Academic Competitions

Iowa State University PLANET

Student Career Days

Seventeen students from the Iowa State University Department of Horticulture competed at the national Professional Landcare (PLANET) Student Career Days at Cal-Poly Pomona in Pomona, California March 26th-29th 2009. Faculty members Ann Marie VanDerZanden and Mike Reinert accompanied the group as team coaches. This annual event is sponsored by national and regional companies within the landscape industry, and this year brought together nearly 1000 students from 64 colleges and universities. The event provides students the opportunity to test their horticulture and landscape skills against their peers and to network with industry leaders through the enormous career fair and numerous workshop sessions. Industry representatives attend this event in an effort to recruit some of the best horticulture students in the nation.

Prior to the competitions we traveled to the Huntington Gardens in San Marino, California and toured the new Chinese garden as well as the rest of the magnificent 120 acre site. It was a welcome sight after a long Iowa winter.

Iowa State University PLANET Student Team at Huntington Gardens.

Enjoying the Children’s Garden.

Of the 25 different competitions, Iowa State horticulture students participated in 23 events including:

Josh Kern (l) and Ben Hershey competing in construction cost estimating.

Waiting for the next event.

Austin Eischeid (l) Bryce Frost and Amanda Snodgrass competing in landscape installation.

David Dietz (l) and Kevin Davis competing in irrigation assembly.

Most events had between 80-100 competitors. Iowa State’s top finishers included: Shane Mairet 6th in compact utility operation; Bryce Frost, Amanda Snodgrass and Austin Escheid 6th in landscape plant installation; Samantha Wagner and David Dietz 9th in wood construction; Winston Beck 12th in leadership skills and David Dietz and Kevin Davis 15th in irrigation assembly.

Our trip was made possible in part by the generous support of the ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the ISU Student Affairs office and the Brickman Company.

This was Iowa State’s third year to compete in the event. We are looking forward to next year’s event in Georgia which will be hosted by North Metro Technical College just north of Atlanta.

The Association of Collegiate Branches is the undergraduate organization of the American Society for Horticultural Sciences (ASHS). Its main purposes are to encourage undergraduate participation in the ASHS, to provide a forum of exchange from club and professional ideas, and to act as an official agent for undergraduate horticulture students.

MACHS stands for the Mid-American Collegiate Horticultural Society and includes collegiate horticulture clubs from 12 Mid-American states including: Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

In spring 2005 MACHS was held in at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. Eighty-four students from 13 schools attended. They gave tour of the CSU campus along with many other exciting places such as the Denver Botanical Gardens, and the Denver Zoo. The 23 acre Denver Botanic Garden was filled with wonderful specimens from around the world.

Iowa State University has participated in MACHS for several years. The students always do well in the various competitions, and took first place in 2003 and 2004. The competition has three sections: plant identification, general horticulture knowledge and plant judging. The students network with industry professionals and visit horticulture points of interest in the host state. The ISU Horticulture Club hosted the conference in 2002.

Students emphasizing the turfgrass option and in the Turf Club also have been very successful in a national competition known as the Turf Bowl, which is held at the National Golf Course Superintendent's meeting each year. This is a 3-hour exam that tests the students on their knowledge of plant identification, mathematics, plant pathology, soils, and entomology. They have taken first place in 4 of the last 5 years in the competition that generally has 60 or more teams competing from around the U.S. In 2005, the ISU Turf Bowl teams took 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 23rd places. Also in 2005, the ISU sports turf team placed 2nd at the National Sports Turf Managers Conference in their first year of competition.

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