GET INVOLVED
e-News Sign Up
Become a Member
SUBSCRIBE TODAY!
National Parks, our award-winning quarterly magazine, is an exclusive benefit of membership in NPCA.
LATEST NEWS
- National Parks Benefit Obama’s Tourism Initiative and Support Economies Nationwide
May 10, 2012
- Clean Air Groups call on EPA to require Clean up at Minnesota’s Dirtiest Coal Plant
May 9, 2012
- Free March for Parks Event Celebrates Natural Beauty and African American History at Biscayne National Park
April 27, 2012
Center for Park Management: What We Do
We provide expertise and strategies that build leadership and management capacity within the Park Service.
The people of the Park Service have a big job to do: protecting 84 million acres of some our Nation’s most breathtaking landscapes, conserving nearly 2,500 historic landmarks and serving over 275 million visitors a year. In meeting these enormous demands, both the NPS and CPM recognize the need for an engaged and highly effective workforce.
In meeting this challenge, CPM helps develop and implement programs and strategies that provide employees at all levels with the opportunity to gain the skills they need to perform their best. These efforts also focus on building a more diverse workforce as well as a more satisfying workplace that is able to attract, properly recognize, and retain highly qualified talent. Finally, CPM also helps the NPS make data-driven decisions so that the Service is able to make the most of existing resources and improve the value of every dollar received.
Through these diverse and integrated efforts, CPM helps to protect America’s National Park System by helping to ensure that the individuals who are the stewards of the resources, the managers of the budgets and the ambassadors of the visitors are equipped with the skills and tools to be most effective.
Currently, CPM is working with nearly 300 NPS staff at the park, regional, and national levels of the agency to help develop and implement management strategies focused on the following areas:
Making America’s Best Idea its Best Place to Work:
Engaged employees advocate for mission and perform their best. Since better performing park employees mean better protection for the parks, CPM and our NPS partners have designed and implemented a number of programs aimed at boosting employee engagement by ensuring agency-wide access to necessary information, improving workplace communication and enhancing the management capabilities of current and emerging leaders. An effective NPS workforce also means having a more diverse workforce - to spur creativity, foster innovation and remain relevant with the changing demographics and characteristics of the American public. To meet these goals, CPM has partnered with the NPS to design and implement a suite of programs focused on enhancing engagement through improved communications, training and workforce diversity. These strategies will help NPS meet its goal of becoming one of the top ten places to work in the federal government by NPS’s centennial in 2016.
Preparing a New Generation of Leaders:
In building an engaged and empowered workforce, the NPS has also recognized the need for developing a robust generation of equally engaged and empowered leaders. To meet this challenge, CPM is supporting the NPS Learning and Development Division to help identify training and development needs, evaluate field-based initiatives that might have national applicability, create an inventory of training and development occurring throughout NPS regions, and build partnerships with key academic-based institutions to provide employees with the academic education they need to be successful.
Becoming a Learning Organization through Data-Based Decision Making:
Before taking on any challenge, you’re sure to need at least three things: an idea of where you are, a plan for where you’re going and the resources to get there. This need for assessment, strategic direction and adequate resources has been a particular focus for CPM and the NPS in helping the Service embed a culture of measurement and continuous improvement within the organization. By implementing projects focused on assessment and the incorporation of best practices, the NPS will be better equipped to use data for strategic decision making, break down barriers to formal and informal knowledge-sharing and view evaluation as a tool for improvement. Through these efforts, CPM hopes that the NPS as a whole will be better equipped to optimize the use of existing resources and improve the value of every dollar received.
