Students excel through achieving a loftier perspective

Almost to the first branch! Who said I'm stopping there? Well, this is Arboriculture Field Skills, which is a course in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation. And this is a lab module that is focusing on arboricultural tree climbing, which is the gear and the techniques that arborists use to climb trees so they can prune them and provide tree care services. So we bring in a lot of professional arborist to teach the students about the tools and techniques that are currently available for them. Many of these students may not necessarily go on to a career as an arborist, but many of them will end up working alongside arborists. And so the importance of this course is really building an awareness and appreciation for arboriculture so that these natural resource professionals, if they do work alongside arborists, they understand what it takes to do the work, and do it well, and do it safely. So today's lab was broken into three parts. The first part was getting acquainted with the types of gear that arborists use for climbing trees. We then talked about the safety considerations both in terms of inspecting gear as well as inspecting the trees that there'll be calming. And then we introduced them to the tree climbing techniques. And so, once we demonstrated that for them, they were then broken out into groups and given an opportunity, under our supervision, to try