On any given day, Nikki Mills is likely to be found in the woods. An outdoor enthusiast with a love for hunting and fishing, Nikkiis also pursuing her passions in the college classroom. Yet being a student doesn’t mean sacrificing time among the trees: as a forestry major at College of the Redwoods (CR), Nikki’s courses take her to timber harvest sites, public forests, beaches, and riparian corridors.
For Nikki and her peers in the CR forestry program, lecture halls are swapped for Humboldt County’s redwood forests, and textbooks are supplemented with cruise vests and hard hats. “Studying forestry is special,” she says. “You get the outdoors as your classroom, and we see so many different terrains in our field classes.”
As a community college, College of the Redwoods offers its forestry students an academic experience that Nikki describes as “personal” and “hands-on”. Field classes, which are held outdoors, teach students methods to measure tree height and evaluate forest stand health. Nikki and her classmates get familiar with tools like Biltmore sticks, clinometers, and d-tapes (diameter tapes), which is a big help when seeking summer employment.
Gaining experience through a summer job is typical for forestry students, and Nikki describes a past position working on a carbon cruising team as “the most fun I’ve had on a summer job.” While completing inventories of forestland to estimate its carbon storage capacity, she and her coworkers cracked jokes, learned from their mistakes, and fell- sometimes into large piles of duff. “When you get out in the field, people fall and trip and make mistakes,” she says. “We make it a point to have a fun time.”
“I think environmental protection is important to younger generations. Climate change scares us, and we wonder, ‘what will we be experiencing in a few years?’” Nikki says. She points out that working in forestry can help alleviate those feelings, especially when that work is often “fun”, and “light-hearted”.
This shared purpose leads to a tight-knit forestry community, which is one of the aspects Nikki enjoys most about the field. She explains how her professors will actively assist students with finding employment, students will form close bonds in the more ‘specialty’ courses, and some local Registered Professional Foresters (RPFs) will even attend CR classes as refreshers.
“I think that’s the best part about forestry,” she shares. “My professors will tell us that they’ve worked with past students, because everyone works together.” In this way, Nikki sees forestry as more than an identity or interest. It can also create a sense of belonging: “You will see your friends again, no matter where you end up,” she says.
These are the experiences that Nikki highlights when conducting outreach as a CR Forestry Club leader. It’s something that resonates with everyone, like when she attended a college fair at a local high school, students got excited when they heard about campus life and her class experiences.
This is the last year that Nikki will spend at College of the Redwoods, where she will earn her Associate’s Degree in Forestry and Natural Resources. She then plans to transfer to a four-year university and earn her B.S in Forestry. After that? Her goal is to become a CA RPF, because– “If you can become a forester in California, you can be a forester anywhere,” she jokes.
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