The Student Conservation Association (SCA) is the largest and oldest conservation organization in the United States. This leading provider of conservation service opportunities was founded in 1955 by Elizabeth Titus Putnam while developing her senior thesis at Vassar University. She wanted an opportunity for young people to be involved with hands on service to the land and be the next generation of conservation leaders. Two years later the first trail crews were placed in Grand Teton and Olympic National Parks.

SCA has expanded from a few trail crews, to include Conservation Crews, Urban Youth Programs, Conservation Intern Program, and Conservation Corps Program. SCA participants now annually assist local, state, federal and non-profit resource management agencies in programs ranging from wilderness and watershed restoration, wildlife research, trail construction and wildland fire education. Thousands of high school, college, graduate students and other volunteers provide more than one million hours of service in national parks, forests, historic and cultural areas and urban settings at over 400 sites in all 50 states.

The largest of the SCA Conservation Corps programs is the Fire Education Corps. The SCA Fire Education Corps is an award winning program that was designed in 2001 to help communities reduce their risk of wildfire destroying their homes and property. The Fire Education Corps was designed to deliver wildfire prevention techniques and to teach the principles of defensible space to communities situated in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). The Fire Education Corps has been established in over twenty states and works in cooperation with the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and various other federal and state agencies. Along with the agency partners, each team works during the fire season with local fire and volunteer fire departments in their designated area.

Teams of corps members work to educate selected WUI communities by conducting home evaluations in order to educate homeowners on how to prepare their homes from the threat of wildland. Fuel reduction projects around homes also further wildland fire education by teaching the community the principles of defensible space. The team members also create community maps by using GIS data and attend local community fairs and events. Information recorded and maps created from home evaluations are given to each fire department who are using the updated information to better protect their district from wildfire risk.

Team Carson City-Reno, along with a team in Idaho, was the first national Fire Education Corps pilot teams formed by SCA in 2001. The team annually consists of college students from all areas of the United States and is made up of one team leader and four Corps members. Each member hired must have a strong interest in science and working in public relations.

Team Carson City-Reno is based at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Carson City Field Office and works closely with the Virginia City Highlands Volunteer Fire Department, the Mound House Volunteer Fire Department, East Fork Fire Protection District in Douglas County, Carson City Fire Department, Reno Fire Department, and the Lemmon Valley, Red Rock, Silver Lake, and Palomino Valley Volunteer Fire Departments.

The team has been highly successful spending their fire seasons educating homeowners about fire in wildland urban interface, conducting fuels reduction projects, mapping urban lots, and running information booths at public events such as the Reno Rodeo and the Nevada State Fair.

The 2005 team includes Ben Hopkins, Team Leader, from Santa Cruz, California (Ben has also been an SCA Team Leader in the high desert of Southeast Idaho); Rachel Sumner, a psychology and public policy major from Massachusetts; Suzanne Price, a Clemson University graduate from Ashville, North Carolina; Liz Wilcox, currently majoring in Environmental Studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville; and Indiana Cruz, a forestry major at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California.

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