©2023 International Society of Arboriculture 122 O’Herrin et al: A Critical Analysis of the Urban Forestry Profession formal relationships between higher education and other interested parties, as urban forestry is scattered across diverse academic units. See Ideal 6. Recruit- ment for further details. There are many intangible skills and charac- teristics that contribute to the practice of urban forestry. It is multidisciplinary in nature and di.ficu.t to desi.n .ro.ra.s .or trainin.. It re.uires co..a.oration .it. .an. re.ated fie.ds and there are also different areas of practice. This has always been the challenge in training urban foresters. Just stating the obvious I guess. It is time we step up, lean in, whatever you want to call it, and own our profession. Perhaps a unique credential will facilitate that. (2020 UFP Survey respondent) Urban forestry lacks alignment of university cur- ricula with industry needs. There is also a lack of for- mal recruitment pipelines, which could also serve as a forum for dialogue through collaboration between professional organizations, practitioners, and higher education. Ideal 4. Credentialing Urban forest professionals currently use a variety of credentials from other professions to articulate their professional identity (Day et al. 2022), none of which use t.e .ords .ur..n .orest.. . .erti.ed .r..n .or- ester credential program created by the California Urban Forest Council and later adopted by SAF has had little uptake and is not currently being offered (O’Herrin et al. 2020). Only 6 of 708 respondents in the 2020 UFP Survey reported having the credential, and all expressed varying degrees of dissatisfaction with the credential in its current state while indicating support for a credential for the urban forestry profes- sion. Another example is the International Society of .r.oriculture (...) .erti.ed .r.orist .unici..l Specialist®; however, this is decidedly an advanced .r.orist credenti.l. .s onl. ... .erti.ed .r.orists .re eligible to take the exam. There are also examples of localized self-regulation of urban forestry, such as the ..ss.c.usetts .u.li.ed .ree ..rden credenti.l .. t.e ..ss.c.usetts .ree ..rdens .nd .oresters .sso- ciation (2022); however, these are local by design and are not open to the whole profession. To establish competency and communicate a min- imum level of knowledge, urban forest professionals maintain many credentials from allied professions: water systems, mapping, etc. It’s hard to explain this to a layperson but once people have a good urban forester on any team, you have someone who can look at everything comprehensively and not narrowly. (2020 UFP Survey respondent) .r..n .orestr. l.c.s . codi.ed .o. t..t is ste.- arded by practitioners and serves as the foundation of the profession moving forward, including to align degree accreditation, credentialing, and continuing education. Ideal 3. Higher Education ..ile .ot. t.e ... .nd t.e .... .ccredit de.ree programs in urban forestry, there is still quite limited participation by higher education. SAF’s college guide lists 5 degree programs with the specialized urban forestry accreditation and another 6 programs with an urban forestry option as a subset of the stan- dard forestry accreditation (Society of American For- esters 2022a). Forestry accreditation in Canada is mediated through the provinces and a national accred- itation board, and there is to our knowledge only one degree program under consideration for accreditation at this time. .ot. sets o. .ccredit.tion st.nd.rds reco.nize t.e interdisciplinary nature of urban forestry. As a result, the accreditation standards tend to be quite broad rel- ative to traditional forest management, but likely not broad enough to include the full array of urban forest professional knowledge and all of its niches. They are not fully aligned with the practice of urban forest pro- fessionals and tend to have more depth in traditional forest management, which should come as no sur- prise, as these standards are administered by organi- zations dedicated to serving their membership of traditional foresters. Additionally, the majority of urban forest professionals are not members of these organi- zations (Day et al. 2022). This misalignment may explain why jobs analyses indicate that market demand for graduates of accred- ited programs is still limited. In the United States, few employers require or even mention graduation from accredited degrees (O’Herrin et al. 2018b). In Can- ada, Registered Professional Forester (RPF) creden- tials, which require graduation from an accredited program, do not distinguish between urban forestry .nd tr.dition.l .orestr.. so it is di..cult to determine if employer interest in RPFs are focused on urban for- estry. This misalignment may also explain a lack of
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