. In that role, he was mentored by historic preservation crew members while earning a living allowance and educational credits.

“It’s such a good skillset to have if you ever want to build a house or a shop of your own, or any other projects,” Otto said.

Mae, a graduate of University of Montana-Western, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a minor in small business management, said she plans to explore the intersection of construction and business management as a career path.

“Construction is something I’m still passionate about,” she said. “It’s nice to see the program is still going strong and these opportunities are growing as the program reaches more people. It just makes me happy that it’s still going. It made me look forward to going to school. I didn’t really enjoy high school, but I loved this class. It’s like a family.”

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