City Trees

Board Member Profile: David Jahn Can you tell us about your educational trajectory? David Jahn: Uncertain in high school of what career I wanted to pursue, I selected Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph University, because that is where my favorite teacher had attended. I graduated in 1970 with an Associates in Agriculture degree, with a major in Landscape and Ornamental Horticulture. Some years later I graduated with a Bachelor of Religion degree from Taylor College in Edmonton, Alberta, and followed that with a Masters of Divinity from Sioux Falls College in South Dakota in 1984. I was accepted into the Doctorate of Education program at State University of New York (Buffalo) in 1987, but career relo- cation kept me from entering the program. Your career trajectory? Upon graduation from agricultural college, I worked for the Borough of York in Metropolitan Toronto, performing their first-ever street tree inventory by walking the streets and documenting tree size and health on 4 x 6-inch cards. These cards were kept in a card file for reference and updating, an early and primitive form of tree inven- tory compared to the today's wonderful online inventories, with their capacity to produce graphs and contain photos. One of my favorite stories? Not having taken a tree ID course in college, I made a colossal blunder by asking the forestry foreman, in front of the entire crew, "What kind of maple tree has enormous leaves and exfoli- ating bark?" The room erupted with good-natured laughter at the young college "expert" who had not yet learned to identify a sycamore tree! In my 20s, I enjoyed other outdoor work including managing a retail garden center, installing in-ground swimming pools, selling nursery stock wholesale, and running my own landscaping company and garden center. Then came a five- year personal enrichment period when I studied to become a church pastor. This information seems to connect with people I meet, since I've heard myself referred to kindly as the Minister of Trees, or as someone working for the Ministry of Trees. However, I did not convert (pun intended) on that trajectory and instead found my way back into the green industry in Southwest Florida. I installed lawn irrigation for a year, spent 2 ½ years doing landscape maintenance for the City of Punta Gorda, and then enjoyed 11 years working for the County of Charlotte. I started County work as a landscape technician, was promoted to hor- ticulturist and then to county landscape manager. During this entire time I was not only honing my landscape design and contract management skills, but I became an ISA Certified Arborist in 1994. With certification came the need to maintain CEUs, and that positioned me to obtain excellent classroom and field training by experts from the University of Florida and beyond. I was, unknow- ingly, on my way to becoming a career arborist! 10 CityTREES

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