Virginia Tech® home

Progress Report

December 3, 2025

Welcome back! We were excited to hold our third Network meeting after the delay due to the shutdown. Clay kicked things off our meeting by congratulating Marc and Bob for receiving the Fellow Award from the National Association for Interpretation at the recent conference in Virginia Beach.

Then, Emily introduced Mentimeter, a new tool for virtual engagement in our meetings. She recapped our last meeting and Cassius Cash’ presentation regarding ‘knowing your why’ and emphasizing the key takeaways. These can be a helpful source of motivation, especially in times of stress.

We also reviewed the why, or purpose of our network, which was:

“Together, we are building a community of practice dedicated to enhancing capacity in interpretation, leadership, management, and evidence-based decision-making”.

Then, Network participants shared their “why” in the Mentimeter, which included conservation, connection, inspiring future generations, and service to public lands.

The rest of our meeting was devoted to hearing new findings from a recent research project led by Virginia Tech and Clemson consisting of observations from over 400 NPS interpretive programs. Our guest speaker, Maia Caddle from Virginia Tech, shared her work related to Audience-Centered Experience Interpretation (ACE). In a survey of general NPS visitors, results found that overall, visitors across demographics were interested in traditional-styled programs over ACE-styled programs, indicating that a participatory, ACE-styled experience may not be what visitors are expecting when they do attend programs. In observed programs that invited deeper audience sharing, the results suggested that the following four techniques were associated with more successful programs:

  1. People Focus: the program focused on human-centered stories and themes.
  2. Thematic Connection: the deeper sharing prompts were directly connected to the theme of the program.
  3. Effort to Reduce Vulnerability: the interpreter established and facilitated a safe environment (using a range of techniques including scaffolding, and if there was audience resistance, the interpreter pivoted to less active sharing techniques, such as reflection, and more traditional interpretive approaches).
  4. Audience Willingness: the audience appeared to be willing to participate and engage meaningfully with the prompts.

While these qualities were consistent across top performing programs, there were less effective programs that still used these approaches. This indicates that there may be some things that interpreters may not be able to control. Even if interpreters use these approaches when using ACE-techniques, the audience may just not be interested in this style of program. Therefore, adaptability as an interpreter may be crucial to providing a meaningful experience using these techniques.

We concluded the meeting with an enriching discussion about participants’ experience with ACE.

We will be back in January (to be scheduled). There is no prep work for our next meeting.

September 17, 2025

This meeting opened with a short recap of our Teams discussion from the past few weeks. Specifically, we heard that members are interested in:

  • Using data to determine when to schedule programs
  • Visitors’ expectations and preferences for programming
  • Developing and testing new program styles/or ideas
  • Connecting to their local communities, including schools
  • Volunteer and seasonal training

During this meeting, we heard from Cassius Cash, former Superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and current President and CEO of the Yosemite Conservancy. In three case studies from his time in the Smokies, he reflected on the importance of knowing your why in challenging times. His key takeaways were:

  1. As a leader, always be clear in your purpose, but flexible in how you achieve it.
  2. Let the curiosity of your success overcome your fear of failure.
  3. Always bet on you.

We’ll continue the discussion from our meeting on our Teams page, where we asked members to reflect on these two questions:

  1. What is your “why?”  What motivates you? 
  2. In your opinion, what should be "the why" (mission/goals) for IEV at your unit? 

Please also consider if and how your “why” aligns (or can align) with the “why” of your IEV program at your unit.

We hope these reflective exercises and thoughts will sustain you and help you as a leader as you navigate current and future opportunities and challenges.

July 30, 2025

Welcome to the Interpretation Learning Network! This 60-minute meeting began with an introduction from Clay Hanna and Chris Elbich. They discussed the history of collaboration with the researchers at Virginia Tech and Clemson, existing resources for interpretation and environmental education, and the goal of joining this network together.

Then, Marc Stern, Bob Powell, Kelley Anderson and Emily Sinkular discussed the expectations of the Network, membership, and results from two short surveys done by the research team. In summary, the Network will meet approximately every 6 – 8 weeks, with up to two hours of prep work for each meeting. We will also focus on Data Exploration together – this includes looking for and utilizing existing data sources at park units or conducting some of our own data collection.

The meeting concluded with about 20 minutes of break-out discussions, where Network Members discussed their interests around what data would be most helpful to enhance their work.

Our next meeting will be Wednesday September 17 at 2:00pm Eastern. We’ll hear from Cassius Cash, former superintendent at Great Smoky Mountains National Park and current CEO and President of the Yosemite Conservancy. To prepare for the next meeting, please respond the Teams discussion post:

  1. What are the most important goals of your work right now and for the near future?  List 2-to-5 key goals you are trying to achieve in your work.
  2. Fill in the blank: If I only knew                , I could make our work more effective. No need to be super succinct here. Explain what you’d really like to know.
  3. What would you do with this information, specifically? How can it help your unit achieve important goals? What are those goals?
  4. What ideas do you have for finding or collecting that information? Is it available or do you need to collect it?

Questions? Contact Emily, sinkular@vt.edu

June 5, 2025

A call for applications for the first Cohort of the NPS Interpretation Learning Network was sent out on February 11, 2025 and the application period closed on March 27, 2025. In total, 20 NPS Park Units were selected to participate, with several members of each park planning to engage in the network. These parks include:

The network kickoff meeting will be held in July 2025. We are excited to share what we learn with this amazing group of leaders along the way!