The Consultant - 2018 - 18
CHAPTER PROFILE associate member category that allowed for student membership. This long-term effort is now reaping dividends for the South Carolina Chapter. MECHANISMS TO ENCOURAGE STUDENT MEMBERSHIP The South Carolina Chapter has spring and fall technical meetings, usually in Columbia (the center of the state) as a one-day event. This allows the students to leave Clemson very early and just make it for the start of the meeting. Student registration fees are kept low through subsidies. While the technical program is important, students also recognize the networking opportunity. Members go out of their way to interact with the students, even providing opportunities for them to moderate or introduce speakers. The Your clients trust your experience. You can trust ours. Forest Management Plans * Timber Cruising * Wildlife Management Plans * Timber Sales Growth Studies * Reforestation * Property Inspection * Boundary Lines * Mismarking of Trees Member Pricing * Prescribed Burn Liability * Smoke Damage Liability Pesticide and Herbicide * Errors and Omissions * Quick Quote Turnaround We can also help with your clients Hunting Lease & Timberland Liability Insurance. 18 887606_Outdoor.indd 1 23/10/17 10:54 pm meetings end with a social event, perfect for the students to get to know new professional acquaintances. The meetings are held at a Forestry Commission education facility in a state forest among the longleaf pines. What better place for the students to feel comfortable introducing themselves to ACF members? To expose Clemson forestry students to consulting forestry and ACF members, the South Carolina Chapter agreed to provide management planning opportunities for Clemson's Forest Resource Management Plans "capstone" course. In this field project, students develop management plans for ACF member client tracts. The students meet with the ACF forester, who explains the management planning process and provides landowner contact information. Next, the students meet with the landowner to obtain tract information and management objectives. Then the students do the field work and develop the plan. They meet with both the forester and landowner and present the final product. The forester and landowner then provide feedback to the professor on plan quality and their impression of the students' professionalism. ACF members spoke to several forestry classes and added a consulting focus to appropriate courses. Tom Henderson spoke to the forest economics class, for example, and ACF President-Elect Mike Wetzel lectured at the Management Plans course. Both also supplied clients for the management planning exercise. Wetzel first spoke about the fundamentals of forest management plans from a consulting perspective and expectations for the class field projects. He closed with a discussion on consulting forestry and ACF as an organization. He used the "ACF Initial Landowner Contact" and "Forest Management Plan Checklists" as teaching tools. Wetzel was peppered with questions: How does a consultant get paid? Do you walk the tract with the landowner? How long did it take for you to prepare this plan? (He provided a sample management plan.) How do you obtain timber volume information for a management plan; what level of field work is expected? THE CONSULTANT 2018
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