Lake County Resource Initiative (LCRI) has hired a new RARE (Resource Assistant for Rural Environments) worker.
Nick Johnson, takes over for Norah Owings who took over as the program manager for the Dallas Downtown Association in Dallas, Ore.
Johnson comes to Lakeview from Madras, where he worked as a quality engineer at a secondary wood facility before coming to Lakeview. He heard about the job from his brother Casey Johnson who works for the Oregon Department Fish of Wildlife.
“My brother worked with Jim Walls before on different projects, he told me about the job and I thought it would be right up my alley,” Johnson said.
Johnson graduated from Oregon State University in 2015 with a degree in renewable materials and a minor in business entrepreneurship.
In order to obtain his degree, Johnson had to take a wide variety of classes that will help in during his time at LCRI.
“My major was very widespread and focused on a variety of things including many different types of renewable energy systems,” Johnson said. “It also focused on things such as renewable material physics and techniques as well.”
Johnson went into the degree program, because he was sure there would be a lot of jobs within the renewable energy career field.
“As I got more into the program, I became very interested in the renewable energy side of things and started to focus on that,” Johnson said.
Johnson isn’t technically employed by LCRI, he is contracted through AmeriCorps, but even though he just started, he hopes that this will turn into a permanent job.
“While I’m here, I want to soak up as much information as I can from Jim Walls and everyone else that he works with,” Johnson said. “There are a lot of great things that we are working on, that I would love to see get implemented.”
One of those things that LCRI is working on is they submitted a grant through the USDA to work with local businesses in Lake, Klamath and Modoc counties to do an assessment on buildings and their energy usage over the last year to determine if they would be a good fit to have solar panels installed on their buildings.
Johnson said that the RARE program is an 11-month program that totals 1700 service hours.
“At the end of the program, you get nine credits that can be used towards a master’s program or a different bachelor’s degree,” Johnson said. “I’d like to get a master’s degree at some point in the renewable energy field, but I want to see where this job takes me first.”
Since Johnson started on Monday, Jan. 22, he hasn’t had a chance to check out Lakeview life, but sees a lot of similarities between Lakeview and his hometown of Madras. He loves the outdoors and spending as much time as he can in the outdoors.
For more information contact Johnson at 541-947-6314.
Originally Published in Lake County Examiner
739 N. 2nd St.
Lakeview, OR 97630
Phone: 541-947-3378