City Trees

September/October 2022

City Trees is a premier publication focused on urban + community forestry. In each issue, you’ll learn how to best manage the trees in your community and more!

Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/1477566

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My name is Alex Fosket. I am an agricultural science major with an emphasis in forestry at Western Illinois University (go, Leathernecks!). I graduate this December. I had a rather uncon- ventional path into the field of forestry. I entered college as a law enforcement major; that was the plan until my sophomore year, when I took a tree ID class as an elective. I found it very interesting and wanted to learn more. By junior year, I had officially changed my major to agriculture science and started a new journey of learning more about soil science, horticulture, agriculture technology, and mainly—forestry. I really enjoyed the urban forestry course, for which we did an Arbor Day project with one of the local grade schools in Macomb, Illinois. I presented about Arbor Day to a class of third graders, which was a great experience. I was lucky enough to work with both the city forester and mayor of Macomb for Arbor Day, when we planted three trees on school grounds in celebration of the occasion. In the summer of 2021, I was hired to be an intern by the Village of Mount Prospect, Illinois. My main job was to inventory trees in sec- tions of the Village where pruning was going to take place the following year. I inventoried nearly 6,000 trees, and at the end of the intern- ship I was asked back for the summer of 2022, when I inventoried approximately 5,000 more trees. Needless to say, my tree ID has come a long way since my sophomore year of college. After I graduate in December, I hope to work somewhere in the field of urban forestry. I am excited for what is to come! I'm looking for work in any of the lower 48 states in the U.S. I welcome hearing from folks who are hiring for urban forester positions: am-fosket@wiu.edu. Alex Fosket with a northern pike (44 inches/112 cm) caught on Waskesiu Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada. urban-forestry.com 11

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