A Look into Davey's Annual Training Program D.I.T.S.

Hear from three students attending the Davey Institute of Tree Sciences (D.I.T.S.) program, Davey's annual flagship training program in biological sciences, safety, tree and plant care and management techniques. Philip Bauerle from Davey's North Pittsburgh office, Izzy Christmann from Davey's Portland office and Max Hackney from Davey's health and safety department talk about their experience in the four-week program, including what they're learning, how they got there and what they're excited to take back home. 

In this episode we cover:  

• What D.I.T.S. means to students  (1:20)
• What's taught at D.I.T.S. (2:00)
• How students will use what they learned (2:21)
• Staying in Kent, Ohio, for a month (3:00)
• Service line-focused training (4:30)
• D.I.T.S. application process (6:09)
• Hardest part about D.I.T.S. (6:52)
• Most fun part about D.I.T.S. (8:02)
• What students take back to their office (9:04)
• How the students found Davey Tree (10:36)
• Weather safety in Florida (12:30)
• Takeaways from D.I.T.S. (13:33)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.  

To learn more about careers at Davey, visit Davey.com/Careers.
To learn more about training at Davey, visit Davey.com/Training. 

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Transcript

Doug Ouster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast Talking Trees. I'm your host Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. We have a very special episode this week. It's our second look at the Davey Institute of Tree Sciences. It's abbreviated DITS and sometimes referred to as DITS around the office. It is a month-long training get-together for people from the Davey Tree Expert Company.

I'm joined by Izzy Christmann, sales and service coordinator for Portland, Oregon's residential office, Max Hackney, senior regional safety specialist, corporate safety department in Florida, dreary old Florida. Must be tough Max coming up here to Kent, Ohio, from Florida.

Max Hackney: Yes, I'm not used to going this long without sweating.

Doug: Philip Bauerle, he is a plant health care technician in my favorite office, North Pittsburgh residential office. That's where the guys work on my trees. Izzy, I want to start with you. Tell me a little bit about what this DITS is from your standpoint.

Izzy Christmann: It is just a huge learning opportunity and a really prestigious thing to go to within Davey. You get to meet a bunch of important people throughout the company, and you also get to meet people from the organization across different service lines and learn about them. A lot of times I feel like we just get stuck in our own little bubbles and service lines and don't get to hear about what the company has to offer in other areas.

Doug: Max, what kind of stuff are they teaching you so far?

Max: Oh, it's we're neck-deep into all things trees, from disease pathogens, learning about insects, how to identify insects, basically the science behind everything that we do every day.

Doug: Philip, what will you use this information for? Do you take it back to the office and spread the word?

Philip Bauerle: Yes, absolutely. Besides a wish list of new techniques and items that I want my manager to approve, being able to, as Izzy called it up, that bubble that we live in, we are very insulated from other service lines. Being able to explain to the other crews how diverse the work we do at Davey will be important.

Doug: Has spotted lanternfly come up at all?

Philip: Nothing but the egg cases I brought to help spread it around. Of course, I haven't actually brought spotted lanternfly.

Doug: Being away from home for a month, is that right? Is it 30 days? Is that how long this is?

Philip: Yes.

Izzy: Just about.

Doug: Izzy, tell me a little bit about that. That's a long time to be away from family and friends.

Izzy: It is, yes, but I am a very adaptable person, and I have fully immersed myself in this experience. Honestly, it has completely flown by the fact that it is-- we're halfway through week four, and going home this weekend is crazy to me because once you're here, it just goes and does not stop. It goes by in that instant.

Doug: Max, same question for you. How has it been being away for this long?

Max: With health and safety, I'm traveling quite a bit. Plus with my background in utility, this month is just a drop in a bucket compared to what I've done in the past.

Doug: Now, Philip you could commute from Pittsburgh, right?

Philip: Yes. When my wife heard that we were just going to be an hour and a half away, she figured she'd throw that out there, but I've been staying here. I went home the second weekend but just really trying to involve myself every day with the work that we're doing here, including working to spend time with people on the weekends and really get to fully immerse myself in the community that we're building.

Doug: Max, from a safety standpoint, how much of the training so far has been focused on something like safety?

Max: We've had our time to shine. Week three we covered a lot of health and safety topics. We've got our turn in front of the class.

Doug: Izzy, same question for you as far as what you do in Portland, Oregon, how much of the training has been focused on exactly what you do?

Izzy: It's been really beneficial. I started as full-time sales at the beginning of the year. It's a really good refresher just of all of the hands-on safety stuff, climbing in the field, just hearing from other people that are in the RC division talking about their day-to-day and what they need from their salespeople and management, just taking ideas and making note of them so I can bring them back and apply them to my team and crews.

Doug: Philip, same thing. How much training focuses on exactly what you do back here in Pittsburgh?

Philip: Week one and two were definitely insect and disease-heavy. Then week three we switched over to some of the more extensive tree work, the climbing, the rigging, a lot of the tree health care involving saws versus sprays. This fourth week we're learning a lot of background as to some of the operations behind the scenes. Safety has also spoken to us yesterday and today. It's been great to learn fuller breadth of what goes on at DV.

Doug: How are you chosen to go to this training? Who chooses you? Someone from your office or someone from the main office? How do we know who's going to go to this month-long training the DITS?

Izzy: That's a good question, honestly. I know there's an application process. Some people just you get the application from your manager and apply. We have never had somebody from the Portland, Oregon, office go before, so our operations manager was really involved in the process of getting me to sign up and come and creating that path for me to be able to come here. I know there's an application and requirements and prerequisites.

Doug: This question is for all three. What's been the hardest thing so far?

Max: For me personally, just because of my background, I haven't had much experience with it. That would definitely be the etymology, actually looking into-- learning the different types of the bugs and how to identify them. That's not something I had experience with prior to coming to this class.

