Administrators at the National Park Service and the Buffalo National River say they’re not sure what’s causing a lack of interest in a teacher education program at the Buffalo National River this year.

After nearly two months of trying to recruit interested teachers to their Teacher Ranger Teacher program, Keith Jefferson, director for the instructional program at the Buffalo National River, said he hadn’t received a single application for the park’s only program vacancy.

“It’s been one of those things I’ve been scratching my head over,” Jefferson said. “Because last year, the interest was just, ‘wow.’ This year, it’s zero.”

Jefferson said the program, now in its second year at the park, received applications from 19 Arkansas teachers in 2013 for the program’s single seat.

Linda Rosenblum, national Teacher Ranger Teacher coordinator for the National Park Service, said the program began as a “grass-roots” concept within several parks in the Colorado area about 10 years ago, and gradually grew in popularity among other parks until it was adopted as a nationwide program in 2010. She said 200-250 teachers participate in Teacher Ranger Teacher programs in 75-100 national parks across the country.

The purpose of the program is to allow teachers to work with National Park Service staff, including fisheries experts, geologists and interpreters, to gain a solid foundational knowledge upon which to devise lesson plans to then execute at underserved schools. Teachers are not required to reside in the same state as the park to which they apply, Jefferson said.

Jefferson said the National Park Foundation awarded the Buffalo National River a grant of more than $3,500. Of that, $3,000 is set aside as a stipend for the participating teacher, and most of the rest pays for an online, three-semester-hour graduate course through the University of Colorado at Denver. Jefferson said the course is an overview of “everything we have to deal with as a national park unit.”

Jefferson said the course is similar to, but less intensive than, courses most National Park Service employees take through the Eppley Institute for Parks and Public Lands at Indiana University.

Jefferson said he and other staff members had speculated that the lack of interest may be related to the lack of housing offered to candidates. Although the program affords participants the $3,000 stipend, there is no housing provided within the park, and finding temporary lodging for one or two months can be difficult, likely limiting the pool of applicants to those who live within a reasonable commute to Harrison, where the park is located.

Jefferson said that to his knowledge, all of the 19 applicants in 2013 lived in Boone or surrounding counties.

Jean Evans, a recently retired teacher in the Bergman School District, was chosen as the 2013 Teacher Ranger Teacher participant. During her eight weeks in the program, which ran through June and July, Evans said she developed lesson plans on three subject areas: the elk population in Ponca, fossils that have been found in the area and the historical influences of the river on people in the surrounding area.

Evans, who taught algebra, geometry and other mathematical courses for about 10 years at Bergman High School before retiring this spring, said her elk lesson plan allows students to research exponential growth and decay models by looking at historical records of elk populations in the area and using that data to predict the size of future herd populations.

She noted that Bergman is about a 30-minute drive from Harrison but said she was surprised that no one — not even a fellow Bergman teacher — had applied for the position.

“I talked it up really big in my school,” Evans said.

Jefferson said that in an era of federal budget cuts, sequestration and other financial burdens, it seemed unlikely that the park would be able to garner additional funds for Teacher Ranger Teacher student housing on top of the grant money it had already received.

“Shrinking budgets limited not only our seasonal employees, but also limited the number of TRT’s we can have,” Jefferson said. Rosenblum said that because the program began as a local project, it has never received a designated, recurring funding source at the federal level. She said the program’s budget for 2014 was about $400,000.

Jefferson said he is hoping to have someone in the program by Wednesday and that administrators will offer some flexibility in completing the program objectives, extending the training schedule into October if necessary. Jefferson said that if the park still doesn’t have any applicants by this week, he and Rosenblum will “consider other strategies” for recruiting teachers to the program.

For more information or to apply, interested individuals can visit http://www.nps.gov/buff/forteachers/index.htm.