Great piece on the summer/fall camps in the Fall 2009 issue of the FRES newsletter. I read it with a constant grin on my face remembering the summer of 1968 when I attended camp. I just missed the Alberta experience as it was held on campus that year.
Many of our classes were held in the old Hubbell building. And yes, we had Gene Hesterberg, Bob Sajdak, Mike Coffman, Norm Sloan, Hammer Steinhilb and others as instructors and Glenn Mroz drove the bus. You’ve come a long way, Glenn! We also had a couple of women at our camp. It took Summer Camp for one of them to realize she was claustrophobic when she went in the bush. She switched to biology the very next term .
That camp produced some of the very best times I had while at Tech. I learned more doing those “hands-on” exercises than I would have spending twice the number of hours in a classroom. The experience of the instructors was invaluable and served me well throughout my entire forestry career. I had occasion to work with people who had graduated from other forestry schools that didn’t have a camp and I can tell you that their lack of practical knowledge was very obvious. I had to actually teach a couple of them how to run a compass!!
I can still hear Vern Johnson speaking that famous phrase “C’est la vie” although he pronounced it “Sell a vee” which gave rise to the phrase coined by the students “If you can’t sell a W, sell a V”. Thanks much for including that piece in the newsletter.
tions of students (especially in dendrology), he was fondly nicknamed ‘Black Bob.’ He often had a sly smile on his face when students were trying to negotiate grades or just joking with him on field trips. He was one of the first faculty to receive outside funds for his work in herbicides and tree production.”