MSU Extension Water Quality AmeriCorps Member

For immediate hire:

BIG SKY WATERSHED CORPS

GAIN PROFESSIONAL experience AND EXPLORE CAREERS IN NATURAL RESOURCES!

Who We Are

At Montana jobshiringnearme.org Corps, we focus on the growth of our participants; positively impacting our lands, environment, and communities; and building transferable job skills.

The BSWC – AmeriCorps Member Opportunity

The Big Sky Watershed Corps (BSWC) Program and its participants are passionate about the land and water and work hard to make sure it’s healthy and available for future generations. BSWC is designed to meet these goals by placing young professionals with partners (known as Host Sites) throughout Montana. Host Sites include federal/state agencies, Tribal Nations, jobshiringnearme.org Districts, nonprofits, and other community-based conservation organizations to create community-based initiatives to protect, preserve and restore local watersheds. At its core, Big Sky Watershed Corps is an AmeriCorps program that assists Montana’s watershed communities to make a measurable difference in local conservation efforts while strengthening the experience of young professionals.

The BSWC program is seeking passionate individuals who are looking to gain experience in the natural resources while making a measurable impact in communities throughout Montana. If you are interested in project design and implementation, community outreach and education, organization development, volunteer generation and/or management: we want to hear from you!

See a StoryMap about the impact of the BSWC program here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/38c9d47974e84d6d99510c88c164d355

Term of Service: ASAP to mid-November

Location: Bozeman, MSU Extension Water Quality

Living Stipend: $1200 biweekly;

Health Insurance: Provided at no cost;

Education Award: $3,697.50 dependent on term length and availability) upon successful completion of the program;

Professional Training/Certification: ArcGIS-Certificate from U.C. Davis; Accredited Experiential Education-Instructor Certification; Principles of Fundraising, Philanthropy & Grant Writing; Communication, Marketing & Outreach Best Practices; Federal, State, and Private Fundraising Strategies & Good Grant Management Workshop; Standard Operating Procedures in Water Quality & Quantity Collection; The Science & People behind Agriculture & Irrigation; Aquatic Invasive Species Monitoring and Education Certification

Member Assistance Program: Free access to confidential mental health counseling, medical advocacy, financial assistance, legal assistance, life coaching and more!

MSUEWQ 2026 Big Sky Watershed Corps member position description

The MSU Extension Water Quality program led by Dr. Adam Sigler integrates cutting edge science with public engagement around water resources. The position with Sigler’s team is science heavy and this position is an incredible opportunity to work at the intersection of science and public engagement. Sigler’s team includes graduate students, undergrads, staff members, and a BSWC member who interacts with all other team members. It is a priority for Sigler that the BSWC member is passionate about engaging the public to foster stewardship of water resources and that they are dedicated to Application of objective, rigorous science in that pursuit.

The position involves more time in the office and lab than it does in the field. Field work opportunities include work with graduate students in Sigler’s lab, traveling to watersheds around the state (Gallatin, Yellowstone, Sun, Flathead, and Clarks Fork). Most of this work currently centers on soil water data in irrigated agricultural fields with cooperating agricultural producers. If fieldwork is a priority for the member, then the research project Sigler requires all of his BSWC members to design and lead can be created to include fieldwork.

In the office, the BSWC member will be working with different water quality datasets collected through citizen science on both surface water and groundwater. The volunteer surface water monitoring program is a big part of this position, engaging with volunteer groups to get data into the MSUEWQ Data Hub, and with MSU water quality courses that Sigler teaches. On the groundwater side the position engages with the Well Educated program that Sigler has been running for more than 20 years to guide well owners through testing and understanding their water quality. The program educates well owners and also creates a large dataset that is valuable for helping other well owners know what to test for and we have some exciting new programming in this area.

Sigler requires each of his BSWC members to complete an individual research project. One BSWC member (Bridget) collected water samples from streams around the Gallatin watershed, with sites identified from a GIS analysis to see where septic system density was highest. Bridget presented that work on a poster at the Gallatin Water Science Symposium in spring 2025. Another member (Gabrielle) led a high frequency dissolved oxygen monitoring campaign with Mini-DOT sensors to look at diel oxygen patterns in the Madison watershed and she presented her research on a poster at the Montana chapter of the American Water Resource Association (AWRA) conference in fall 2025.

Below is a detailed list of projects identified for the 2026 BSWC member. The first list contains projects the corps member should expect to complete during their term. The second list includes projects the corps member could be involved in depending on time, resources, and interest. Many other opportunities typically arise as well.

Responsibilities:

• Well Educated program assistance: the member will learn the fundamentals of private well testing and how to help private well owners to test and understand their water quality. This will include processing participant lab results using an R script, emailing results, and following up to answer participant questions as they arise.
• Updating MSUEWQ’s Data Hub: MSUEWQ maintains a web-based data resource called the Data Hub. The Data Hub allows volunteer water monitoring groups and the public to readily plot and visualize local volunteer-collected water quality data (link to Data Hub here). The corps member will work with monitoring groups across Montana to upload their water quality data to the MSUEWQ Data Hub. This work includes acquiring volunteer-collected data through WQX (the national water quality data portal), working through R workflows to process data, and meeting with program coordinators to review data and identify issues. Later, the corps member will work with the previous BSWC member to broaden public engagement with the Data Hub.
• Well-testing clinics: Corps member will assist Dr. Sigler and the previous BSWC member to continue a process of piloting well testing clinics with samples analyzed on MSU campus. This includes a lot of logistics for engaging the public, receiving and processing samples, wrangling results and delivering a public education workshop.
• Fieldwork: During the field season, the corps member will have opportunities to assist Dr. Sigler’s graduate students with fieldwork. Fieldwork typically involves travel to research sites, overnight camping trips, and collecting samples/downloading logger data.
• ENSC 490R Teaching Assistant (Aug-Nov): The corps member will help with a course that engages MSU undergraduate students and volunteer monitoring program coordinators to facilitate students analyzing data collected by citizen science groups. This is a fall semester course taught by Dr. Sigler, which provides real world data analysis experience to undergrads and data analysis products to volunteer groups.
• Volunteer monitoring survey: Corps member will work to deliver a survey to volunteer water monitoring programs across the state. This will include following previously developed standard operating procedures to make some adjustments to the survey in Qualtrics, recruit programs and run R scripts to create plots of the data.
• BSWC designed research project: there is flexibility in what this looks like; it could include collection and analysis of water samples, or could be GIS based, or something else. Sigler will work with the BSWC member to design a project of interest to the member that is well enough aligned with the work Sigler’s team does to fit.

Other potential projects include:

• Gallatin Water Science Symposium: may assist with planning the Gallatin Water Science Symposium. We held the first one on February 19th, 2025 and there is interest in doing it every other year, which requires planning for at least 10 months in advance.
• Soil sensor lab experiments: may help perform experiments with soil water sensors in the lab.
• Summer sediment course: may help support another professor’s undergrad research course on sediment loading in the Gallatin watershed.
• GIS mapping: may help with various mapping projects, likely for the fall undergrad course.
• VolMon 2027 training planning: may work on planning for the 2027 statewide volunteer water monitoring training.

Updated 2026-05-08