UNH and outdoor gear company NEMO Equipment celebrated the funding of the first NH Outdoor Recreation Policy Fellow at UNH with an event at the company’s headquarters in Dover on Friday, July 21.
The fellowship will be funded for an academic year by NEMO, with a match from UNH’s Carsey School of Public Policy.
“The Outdoor Recreation Policy Fellow fills a need that stakeholders have had, up to this point, only limited means to address, which is capacity building broadly across the sector,” said Jayson Seaman, Chair of the Department of Recreation Management & Policy in UNH’s College of Health and Human Services. “The Fellow will monitor the changing policy landscape and bring actionable ideas to the local level, and track funding opportunities to support local business and community development as well as the research that helps shape the policies guiding our state’s outdoor industry.”
The Outdoor Recreation Policy Fellow will support the state's growing outdoor recreation economy in partnership with UNH, NEMO, Granite Outdoor Alliance, and the State of New Hampshire’s Office of Recreation Industry Development. Patrick Marcoux, a first-year graduate student in the Carsey School of Public Policy’s MPP program, has accepted the fellowship position for the ’23-24 academic year.
“Outdoor recreation is central to our state’s identity as well as its economy,” said Seaman. “In New Hampshire, outdoor recreation accounts for 2.7% of the state’s GDP and provides employment for 4.1% of the state’s workforce, or more than 28,000 people. The Fellow will help key stakeholders collaborate in support of the outdoor recreation economy and its workforce, not just in this industry but in overlapping sectors like tourism and hospitality.”
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Written By:
Tom Bebbington | College of Health and Human Services | thomas.bebbington@unh.edu
