Julia Washburn Named Associate Director for Interpretation & Education

Creative, experienced entrepreneur will lead new organization

WASHINGTON: The National Park Service is best known for the places of stunning natural beauty entrusted to its care; places where millions of people come every year to hike, camp, and relax.  But beyond spectacular scenery, all 392 national parks and the National Park Service offer far more: unparalleled opportunities to learn about our environment, our history, and the people who made this nation.  

National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis is committed to establishing the NPS as a premier educational institution.  To lead that effort, he has selected Julia Washburn – former park ranger, National Park Foundation senior vice president, park advocate, and entrepreneur – to serve in a newly created position: Associate Director for Interpretation and Education.

“From traditional campfire talks to park museums to ranger-led school field trips, education has always been integral to the National Park Service mission,” Director Jon Jarvis said. “We work with teachers and educators across the country to provide classroom-ready, award-winning curricula and offer engaging in-park opportunities for visitors to discover the mysteries of nature and the stories of success and struggle that formed America.  But we can – and should – do more.  There is no better place to understand history than where it happened and no better place to grasp the dynamics of nature than in parks where it has been preserved.  Julia has the talent, the credibility, and the vision to make the National Park Service a valuable and trusted resource for teachers and learners of all ages.”

Washburn will assume her Washington, D.C.-based position in September.  She will manage the Volunteers-In-Parks program, Harpers Ferry Center for Media Services (publications, exhibits, audio-visual production, and historic furnishings), and NPS relationships with cooperating associations, non-profit organizations that support educational, scientific, historical, and interpretive activities. She will also manage all areas of interpretation and education, which across the country swore in almost 600,000 Junior Rangers and conducted more than 57,000 curriculum-based education programs in 2009.

Washburn started with the NPS in 1989 after serving two years in the Peace Corps as a volunteer science teacher in Sierra Leone.  Her first NPS job was as a park ranger at Fort Dupont Park in Washington, D.C., where she developed the Model Elementary Science Outdoor Classroom Program, a curriculum-based program for fifth-graders. She has also worked at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, W.Va., and at Rock Creek Park, D.C., where she was Chief of Resource Management, Interpretation and Education. She was a co-chair of the National Park Service’s Education Council and a chief architect of the Interpretation and Education Renaissance, a movement to revitalize interpretation and education across the NPS. She has applied her expertise as an interpretive planner at the NPS’s Conservation Study Institute in Woodstock, Vt.

Washburn served as Senior Vice President for Grants and Programs at the National Park Foundation where she led a staff of six who delivered millions of dollars in grants and in-kind services to parks and their partners.  In 2007, Washburn founded a consulting firm to provide strategic and interpretive planning, education program design, and management support services for conservation, preservation, and environmental education organizations.

She is an adjunct professor at George Washington University where she teaches in the museum education graduate program. She served as key advisor to the National Parks Second Century Commission’s Education Committee.

Washburn holds a bachelor’s degree in psychobiology (neuroscience) from Mount Holyoke College, Mass., and a master’s degree in museum education leadership from Bank Street College of Education, New York. She enjoys hiking, camping, singing and playing guitar, and cooking, and loves visiting national parks with her husband and two daughters.

www.nps.gov