Updated: Friday, Nov. 15, 2024
Starting a new job isn’t always just a fresh journey. It can also be a novel experience for those who enjoy what they do. This is certainly the case for Grant Herfindahl, St. Olaf’s new Assistant Director of Recreation. In an interview with The Olaf Messenger, Herfindahl described his previous experience and how he landed this position.
“I applied in January,” Herfindahl said. “Before then, I had worked at Albert Lea Community Education. Through there, I worked as a manager and oversaw various summer camp groups.”
Herfindahl attended University of Wisconsin-River Falls, where he earned an undergraduate degree in animal science with an outdoor education minor. Aside from that knowledge, Herfindahl also has experience specific to climbing and mountaineering.
“I had an internship for a summer working for Acadia Mountain Guides [Climbing School],” he said. “We led various weeklong, overnight, and day trips for elementary, middle school, and high school age kids.”
As Assistant Director of Recreation, Herfindahl’s responsibilities include overseeing the facility, various fitness classes, the climbing wall, the rental center, and managing staff. The climbing wall, in particular, has been the focus of new adjustments and developments.
“One thing we’ve been working on is establishing a route-setting team, which is just a group of staff that have had an interest in setting routes, rotating through the routes on the wall a little bit more consistently,” Herfindahl said. “This keeps the interest of people, especially the regulars, that come to the wall.”
Herfindahl has also introduced many new outdoor trips to the St. Olaf Recreation Program (STORP) with the goal of being more accessible to students. This semester, STORP led four different trips, and Herfindahl plans on running three or four trips this spring semester.
Herfindahl expresses that while he wants to keep these trips going, these trips require funding to continue being free and accessible to students.
“The future is up in the air in terms of what we will be able to offer students, budget-wise,” Herfindahl said. “The biggest thing is if we can keep being able to offer these outdoor trips. This year we have a limited budget for being able to offer and provide them for free.”
St. Olaf Recreation is blooming this year, and it will be exciting to see what else Herfindahl has in store.
Correction: The Olaf Messenger mislabeled the department in which St. Olaf Recreation falls under in the article title
