Joe Carper, Class of '82
Director of Operations, Appalachian Mountain Club
Q: When did you begin working for the Appalachian Mountain Club?
JC: Four years ago, in the fall of 2003. It was wonderful to return to New England again after nearly 20 years in the Washington, DC area.
Q: What are some of your job responsibilities?
JC: AMC's mission is to promote the protection, enjoyment and wise use of the mountains, rivers and trails of the Appalachian region. As Director of Operations, I oversee our network of mountain huts and front country outdoor education centers in New England and northern New Jersey; our educational programming initiatives for youth and adults; our merchandising efforts; the activities of our twelve chapters and thousands of volunteers; and the organization's management information team and the Board, I also contribute toward the development of the organization's long-term strategies.
Q: How did the PNP program help prepare you for the workplace?
JC: The program helped me make the transition from my previous work as a counselor working with emotionally disturbed youth to non-profit management, with a focus primarily on organizations having a large earned income component of their operations. While the basic accounting, operations management, and marketing skills I learned at BU have been extremely helpful, even more important were the case-based courses that required us to think as senior managers-analyzing the issues, identifying the important constituencies, and formulating strategies and action steps. That methodology has proven helpful over the years across a number of positions and organizations.
Q: What were a few of your favorite things about PNP and/or BU?
JC: My fellow classmates, especially the fellow full-time students with whom I spent hours in study groups, preparing for exams, etc. The mix of full and part-time students and the diversity of their work experiences. Everyone was so very supportive of one another. The PNP faculty was superb and extremely available outside of class time. The internship opportunity also.
Q: Could you tell us about some of the key projects you're working on?
JC: AMC is very concerned about many of the trends in outdoor recreation today, especially the trend of fewer youth engaging in unstructured outdoor activities and having meaningful connections with the natural world. We believe the future of conservation depends upon such experiences.
We are working hard to find ways to engage more young people in the outdoors-from increasing the number of youth agencies we work with, to training more outdoor youth leaders, to increasing attendance on our overnight environmental education programs aimed at middle school-aged kids, to expanding the number of family camps we run at our outdoor centers that can introduce folks to the outdoors, to engaging our volunteer community in developing more family and youth-friendly programming.
While funding for these kinds of programs comes, in part, from grants and contributions, we also support these programs from surpluses generated from our lodging operations, so much of my time is spent trying to figure out ways to increase our occupancy-including more aggressive group sales efforts, improving the level of guest amenities, and improving the quality and variety of the free programming we offer all our guests.
Q: What are some of your or AMC's more recent accomplishments and/or challenges-an interesting new program AMC is doing, etc.?
JC: One hundred years ago, the AMC was instrumental in helping pass the Weeks Act, which created the White Mountain National Forest-a recreational treasure today for many of us in New England. Now, we are equally engaged in helping preserve the One Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, a beautiful expanse of forest and lakes ranging from Monson to Mt. Katahdin surrounding the Appalachian Trail corridor. As a landowner of 37,000 acres, we are practicing sustainable forestry, developing a four-season recreational infrastructure we hope will attract many to the area, and helping promote economic development in the region through nature-based tourism.
If you'd like to contact Joe, please email him at: jcarper@outdoors.org.
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