McGill Minute

There’s no better way to celebrate Park and Recreation Month than by highlighting the people who faithfully serve their communities all year long. In this podcast, we are excited to share with you insights from John Davis, Lincoln County Parks and Recreation Director about the parks and recreation field. John, a Lincolnton native, spent eight years doing youth educational recreational programming for the Burke County Cooperative Extension and joined Lincoln County in 2015. The City of Lincolnton and Lincoln County, through a joint process, recently created updated comprehensive parks and recreation master plans that exemplify how parks and recreation professionals are rising up to promote health and well-being, protect the environment, and offer inclusive options for play by building a plan with the engagement of their community. By assisting with planning efforts like this, McGill is shaping communities together.

In this episode of the McGill Minute, Toni Shope, McGill's Marketing Director, interviews LuAnn Bryan. LuAnn joined McGill after a long career in parks and recreation, where she had the opportunity to administer the North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund (PARTF) and federal Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) grants through the Resource Recreation Service for more than 20 years. In this podcast, LuAnn will walk you through how to submit for a PARTF grant and what is most important to include in your application.

With college career fairs approaching and students starting to make their post-graduation plans we wanted to talk with two of our team members who have interviewed many employees over the years and hear their insights into the hiring of new engineering graduates during this podcast.

STEM Day is celebrated every year on November 8, to encourage kids to explore their interests in the fields of science, technology, engineering, art, and math. As an engineering firm, McGill is proud to employ STEM-educated workers. There were nearly 10.8 million workers in STEM occupations in 2019, however the number of STEM vacancies continues to remain higher than the number of actual candidates for many areas of the country.

At McGill, we are celebrating STEM Day by speaking with Ian Riddell, the STEM facilitator for grades PK-8 at Carolina Day School, in Asheville, North Carolina, about what he believes are the most important things to teach young people to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. Ian has crafted a STEM workshop at Carolina Day School that includes hand-tools, scientific equipment, Legos, computers, and much more. His passion for challenging students to think critically about science and mathematics through hands on experiences leads him to develop programming that inspires curiosity and confidence in young people and will likely result in increased numbers of workers in STEM occupations in the years to come.

Resources:

Scratch - https://scratch.mit.edu/

Science Olympiad - https://www.soinc.org/

FIRST LEGO League - https://www.soinc.org/

References:

https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/still-searching-job-vacancies-and-stem-skills/

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/stem-day.html

In this episode of the McGill Minute, we bring in Nick Huffman, McGill’s Electrical Practice Area Lead, to explore his role on the McGill team as it relates to water and wastewater projects. Nick has been with McGill for over 14 years. Nick and his team play a critical role in McGill’s water and wastewater treatment projects, by upgrading electrical systems within treatment plants, providing auxiliary power through backup generators, and providing safety and operational guidance for operators. Nick shares his knowledge on SCADA, how to improve efficiency in water and wastewater plants through electrical engineering improvements, and why utilities and local governments need to be aware of and protect themselves from cyber attacks and outmoded software and electrical systems.

In honor of National Parks and Recreation Month hosted by the National Recreation and Park Association, McGill interviews Greg Stopka, the Strategy and Innovation Manager for the Park District of Oak Park, Illinois to better understand how communities are stronger, more vibrant, and more resilient because of parks and recreation. The Park District of Oak Park is a great example of how parks and recreation departments can use data to tell stories, from communicating messages related to park programming to telling the stories of how the Park District's efforts build communities and result in better outcomes for community members. Greg shares how using online dashboards and internal innovation tools has led to Oak Park's successful parks and recreation program.