![[Image description: A MCC member uses a hand drill to build a fence, wearing their MCC sweatshirt and hard hat.]](https://cdn.firespring.com/images/75c58c4a-833e-450f-8301-9062d1b0fc18.jpg)
A term of service with AmeriCorps comes with a variety of benefits! Below are some of the many perks of joining MCC.
AmeriCorps Benefits
Your AmeriCorps service qualifies you for certain monetary benefits. Click on the bullets to learn more:
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AmeriCorps Segal Education Award
This is awarded to all members after a successful term of service. It is a monetary award that is uploaded into your AmeriCorps portal up to 30 days after you successfully complete your term of service. The amount ranges from $1,000 - $7,000 depending on the length of your term. It can be used to pay off student loans, pay for future education including trade schools, or many other types of educational expenses. Many colleges will also partially or fully match these funds.
Check out our Alumni Resources page to learn more about the Education Award!
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Loan Forbearance
Many Student loans can be put in forbearance while serving with AmeriCorps! Forbearance is temporarily postponing your obligation to make payments on your student loan. As an AmeriCorps member you may be eligible for forbearance on your qualified student loans during your term of service.
Professional Development
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Personal & Professional Development
Gain leadership, technical, teamwork, and problem solving skills that are transferable to a wide variety of careers.
Utilize the Alumni Resources Page to help you leverage your service to gain future employment.
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Professional Networking
MCC crews serve with a wide variety of federal, state, non-profit, and tribal project partners. We ensure our crews have the necessary tools to navigate these relationships. We also encourage our members and leaders to network with these individuals for future career opportunities. Maintaining a level of professionalism with our partners is key to our success and maintaining the standard of MCC projects in the field.
Our partners are very invested in hiring MCC Alumni!
Find out more about our partners and who you could be collaborating with here.
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Public Lands Corps Hiring Authority
Public Lands Corps Hiring Authority allows qualified AmeriCorps alumni with adequate hours served on public lands to apply for federal employment under a special hiring authority (Forest Service, Park Service, Bureau of Land Management).
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Join an Alumni Network
After a successful term of service with MCC, you will join a network of 5,000+ alumni in a wide variety of careers. In addition, you will join over 1 million AmeriCorps alumni who have served in various programs nationwide. This network can open up career opportunities and create continued connection with other service members.
Skill Development
In addition to the benefits listed above, as a leader or member with MCC, you stand to gain a wide variety of skills. Click on the bullets to learn more!
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Leadership Development
Our Crew Leaders participate in a 2.5 month Leadership Development Program, where they grow in emotional intelligence while outfitting a tool box of practical leadership competencies. Our crew leaders then pass those skills on to their crews as they live, learn, and serve together in some of our country's wildest places. The entire season, crew leaders and crew members will hone their skills, receive feedback on their performance, and collaborate with regional staff to meet their performance goals. These trainings have been refined over the course of three decades:
- Experiential Learning Model
- Communication Styles
- Feedback and Reflection
- Stages of Group Development
- Mind Styles
- Emotional Intelligence
- Conflict Mediation
- Facilitation & teaching to different learning styles
- Debriefing
- Specialist Roles
- We provide leadership opportunities for our crew members, who can choose a role based on their interests and desires for professional development: Vehicle Specialist, Gear Specialist, Tool Specialist, Safety Officer, Crew Journalist
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Risk Management
Our crews travel throughout Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and the Dakotas to do rigorous projects with heavy tools, oftentimes in very remote locations. Many times crews are operating on their own without the benefit of an MCC staff member or project partner. It is important that our crew leaders and members develop sound risk management skills to keep safe in the field. This includes:
- Emergency Management & Incident Management Procedures
- Serving in all types of weather
- Field Communication
- Water Filtration
- First Aid & CPR
- Our leaders are provided with a Wilderness Advanced First Aid certification and our members receive basic first aid and CPR. We utilize local professionals who understand the rigors of backcountry field work and ensure our crews have the skills to manage incidents in the field.
