Program Description

Concerned about the environment? Interested in ecology? In Forestry and Landscape Management, students learn about scientific identification of trees and plants, as well as landscaping design, construction and maintenance. Students are prepared to further their education in fields like Environmental Science, Ecology, Turf Management, Arboriculture, Landscape Construction or Nursery Management. The program is taught using problem based learning with an emphasis on authentic, hands on projects in the community. Completion of these projects require the use of skills and acknowledge gained in the classroom such as plant identification, landscape construction practices, arboriculture practices, turfgrass science, and plant health care.

Classes are taught outdoors as much as possible and educational field trips are added to create dynamics in learning. Some of the traveling a student may experience is ( but not limited to ), traveling to other schools to work with science classes, going to City, County, and State Parks, participating in invasive plant identification and eradication and helping to replace plant species with native material. Classes are also visiting forests and lumber mills, working on golf courses, visiting large and small landscape design and building firms, attending turfgrass commercial equipment sales events, developing relations in business by visiting plant propagation and greenhouse facilities, investigating tree care and landscape maintenance businesses, visiting plant pathology labs, looking at mechanical engineering and agricultural repair shops, making occasional trips to farms that produce fruits, vegetables, Christmas trees, row crops, and nursery production.

When class can not be held outdoors, indoor instruction is geared toward personal communication and marketing skills, plant fertility, soil science, plant identification, and hand/power tool usage and repair.

The first year of the program students are encouraged to acquire a driver's license. This leads to allowing students to better participate in summer employment in the field and the involvement in an internship in a position related to the Green Industry during the second year.

Alumni of the program have gone on to have successful traditional Green Industry careers such as designing and managing golf courses, becoming entrepreneurs in landscape construction companies, turf grass and athletic field installation and maintenance, plant health care technicians, US Forest Service employees, Parks and Recreation managers, tree care, and even running plant pathology labs.

Others students have successfully taken other non traditional destinations after graduation such as investment bankers, ski area managers, medical doctors, and business owners to name a few. These students have all suggested that Forestry and Landscape class created the foundation in their lives for working as a team, understanding how to think and memorize, develop personal communication skills, time management, creative expression, and problem solving in difficult situations.

If you are interested in working outside with plants and turf, this program may be for you. If you complete the Forest and Landscape Management program, you could be employed in various careers found in the “Green” industry. You will have an opportunity to study first hand, given a work-based experience, between three and five major fields of study during the first year of the program. In the second year, you will concentrate on one area, attending class for approximately 50 minutes a day and working three to four hours a day in your area of interest.