9 minute read
Naomi Plante
— Kevin Chetwynd ’22
“I’d never seen a farm at all,” Chetwynd agrees. “He wanted to know if I wanted to take on a very different experience in a different part of the country. When you’re seeing fields more than an office, it’s definitely something you don’t expect as a management major.”
In heading to Washington state, the three selected students would be following in the footsteps of Jackson, who launched his career back east at a Big Eight accounting firm before heading west to Washington and starting his own practice. It was there in 1982, at age 35, that he joined forces with a client who wanted to plant an apple orchard. Jackson took over the business by himself five years later.
Not that there wasn’t some worry about how the interns would transition to farm work. “My dad definitely had a concern,” admits Bringolf. “He said, ‘These kids are not going to know what to do!’ But after we sat down with them, we didn’t get the sense that they were city kids who wouldn’t understand small town life.” The greatest challenge proved to be going through with the internships during the worsening COVID-19 epidemic. Washington had been one of the first hotspots of the coronavirus outbreak in the early spring. The student crew likely became the first Nichols interns to undergo a two-week onsite quarantine as part of the more than six weeks they spent at the farm, from mid-May to the end of June. Their presence also represented the exception rather than the rule in the age of COVID. Girard points to three or four Nichols classmates whose scheduled internships were cancelled. “It was hard for a lot of people,” he says. “I have a friend who had a great internship at Disney World in Florida and lost it.”
The house set aside for Girard and his mates allowed them to quarantine and hit the ground running at the same time. “We had to gather the physical paperwork of apple sales and revenue and transfer it to the new program,” Chavez notes.
That meant amassing and coding the information in each “pack out report” from the frequent shipments of apples to one of five packing houses that Royal Bluff Orchards uses. The coding included the different sizes, varieties, prices per pound, and which of the 37 blocks — or land plots in the orchards — produced the apples. The data will make a difference in traditional orchard management, Bringolf says. “After 30 years, trees stop producing at the level we want,” she notes, adding that the expiration date happened not long ago with a group of Granny Smith trees. “We pulled all of the trees from the ground, installed a new trellis and irrigation system, and planted Granny Smiths, Honey Crisps, and Galas.”
Based on the data-driven system, those decisions can come earlier — and with more informed solutions. “We’re hoping it will tell us how well our blocks are producing, as we get data points that help determine the level of production in each block compared to the level of financial return,” Bringolf predicts.
Growers traditionally have had to rely more on their judgement. The staff of Royal Bluff Orchards plans to use both data and their own assessments, a leap forward not lost on Girard. “It provides concrete evidence to review what were educated guesses in the past,” he says.
Chetwynd also gets the bigger picture. “The data we were organizing will help produce better fruit growing — which plots of land are going to produce apples more efficiently, and whether certain plots of land would do better with Fujis or Granny Smiths.”
— Jim Jackson ’69
“We’re five to seven years ahead of the curve. We’re the first orchard to do this as far as I know,” says Bringolf, adding that the family business took a similar lead two years ago in implementing the program Field Clock, which tracks every aspect of field labor — harvesting, mowing, maintenance — by location and time spent, and arranges the data in an accounting format.
“It’s definitely helped us analyze our labor efficiency,” Bringolf reveals, adding that she is aiming to merge that data with the new IBM database.
Besides coding three days a week, Chavez, Girard, and Chetwynd spent one day outside on the farm, where workers were agriculturally distanced because of COVID restrictions. “Part of the internship involved working in the nursery, temporary home to the youngest apple planting. We could see the lifespan of how it all works,” says Chavez, whose horticultural education did not stop there. “I pretty much knew nothing about apples,” he says, including the newer generations of genetically engineered, V-shaped apple trees growing close to the ground. “The trees aren’t very tall,” he explains. “That makes for more efficient harvesting,” without the need to use ladders.
