Student Arboriculture Workshop

[JD3000]

At Columbus State we're developing an arboriculture major, as some of you have heard me mention in the past. I have a few questions and was looking for some comments and hopefully draw on any experiences any of you have had regarding similiar matters.

 

1.) Are we suffering from a Kevin Costner Syndrome? "If you build it you it, they will come..."

Some of us have looked at enrollment plummeting in the past few years in hort/landscape/design/related Green Industey fields and pessimisticly wonder if students in Ohio will actually gravitate towards a certificate or degree program in Arboriculture. Sure it will be marketed to all appropriate schools and whatnot but is there a lack of interest amongst Millenials?Thoughts?

 

2.) We're putting together a high school student field day for this May. We're thinking it will start off with an intro ceremony thing in an auditorium then move into stations. General Safety, pruning, large equipment, small equipment, PHC, etc. Specific safety issues and procedures would be brought up at each specific station as well. Seems a good day if events to me. There are many headaches on many other fronts hiwever from areas such as student safety, legal, transportation, who and how to admit interested students, etc etc etc. Many issues on those subjects and many more but the first to come up has been funding. We received $5K from the Tree Fund but that will get swallowed up quickly just by food and beverages. We are currently contacting all the Big Companies seeking sponsorships and equipment demos as well as the better local privately owned companies. One point I made was that any company that gets involved with this will likely be putting in far more than they get back (at least at first...hopefully...) in hopes of finding future employees and drumming up interest in the industry.

 

Have any of you been involved with a similiar student day?

 

Anyone nearby interested in helping in any way? 

 

What else?

 

(Note: this was copied and pasted from elsewhere and I know most of you are nowhere near my location but any advice is appreciated!)