Hi! My name is Jonathan VanBuskirk, and I am part of the 2026 Summer Workforce Development Internship with University of Maryland Extension. I am located at the Harford County Extension Office and will be working with Andrew Kness, the Agriculture Senior Agent for Harford County, and Erika Crowl, the Senior Agent Associate for Baltimore County.
With Andrew Kness, I will be assisting with publication work on current UME newsletters and certification courses, inputting and analyzing survey data from the 2025–2026 Winter Meetings, and assisting with on-farm visits. This work may include crop inspection, farmer education, and pesticide and nutrient management assistance. Currently, there are no plans for work with Erika Crowl, as she is in Kenya until later this summer, but I hope to be able to explore and learn more about what Baltimore County has to offer!
I recently completed my freshman year at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I am studying Environmental Science and Technology with a concentration in Natural Resources Management. As I've completed more coursework, I've found myself becoming more and more interested in soil science, which I attribute in large part to my growing interest in agricultural Extension.
Outside of school and work, I spend a lot of time outdoors. I enjoy backpacking, fishing, growing dahlias, meteorology, and aquascaping—which is a fancy way of saying I spend an unreasonable amount of time arranging rocks and plants in fish tanks. When I'm not doing that, I'm usually cooking, watching baseball, or finding some other excuse to avoid sitting indoors. Looking back, those hobbies probably had a lot to do with why I ended up interested in agriculture and natural resources in the first place.
So.... this is me outside of work. I don't really know if context makes this photo easier to explain, but it was taken somewhere in the middle of a 60-mile backpacking trip in PA. By this point, we had been hiking for several days, were running low on sleep, and had spent entirely too much time in the woods. I guess the forest makes me a little crazy.
My high school years were the time when agriculture and environmental science really came to the forefront of my life. Leaving my home school, my friends, and everything familiar behind, I transferred to North Harford High School, which hosts the Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences Magnet Program. That's where I fell in love with nature—or maybe where I could finally indulge that interest. Through the program, I became involved in my local FFA chapter, serving as an officer during the 2024–2025 school year and competing in four Career Development Events: Environmental and Natural Resources, Forestry, Nursery and Landscape, and Floriculture. In the process, my team and I earned four state titles and three national podium finishes. Personally, I was fortunate enough to earn two top-10 individual national finishes. I also competed in Envirothon, where my team (basically the same people, funnily enough) earned three county and state titles and placed third and second in the world in consecutive years at the international NCF Envirothon competition in New York and Alberta.
My Envirothon team and I pose with a bear statue in Banff National Park, Alberta, during the 2025 NCF Envirothon competition (I'm the one getting a hug from the bear in the gray hoodie). The five of us had spent years competing together in Envirothon and FFA, so traveling to Alberta to represent Maryland on the international stage was an unforgettable experience. We ultimately placed second overall, and the trip remains one of the highlights of my time in high school. I'm down to talk about my experience, just bear with me if I get a little heated about missing 1st by one point...
Needless to say, I've spent some of the most important years of my life focused on agriculture and natural resources. For the longest time, I thought I would end up working in environmental science, but my visit to the Wye Research and Education Center might have changed all that. What I saw was a beautiful blend of science, education, and the honesty that I had always associated with agriculture. So we'll see—I don't know where I'll end up (but who really does?).
Through my work with Extension, I hope I can be genuinely helpful to the farmers who are the backbone of my world. I feel as if farmers are often overlooked and taken for granted, and I want to do my part to push back against that. At the same time, seeing what happens behind the scenes in Extension and agriculture will give me a better perspective when making decisions about the future and determining what is actually best for the field, regardless of what others might think is right. Oh, and the connections are pretty cool too!
I believe that through this internship, I can be part of some amazing things and hopefully make a real difference this summer.
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