Steve Cohan’s students from the University of Maryland have been participating in the annual Student Career Days event, now hosted by the Professional Landcare Network (PLANET), for five years. As a group, the team has moved swiftly up the ranks from 27th place out of about 45 schools their first year to 11th place out of 54 college and universities this year. And while it’s working hard to break into the Top 10, the University of Maryland team felt like No. 1 this year playing host in College Park, Md., to nearly 1,500 Student Career Days attendees.
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“Being able to host Student Career Days is a really amazing achievement,” said Cohan, program coordinator for the Univeristy of Maryland’s department of natural resource sciences and landscape architecture. “It’s something I’ve been focused on for a couple of years now in order to get approval to hold the competition here and then organize all the details that go into making an event of this size successful.”
Cohan says faculty members that are interested in bringing Student Career Days to their campuses should be prepared to cut back on their teaching loads in order to accommodate the responsibility. Likewise, he says it’s much more than a one-person job.
“Hosting Student Career Days really elevates the status of our program here at the university and at the opening ceremonies, our Provost William Destler expressed how impressed he was with the magnitude of the event and the involvement of the students and the industry,” Cohan said. “But the fact is that we couldn’t achieve any of this success without the help of our sponsors.”
With 13 major sponsors and nearly 50 additional sponsors of the competitive events*, PLANET put together what was ultimately the largest Student Career Days event yet, with more sponsorship money coming in than ever before. Still, representatives from Platinum Sponsor Stihl note that, for the sponsors, Student career days isn't about the dollars.
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“This is our sixth year participating as a Student Career Days sponsor and we’re truly not here to sell anything or market our company,” said Stihl National Training Manager John Keeler. “What’s important for us and for all the sponsors of Student Career Days is to interact with the students – the future of the industry – and say, ‘This event is important to us and what we do as a profession – won’t you join us?’”
As the Student Career Days Platinum Sponsor, Keeler presented a $30,000 check from Stihl to PLANET Student Career Days Chair Jim McCutcheon at the event’s opening ceremonies on March 20. He then yielded the balance of his presentation time to another major sponsor, the Ariens/Gravely/Stens Cos. “The students here are the future of the green industry and it’s important for them to hear from another prominent player that helped make this event possible,” he said.
National Account Manager Ron Marcellus and Corporate Marketing Services Manager Carol Dilger took the stage for Ariens/Gravely/Stens, echoing Keeler’s emphasis on networking to build industry professionalism. “As sponsors of this event, the Ariens/Gravely/Stens Cos., and Stihl have a special relationship in creating a better tomorrow for the industry and we want to make sure everyone takes advantage of the opportunities to meet and get to know new people who are at Student Career Days today,” Marcellus said. “The industry is on the rise because of passionate future professionals like these students and this level of healthy competition in the events and at the career fair is to everyone’s benefit.”
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From major sponsors like Stihl and Ariens/Gravely/Stens to individual lawn and landscape companies that supported the Student Career Days competitive events, Cohan says he’s highly appreciative of all the companies that made the event possible. “There’s probably no other department at the university that has industry support like ours does, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see it in action,” he said “These sponsors are here because they care and that does a great deal to raise the industry’s professionalism and gives more weight to the opportunities available through horticulture and landscape contracting programs at all the participating universities.”
Indeed, Cohan said he met a prospective student visiting the University of Maryland with his father recently and invited the pair to visit the campus again during Student Career Days. “The young man had expressed an interest in going into the landscape field and I knew he’d get a much better taste of the program and the scope of what he could do with that kind of a degree if he saw other students in action,” Cohan said. “We stayed in contact and he took us up on the offer to see the Student Career Days event and he was just blown away.”
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The chance to use Student Career Days as a recruiting opportunity with high school seniors may be rare – but then again, it wouldn’t happen at all if the event wasn’t possible. Thankfully, industry sponsorships and participation continue to grow annually, and the numbers of participating schools and students are also on the rise. Keeler is proud of the industry’s involvement and says he’s looking forward to next year’s 30th Annual PLANET Student Career Days at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
“Of all the boards I sit on and organizations I participate in, this is the most important and most fulfilling,” Keeler says. “I look forward to it every year and every year I’m more excited about the future of our industry.”
*For the purposes of this article, the Ariens/Gravely/Stens Companies are considered one entity rather than 3 separate sponsors. All major sponsors also held sponsorship roles for many competitive events.