Cooking up an internship

By Betsey Norgard, Augsburg College

For a number of summers, Grand Rapids, Minn., native Emily Johnson and her friends spent time at Camp Hiawatha, a Voyageurs Lutheran Ministry (VLM) camp in northern Minnesota. After high school, she found a way to keep returning to camp while also earning money to attend Augsburg College — working as an assistant in the camp kitchen.

Last year, when spring came around, she received a call asking if she would consider taking over as head cook at Camp Vermilion, VLM’s other camp, following the retirement of their longtime cook. She accepted...with trepidation.

“I made all the mistakes there were,” Johnson says, as she talks about what she encountered in figuring out what to serve, how to make it, and how much food to order each week.

This year she returned as head cook, and everything just fell into place.

Johnson is a business management and economics major, set to graduate in May. She plans to use her management experience, combined with a love for the outdoors, to own and manage her own resort some day. After graduation she intends to seek a job at a resort in the Pacific Northwest for the experience. She’ll take with her added expertise in scheduling events from her student work on campus in the Event Services office.

Johnson decided to shape this summer’s camp experience into formal learning to fulfill her required internship. She learned and wrote about aspects of business management in her work — how the camp runs as a business; how she could avoid unnecessary costs in ordering food; and how the kitchen staff manage and communicate important camper issues, like food allergies.

“It was good for me to take what I’ve learned in my classes and apply that knowledge...away from school,” Johnson says. “It’s amazing how much of it comes into view when you’re in the midst of it. I also learned how difficult being a good manager is.”

Her work involved long hours and a lot of planning to feed campers who vary in age from kindergarten to ninth grade at nearly a dozen different sessions all summer. She was usually in the kitchen by 6:30 each morning, enjoying a brief calm before beginning the day’s routine.

Figuring out what foods the campers would relish, and how much to make were among Johnson’s greatest challenges. Once she figured out some of the tricks to adapt and multiply recipes, she enjoyed borrowing some of her mother’s recipes to try out on the campers. Most of the time they worked well.

What she discovered she learned during the summer included leadership training — values such patience, compassion, and confidence to stand up for yourself — as well as business savvy.

“I even felt I was able to contribute to conversations about business matters,” Johnson concludes. “That was a good feeling.”

Senior Emily Johnson used her summer job at camp as an internship to learn about the business side of running a camp as well as the necessary leadership skills.

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