In the fall of 2017, Goshen’s City Forester, Aaron Sawatsky-Kingsley, approached the Community Resilience Guild to help create an internship position. Aaron was looking for help completing tree inventories throughout Goshen, but was too busy himself to design an internship. We had recently made connections with Goshen College while creating the CRG Internship program, so we agreed to help Aaron.

After helping facilitate conversations between Aaron and Goshen College faculty, CRG Fellow David Leaman-Miller drafted an internship description and application. This past May, three Goshen College Students joined Aaron to work on a survey of the trees in the College Farm Neighborhood. In addition to this particular survey, the conversations between Aaron and Goshen College have opened the door for future internships, guest lectures by Aaron, and student research projects.

Check out the video below to learn more about this project.