Partner Spotlight: National Park Service
The National Park Service (NPS)—whose land Runway Green will be built upon—is a critical partner in this unprecedented opportunity to bring a learning ecosystem to Brooklyn’s backyard. We chatted with Jennifer Nersesian, Superintendent of the NPS’s Gateway National Recreation Area where Floyd Bennett Field sits.
Here’s what she shared:
NPS lands are filled with endless opportunities for education about our environment. What is the NPS’s role in educating communities with the job-ready skills they need for green careers?
At the most basic level, we strive to use our sites and resources to provide opportunities for people to have a more meaningful experience or connection with the world around them, whether that is about history, the natural world, or simply getting outside and enjoying the outdoors. But for those in whom this sparks some greater interest, we look to have a ladder of experiences. This may be through deeper curriculum-based engagement in the classroom, volunteer and stewardship opportunities, or for some, ultimately jobs in green careers, whether with the NPS or another organization.
The only way we can bring a model like this to scale in New York City is through partnerships, such as we have with Runway Green.
If you describe what Runway Green and this partnership will bring to New Yorkers in three words, what would they be?
If you’ll allow me four: Unparalleled place-based educational experience.
If you were 16 again, which Runway Green program would excite you the most and why?
Getting my hands dirty in the gardens! There is nothing more rewarding than harvesting something you’ve grown. But as an adult, I also recognize it is such a powerful way to make science relevant to kids, as well as connect it with social issues like hunger, food security, and community resilience.
What about this opportunity on Floyd Bennett Field is the most inspiring to you?
Floyd Bennett Field has it all—natural resources, significant history and cultural landscapes, outdoor recreational opportunities, as well as serving as a living laboratory for thinking about coastal resilience in a changing world. The idea of having that serve as the foundation for a place-based educational experience—using the whole site as a classroom to immerse kids in a very physical way in the environment they are learning about—makes that learning real, and a part of who those kids are or will become. Kids can try hiking, biking, birdwatching, archery, camping, boating, hockey, football, soccer, and visit a historic aircraft museum without ever leaving the site. It’s transformational.
Just as importantly, we have a whole ecosystem of partners at Floyd Bennett Field and around Jamaica Bay who can offer education and recreation opportunities as well as workforce training and development to Runway Green students, including the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay, CUNY, the Appalachian Mountain Club, Aviator Sports, NYC Parks, the Natural Areas Conservancy, the American Littoral Society, and many others.
Those connections don’t stop with the students. Floyd Bennett Field will inevitably become part of their families’ lived experience, and we can build upon those relationships to better serve the communities we are here for.
What is one job in the climate and sustainability sectors that you want more young people to know about?
Coastal resilience. At Floyd Bennett Field we are particularly interested in how augmenting natural systems can play a role in wave attenuation, flood absorption, and other aspects of protection, and looking at new technologies and methods for accomplishing this. The next generation has the opportunity to integrate nature into our solutions instead of fighting against it. In the process, we can create a living environment that is more integrated, healthy, diverse, safe, and beautiful.
What is your favorite species in the Gateway National Recreation Area?
The prehistoric-looking Horseshoe Crab. They are so emblematic of Jamaica Bay, and provide great opportunities for research and engagement.
What’s your favorite activity to do in Gateway National Recreation Area?
Kayaking! It’s exhilarating and so calming at the same time, and getting to see the park from that vantage point gives you a whole different perspective on New York as a water-based city. My own kids’ first kayaking experiences were at the ranger-led programs at Floyd Bennett Field, so it’s special for me in that way too.
Jennifer Nersesian is the Superintendent of the Gateway National Recreation Area, which covers 27,000 acres of natural resources between New Jersey’s Sandy Hook and New York’s Jamaica Bay and Staten Island. Jennifer has over two decades of experience with the National Park Service and holds a master of public policy with a concentration in environmental policy from Rutgers University. Within the Gateway National Recreation Area that Jennifer oversees rests Floyd Bennett Field—a 1,300-acre peninsula on National Park Service land that juts out into Jamaica Bay where Runway Green’s headquarters will be located.