Chavez, Girard, and Chetwynd agree that they encountered a different world than they were used to…but not all that different. Native Oregonian Chavez engaged in shop talk with his grandparents who have worked as lifelong fruit pickers. “They were excited for me,” he says. “My grandma is 74 and still picking in the blueberry fields. She was excited to hear about my experiences apple picking because she had never picked apples.”
Girard, meanwhile, identified with the orchard workers he met. “There were similarities with the people I’ve surrounded myself with at home in Dudley — blue collar down to earth, hardworking people,” he reveals.
— Hunter Girard ’23
Chetwynd also made a discovery close to home. “I’d found out that Jim came from Reading, Mass., the same as me,” he says.
What the future holds for internships at the Royal Bluffs Orchards remains undecided, although Bringolf would like to continue. “2020 was a rough year,” she says, laughing. “These interns were a bright spot.”
Next year, she notes, the emphasis would fall on data analysis of the extensive database this year’s interns helped build. “I know moving forward that there’s always work to be done, always problems to solve,” Bringolf says. “The more people you have to solve these problems — even on the intern level — is valuable.”
Jackson has a larger agenda. “It would be good if the college continued what we’ve done with other alumni businesses out here,” he suggests. “My thought was to set an example of how students might get out of provincial New England and see what the rest of the country looked like.”
His main message: Come west.
Girard offers this advice to his Nichols peers if the internships become available again. “Do it. It’s worth it, especially if you haven’t been out to this side of the country,” he insists. “It’s what Nichols makes possible. Take advantage of it.”
Harvesting opportunity during a pandemic
As many college students and recent grads saw internships and job offers become casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic, some at Nichols College found success through flexibility, open-mindedness, and a little help from the campus community.
“My goal was to find a job within the events and event planning industry, and now that events are on pause for a bit, it completely forced my search process to do a 180,” says Rebecca Siegel. Like Siegel, fellow hospitality management major and 2020 graduate Taylor Ward faced dismal job prospects, and Isabelle Leonardi’s search for a marketing position proved fruitless. “Companies working remotely don’t want to hire you because they can’t train you,” she says.
But thanks to a long-time connection between Windsor Communities and Liz Horgan, director of the Career and Professional Development Center at Nichols, all three landed positions as leasing consultants.
“I give tours to potential residents and deal with the day-to-day operations of customer service and follow-through on new leases or renewals,” says Ward. “And my favorite thing is I get to plan the events every month for the residents!” Siegel is also thrilled with the “opportunity to incorporate my love for events” through the position, and Leonardi welcomed the relocation from her native New Hampshire to warmer climates in Boca Raton, Fla. During the pandemic, fortune was also smiling on McKenna Gernander, who was able to complete her summer finance internship with Aetna, even if the experience was slightly different from what she expected. “Rather than working at the corporate office in Hartford, Conn., I worked from my kitchen table in Coleraine, Minn.,” she says. “I didn’t get any in-person interactions with my co-workers or any other interns, but I was still able to get to know them well through group projects, networking sessions, and virtual coffee chats.” Gernander, a student in the 3+1 Program, gets to continue her role at Aetna through 2020 and will begin a full-time job there in June 2021.
— Taylor Ward ’20 “Friends at larger universities can’t believe that a professor worked with me weekly to find a job. I am lucky I went to Nichols College.”
— Isabelle Leonardi ’20
For those whose internships did not materialize, some Nichols faculty members came through with alternative opportunities. Bryant Richards, associate professor of accounting and finance, invited 10 students across disciplines to serve as research associates in the college’s innovative Robotic Process Automation program, and Tim Liptrap, associate professor of sport management, convened a group of student interns to offer consulting services to businesses in his hometown of Coventry, Conn.
Gernander advises students and new graduates to consider all options during this time. Siegel agrees: “You might not get a job that is your dream job right away, but patience is key.” As is the support of the Nichols network, says Leonardi, who was aided in her search by Associate Professor Len Harmon. “Friends at larger universities can’t believe that a professor worked with me weekly to find a job,” she notes. “I am lucky I went to Nichols College.”
