Director Keith Cline, said that "our integrity is the
only thing we have complete control of." We get
to decide what we do as professionals, and our
actions determine how our leaders, our custom-
ers, and our communities understand our work.
Through diligence, integrity, patience, planning,
and adaptation we can all reach our goals.
Learning Together
More than 30 arborists, landscape architects, nat-
ural resource managers, and urban foresters came
from around the country, plus one participant
from Lebanon. We ate every meal together for five
days and participated in the course material for
12 hours a day. The immersive nature of the MFI
program can be intense at times, but ultimately
it left me with a wealth of new ideas, strategic
approaches, and an expanded professional network.
We frequently broke off into our PLGs to explore
common challenges in urban forestry and com-
munity engagement. My PLG included a landscape
architect for Washington, D.C.; an arborist for
Boise, Idaho; an urban forestry education coor-
dinator for Austin, Texas; an urban forester for
New York City, a natural resource manager for the
state of Missouri; and an urban forester for Fargo,
North Dakota. I learned quickly that while we all
have different challenges and support from our
organizations, we could all benefit from collabora-
tion. For example, every member in our group was
at a different stage of response to Emerald Ash
Borer, so we had a rich exchange of current strat-
egies and future plans for dealing with this pest.
Our different experiences with internal and external
support from partnerships was illustrative as well.
As the importance of these partnerships continues
to escalate in our industry, having colleagues from
different organizations is very valuable for compar-
ing partnering strategies. For instance, as soon as I
returned from MFI, I connected a stormwater engi-
neer I know from work with a colleague from my
PLG. Having this new network with other colleagues
across the green infrastructure industry gives us
each the benefit of an expanded knowledge base.
Venturing Beyond the Canopy
Consulting Arborist and Teaching Cadre Member
Walter Warriner illustrated the concept of
"venturing beyond the canopy." He encour-
aged us to find the interested 1% of our part-
ners and form a creative team to develop
plans and strategies for the future. >>
www.urban-forestry.com 27
"It left me with a wealth
of new ideas, strategic
approaches, and an expanded
professional network."
Jamie King found Rosa Linda Perez's day of media-
communication training especially helpful.
Photo by Owen Croy