Doug: What do you think, Philip?

Philip: I'd say just jamming the amount of material that we do in a day. When I was in school we covered entomology. I took a whole semester worth and really trying to cram that into two days is a big task to do in terms of the amount of information.

Doug: What do you think, Izzy?

Izzy: I would agree. I think it's just allocating your time wisely and properly too. Everyone out here is trying to make friends, make new connections, but you also have these tests at the end of each week and this new material, or even if it's not super new material and you've learned it before, it's fresh that week, so just making sure that you're giving yourself enough time to study but also giving yourself breaks to be social.

Doug: What has been the most fun?

Philip: Definitely getting to work with some of the professionals we have on staff. There are PhDs that we have on staff at Davey that really are experts in the field, and so being able to ask them questions, bounce ideas off of them, that's, I believe, what has been really fun for that is interacting with our trainers.

Doug: Max?

Max: Yes, I could agree with that. It's the conversations that happen between the lectures and between the sessions where people that you've read about and you've seen in emails and stuff suddenly become real people and you actually have personal one-on-one conversations with.

Doug: The most fun for you, Izzy?

Izzy: Most fun. Honestly, it's been getting to know everybody. I love meeting new people, and it has been great to hear everybody's different stories from their offices and their lives and how they got into Davey, and what they think of their jobs. Just making new friends with all that information.

Doug: When you do head back to home, what do you take with you? Is it a big notebook or is it just internet stuff? What do you take back?

Philip: Two big notebooks.

Izzy: Two big binders. [laughs] Binders with all of the lectures that we have been presented and handouts and worksheets and some tools that they gave us.

Philip: Also the connections we made with one another and the business cards, people we've met while we're here.

Doug: When you get back, will you be expected to do a little rundown of what you learned so you can, again, share it with the team back at work?

Izzy: I probably will. I think that my office will have me do a debrief. We have a relatively young office. There haven't really been employees at my office that are there five, ten years. I think we're in that three-ish year realm and that's me. Just explaining to them like stick around with Davey and these are the opportunities you can get.

Philip: If Rob's going to make me do a book report, I hope he lets me know beforehand.

[laughter]

Max: I've been in communication with my support staff back home, just giving constant daily debriefs on how things are going, things that I think might benefit us. From interaction standpoint, is, again, coming from a support side, is a little bit different for me than it is for the guys coming from operations.

Doug: If you don't mind, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about how you got into this and why this job is right for you. Philip, what was your journey into your job?

Philip: I graduated college right before the economic downturn in 2008, 2009, but I've always had a passion about plants. I worked for the Penn State Master Gardeners for five years where I learned a lot of diagnosing, a lot of insects, a lot of how to communicate with people. What I've tried to do is build a career based on those skills I built while I was at the Penn State Extension. From here, it's been applying pesticides and herbicides, as well as speaking with people and telling them what I'm doing.

Doug: Izzy, how did you get into this?

Izzy: I fell into my major in college, which was forestry and natural resources, and then I minored in urban forestry. I was a DV intern the summer between my junior year and senior year of college. I grew up in California, so I wanted to move out of state. I chose the Portland office to intern up there, and then the following year, it worked out for me to just move back up there and work full-time at my office. I have been there since.

Doug: Max, how about you?

Max: I'm actually a second-generation Davey. I grew up wearing the green Davey T-shirts. My father first joined the company in '92. When I come on board, I cut my teeth in the field, but I knew I wanted to be somewhere where I could make a difference. I wanted to make sure that the people that I was working around got to go home safe. That's how I found my way to health and safety.

Doug: I want to talk to you a little bit about that, Max, about your climate. Are you affected by hurricanes as far as your area, where you work?

Max: Oh, yes, absolutely. Where I live, where I was born and raised, up until this point, I was the epicenter of the Florida-- the 2004 hurricane epidemic. I had all three hurricanes that went through Florida, the high crest, right across my house.

Doug: With your job, when you hear that's coming and you never know, you look at the maps and they never know where it's going to land, do you sweat it out the night before this is going to hit because it's going to be a lot of work?

Max: Again, being a second-generation, it's something that I always knew exactly what was going to happen. When a storm's coming, I'm not worried about me because I know I'm going to be working. I'm making sure that my wife and kids are somewhere where they're going to be safe because I know as soon as the winds die down, I'm heading to work.

Doug: Before I let you guys go, I want to hear your biggest takeaway from the training. Philip, do you want to start?

Philip: Oh, sure. I would say just the fact that, due to the diversity of our business lines, really the resources we have and the connections that we've made while we're here will be things that help us keep this company growing and keep this company very strong as our careers continue.

Doug: Max?

Max: Definitely the science behind everything. How much of an industry leader we actually are just by doing the math, doing the sciences.

Doug: Izzy?

Izzy: Yes, I would build off of what Max said of, we're here, we're seeing the lab, we're seeing all these people with PhDs, and the amount of resources that we have as a company across all these different service lines are just huge. That's something that not every company can say that they have.

Doug: When do you guys go home?

Izzy: Saturday.

Philip: Saturday.

Izzy: Friday night, Saturday. Goodbye banquet is Friday.

Doug: Guys, I appreciate your time. It was great to talk to you. Now, go get lunch, okay?

[laughter]

Max: Thank you.

Philip: Thank you, Doug.

Izzy: Thanks for having us.

Doug: Thanks, guys. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. It's great to talk to a diverse group that's going through this special training. Now, tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I am your host, Doug Oster, and do me a big favor. Hey, subscribe to the podcast, so you'll never miss a show. You got an idea for an episode, maybe a comment? Send us an email to podcasts@davey.com, that's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S at D-A-V-E-Y dot com. As always, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

[music]

[00:15:35] [END OF AUDIO]