Volunteers, Youth, and Students

Opportunities for volunteers, youth, and students are an important component of archeology outreach. These experiences enable participants to learn more about a field of interest, while supporting strategic archeological resource management. Opportunities range from fieldwork, to collections management, to site monitoring, interpretation and education, and research.

Keep in mind that like NPS employees, volunteers, youth and students have workplace rights, including protection from harassment. Share the link for the NPS Employee Center on InsideNPS, which includes information about workplace policy, appropriate codes of conduct, and processes to resolve issues. Also be aware of, and share, the Guide to Understanding National Park Service (NPS) Preventative and Response Measures to Harassing Conduct During Archeological Field Schools.

For more information:

• Director's Order 7: Volunteers, National Park Service
• Reference Manual 7: Volunteers-in-Parks, National Park Service
• Volunteers-in-Parks, NPS Management Policies (2006)
• Director's Order 26: Youth Programs, National Park Service

Defining Volunteers, Youth, and Students

Volunteers are not paid. The public finds volunteer opportunities through the NPS Volunteer with Us website. The NPS Volunteers-in-Parks (VIP) program is administered through the NPS Interpretation, Education, and Volunteers (IEV) directorate. For the most up-to-date information on policy and administration, refer to IEV guidance on InsideNPS and check with your Volunteer Coordinator.

Youth are individuals age 15-34. Youth may be unpaid volunteers, or be paid a wage or be otherwise compensated through participation in a federal youth employment program or a partner working on NPS land. The public finds youth opportunities through the NPS Youth Programs website. For the most up-to-date information on policy and administration, refer to Youth Programs guidance on InsideNPS.

Students are enrolled in a school, college, or university and seek a degree. They may be unpaid volunteers, or be paid a wage or receive an educational stipend. There is no age restriction. The public finds student opportunities through the NPS Jobs and Internships website. For the most up-to-date information on policy and administration, refer to Youth Programs guidance on InsideNPS.

Best Practices

Parks should not undertake volunteer, youth, or student programs if a professional archeologist is unavailable to give the time, attention, and supervision necessary. When creating or managing a volunteer, youth or student program, consider the following best practices:

• Every project and program should be supervised by a professional archeologist as defined in Appendix E of DO28. Some projects, such as the curation of artifacts, may be supervised by professionals in appropriate fields.
• NPS archeologists must drive a project and are responsible for quality control over the results. If an archeologist is not available, a park should not host a program.
• Volunteers, youth, and students cannot conduct their own unvetted programs, or deviate from an archeologist's directions. They should not, for example, carry out their own excavation or metal detect unsupervised. They should not deviate from the park's expectations for a script, behavior, or attitude towards the public or the resources.
• Under certain circumstances, trusted volunteers may assume additional responsibilities. At no time, however, should NPS resources be compromised.
• NPS archeological resource management takes place to comply with the law. Integrate information about NHPA, NAGPRA, and ARPA into training. Consider creating handouts, postcards, or bookmarks with the basics about these laws.

When weighing whether or not to host a program, consider that volunteers, youth and students:

• Make valuable contributions to NPS archeological resource management, inspire staff and bring a fresh perspective, and may go on to become archeologists, themselves.
• Become ambassadors to NPS and archeology by talking about their experiences with friends, family and communities. These conversations help the public to understand why the NPS does archeology and how it is valuable and relevant.
• Require supervision and time for mentoring, administrative paperwork, checking the accuracy of completed work, and other tasks.
• Need training to complete their tasks well and require frequent check-ins to ensure their work is being done correctly. Archeologists may wish to develop a guidebook with protocols for the work, or schedule a training program.
• Benefit from regular meetings to identify any problem areas, share ideas to improve or change outreach efforts, and to get a sense of their talents.

Advanced Volunteers

Parks may also engage advanced volunteers, such as retired professional archeologists, certified avocational archeologists, amateur archeologists, or individuals with special skills sets (such as metal detecting). In these cases, archeology is still a hobby and not a profession, and the skill level and commitment of participants may still vary greatly. Potentially, however, because advanced volunteers bring experience and deeper knowledge, they can be assigned more complex tasks, or possibly be afforded more autonomy. Nonetheless, NPS staff must retain control over decisionmaking in keeping with NPS policy and procedure.

Keep in mind that even advanced volunteers:

• Can mess up or make a bad decision; must earn trust.
• Require training and supervision.
• Should not make archeological resource management decisions.
• Should not supervise other volunteers.
• Should not access sensitive archeological data.
• May publish findings, but should do so through an agreement with the park, which retains control over the subject matter, especially sensitive data such as site locations.