City Trees

Can you tell us about your educational trajectory? Steve Harris: When I was 9 or 10, my Dad gave me an atlas of the United States for my birthday. I studied it often and knew all the states and capitals before that was taught in school, which might be the reason I studied Urban Geography at Ohio State. In 1990, at the end of my senior year of college, one of my friends told me they'd enrolled in the Peace Corps. The idea of getting that kind of experience resonated with me, so I applied and was sent to The Gambia in West Africa to be a forest extension agent. Upon my return to the States, I worked in an unrelated field for a couple of years before real- izing that forestry was the career path for me. I attended Paul Smith's College to get an Associate's Degree in Pre-Professional Forestry then went to SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry to get a Master's Degree in Forestry. In both cases, my focus was forest management. Your career trajectory? SH: After completing my Master's, my job search initially focused on traditional forestry jobs but then I interviewed at our local extension office for an urban forestry educator position. Right away I knew that was the job for me. The job was about trees but even more, it was about people and was similar to the work I loved while in The Gambia, only this time in my own community. After five years as an extension educator, I left to be sales manager for a start-up native tree nursery near Ithaca, then the City Arborist posi- tion in Syracuse opened up and I got the job. Please tell us about your position now. What do you enjoy doing most? SH: I oversee the Forestry Bureau, which is in the Parks Department. We manage 35,000 street trees and 8,500 park trees. It is a small bureau (seven people) in a small city (144,000 people) which means I get to work in every aspect of urban forestry from tree and planting site inspection to design review and overseeing tree pit expansions and forest restoration projects. Besides having a great and highly skilled in-house forestry crew, what makes the job fun is working with my col- leagues in other departments to achieve shared goals. For example, I have to frequently consult with our transportation planner to ensure we opti- mize pedestrian and bike travel with above- and below-ground space for trees along new develop- ments. That has led to a growth in our program and good collaboration across departments. A watershed event for our program will be the imminent release of our urban forest master Board Member Profile Steve Harris Steve Harris has been the City Arborist for Syracuse, New York since 2010. In addition to being an SMA Board Member, he has in recent years been a key contributor to the SMA Conference Programming Committee. 12 CityTREES

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