- Ergonomics Foundations
- MCC is physically challenging. We want to ensure that every participant leaves the program stronger than they arrived. A physical therapist helped MCC develop a specific stretch and safety routine designed for our crews. Practicing these basic ergonomics (the study of people's efficiency in their working environment) helps to reduce workplace injury and allows our members to focus on their personal growth and technical skillsets, rather than on being injured.
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Backcountry Travel
Never backpacked before or spent time in the woods away from your car? MCC will provide you with skills to travel safely in the backcountry, whether that's with your crew or on your own with your friends and family:
- Reading topographic maps
- Utilizing a compass
- Bear & Wildlife Safety
- Using bear spray
- Setting up a bear safe camp
- Using mapping applications for backcountry travel and trip planning
- How to safely read water, cross creeks and rivers, and use a throw rope
- Principles of Leave No Trace
- Backcountry nutrition & meal planning
- Using and maintaining backcountry stoves & water filters
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Technical Field Skills
MCC members and leaders stand to gain many technical field skills while serving with MCC. Training can vary depending on crew type and position, but could include:
- Chainsaw use and maintenance
- Crosscut saw use and maintenance
- Hand tools:
- Pickmattocks
- Pulaskis
- Shovels
- Rock Bars
- Tamping Bars
- Loppers
- Hand saws
- Axes
- Grip Hoists
- Trail Maintenance and Construction:
- Digging new and existing tread
- Drain dips
- Water Bars
- Puncheons
- Bridges
- Turnpikes
- Retaining/Crib Walls
- Working with treated lumber, natural timber, and rock
- Invasive Weed Identification
- Applicator Licensure
- Tool Maintenance & Re-handling
- Knots
- Fencing
- Defensive driving (all leaders and some members)
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Teamwork
MCC is a crew-based experience. Corps Members will serve their term of service in a crew with five to seven other Corps Members that will develop into a well-integrated team. Many alumni say serving and living within a small crew was one of the major highlights of their time with MCC. The crew structure allows Corps Members to grow together and experience the satisfaction of becoming a high-performing team.
The Impact of Your Service
MCC is committed to having a positive impact through our projects. Below are some of the projects you could be involved with at MCC:
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Trail Maintenance & Construction
Trails help reduce human impacts on the land by concentrating foot/animal traffic on specific corridors. This helps protect sensitive ecological areas.
Water mitigation and drainage structures help with erosion control.
Burn Area Rehabilitation on trails impacted by wildland fire helps restore ecosystems and control erosion.
Trails provide safe access and an enhanced user experience for recreating members of the public.
MCC also improves trails that have not been maintained for years; this opens up new opportunities and disperses impact.
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Invasive Plant Management
Invasive weeds take over native grasses and forage that many species (Elk, Deer, Mice, Birds) rely on in the Northern Rockies ecosystem.
The mitigation of these invasive weeds is necessary to protect food sources.
These projects allow native plant communities to flourish.
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Planting
Planting and seed collection help to restore ecosystems impacted by wildland fire and beetle kill. Over the course of 30 years, MCC has planted over 1.2 million trees!
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Fuels Reduction
Wildfires have become more frequent and catastrophic.
Fuels Reduction projects in the wildland/urban interface help to create defensible spaces around homes and in fire threatened communities.
Utilizing chainsaws to reduce the amount of “fuels” (trees, shrubs, etc.) in our forests allows certain species to thrive and reduces the intensity of catastrophic fire in a given area.
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Education
In addition to the projects our crews do on the ground, we also act as educators to inform the public about Leave No Trace, how our projects positively impact our public lands, and act as role models for stewardship.
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Watershed and Habitat Health
We plant trees/shrubs along waterways to reduce erosion and protect streambanks.
We also utilize BDAs (beaver dam analogs) and other low-tech process-based techniques as a simple, cost-effective, non-intrusive approach to stream restoration. This is the work that our Mesic Restoration crews do.
