Toward a Model of Camp Staff Engagement: A Look at University-Based Day Camps

Abstract

Camp staff who feel engaged in their work are more likely to gain a variety of beneficial outcomes as well as create quality experiences for the campers they serve. Engagement, which is fundamentally situational, can be described both as a state of being fully present and as an overall sense of deep connection to the given context. While many models explaining engagement and its antecedents exist, most represent either an educational setting or a traditional work setting; neither of which may accurately apply to college-age camp staff. The camp setting may provide unique intersections between work and school for staff members and is a promising environment to explore camp staff engagement. The purpose of this study was to understand day camp staff engagement both as a day-to-day state of being fully present as well as staff members’ larger sense of deep connection to their day camp staff jobs. The guiding question was “What do engaged staff say, feel, and do?”; secondary questions explored staff members’ perceptions of the factors that affect or prevent engagement in their jobs.

A total of 38 staff members from two university-based day camps that are of comparable size and program focus participated in this study. Data were collected using daily staff journals and focus groups. Daily staff journals were used to examine the day-to-day nature of engagement, and focus groups were used to explore engagement more broadly and to understand what factors impede and foster staff to optimally engage in their work at camp. Activation, participation, and connection with campers and peers were three dominant themes that described what engaged staff say, feel, and do in their jobs. For the participants of this study, physical and emotional wellness, stress, and connection were the three primary factors that either supported or prevented engagement. These results suggest that university-based day camp staff engage in ways that are different from how existing models imply they might engage in non-camp jobs or in college. This study takes a needed first step toward developing an operational model of camp staff engagement and offers important considerations for camp managers in university as well as other recreation-based day camp settings who hire college students, students soon to be enrolled in college, or recent graduates as frontline day camp staff.