Abby's Assignment 2

I interviewed Laura Auteberry, marketing and development director for the Champaign Park District. The mission of the Champaign Park District is to provide quality parks and activities to the city of Champaign. The CPD offers over 1200 programs to the community each year and has over sixty parks that make up over six hundred acres of land.
The Champaign Park District hosts a variety of different services to its members and to the public. The CPD provides everything from organized sports leagues to group fitness classes to cultural arts exhibitions. The agency exists as a creative outlet for the community.
The CPD provides many jobs for the community as well. Jobs can range from working as camp counselors to working in concessions and coaching. The Park District also employs landscapers and other types of maintenance workers.
They employ both part-time and full-time as well as seasonal part-time. The CPD employs a large number of students from the University of Illinois. There are usually around seventy-five students working there during the school year and during the summer that number increases to around eight hundred students.
Often the CPD employs university students as interns. Because the park district offers so many different activities it is an ideal place for students to begin a career. Most of the students who have interned here have returned to the CPD to begin their careers.
When asked how she would define leisure Ms. Auteberry stated that leisure is defined by the individual. Some people may feel that leisure is a time of relaxation and a stress release. Others may consider playing basketball or other active sports leisure. No matter what a person's definition of leisure may be, the Champaign Park District has a place for him or her.
The Champaign Park District has beautiful parks and facilities and is an asset to the Champaign community. It would be a great experience to work in this field. By working for a park district in such a large community, a person becomes acquainted with the different ways that others use their leisure time. It is a great beginning place to learn what programs work and what programs people are interested in as well as what programs are little participated in. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. It can be a source of new ideas for future jobs but there can also be regional challenges. If a person has worked in Champaign all his life and he moves to another place where the culture differs from that of the Central Illinois culture, he may have to relearn what people like and don't like to do for fun. The regional differences can be overlooked. Also, it may become just a safe job to have right after graduation from the University of Illinois and one may never really move on from it. This agency however delivers public recreation to all who would like to participate in it.