Ranger School Virtual Open House

There's no students here yet, right? Still just the five of us.

But I don't hear Tom.

He muted.

You muted OK.

Rookie mistake, you only in my 1000 zoom meeting.

Now we should be live, so I'd like to welcome any students that are joining us. I don't see any in the just patient.

Let's chat, but if there are students who join us, she could just put your name into the chat and let us know you're here.

I'm just gonna do a quick shout out to rocky Rocky Ice T we're at 4:31. Is there a reason why we don't have other participants?

Yeah, I'm I'm just looking at the registration list now, I mean.

There is that issue that students being linked to there's no shows, but that should not impact their ability to get into this event.

Nor to impact the ability of those that are still listed as registered.

Where is no way for me to change their status.

I don't know.

I'm not sure why it changed their status earlier today.

I did not think it would have an impact on their ability to get into this event.

From everything I can tell.

Clearly that's not necessarily the case. Let me see if I can.

If I can get a link to send people, I will shoot an email out to everybody on the registration list.

So I guess hang tight with me and I will be back as soon as I can do that.

Yes, to appear to be.

Example.

I'm sending waiting for other for me.

Now it's about.

And end it right now.

I'm starting to see a few names show up on the participant list.

So if you'll please, bear with us. We're just having a few technical issues and we'll try to get everyone on board and get started here. Thanks so much for your patience and sticking with us here.

Doctor Johnston, if I could, I give an update to the students. Thank you for your patience. We are getting a message out to redirect you to a different link so if you're in obviously that doesn't impact you but we are getting a number of messages into our ESF admissions inbox that students are having trouble. So you're being supplied with a new link, so I see the participant list starting to grow now.

So we are beginning to resolve the technical problems. I would ask if you can. Mary Ann. I think we do have a number of students that are that are here that are that have been waiting for some time. I expect others to join us as we get this email out with the new link. So it's up to you whether you would like to ask people to give it another 5 minutes or whether you'd like to begin. But we are on top of the technical issue and I expect it to be resolved.

In like 5 minutes or less.

Everyone should have just received an email. Sorry for the interruption from esf.info@esf.edu with a working link to get into.

That the event so it did just go out.

Just a moment ago and I would imagine you'll see that number go up in just a second.

Alright.

If you guys need anything on this, let me know.

Yeah.

I think we're good to begin, don't you? Rocky, we were up to 18 people and it it it will continue to grow. So I I think we should begin.

Alright, have a good night guys.

Thank you so much and good afternoon everyone. Thank you so much for your patience.

We are doing our first ever virtual open house an having our first ever slight technical issues with our virtual open house, so I really appreciate your patience and staying on with us. And again I think some more people are going to be joining us. If you would like though and you wanted to go ahead and pop over into the left hand side of your screen you should see a little chat window an you can pop in there and just give us your name and let us know you're here and that would be great.

And I will go ahead and start telling you a little bit about the Ranger School.

So for our presentation today we have it divided up into just a few parts.

I'll give you a little overview of the school, and then we'll move into a little bit about the admissions process and financial aid, and then we'll wrap up with a section on student life where we have a few students to come in to visit with you, but in the meantime, I should introduce myself. My name is doctor Mary Ann Johnston an I am the director of the Ranger School. I've been a faculty member here for about 12 years now, but I only just began the director position.

Over the summer. So this is my first open house as director as well as my first open house.

On a virtual platform and during a covid pandemic. So lots of lots of firsts for me this year.

So I wanted to start by just sharing a little bit about you with the Ranger School, so we have a image here on the screen of the building. This is taken from the Oswegatchie River that flows into cranberry Lake out in front of the school looking up towards the front of the building. Obviously this was taken in the fall. We've moved a little bit past leaf color at this point, so we're starting to lose our leaves, but this is what the school looks like from out front.

You probably realize this, but the Ranger School is located in Wanakena, so this is a remote campus. While we are part of ESF an the main campus, of course is located in Syracuse. We are up in the Adirondacks, so just to give you a sense of that were located in the town of Wanakena and this is just a I don't know. Maybe a Google or MapQuest that I pulled an over here. We have the state of New York and this.

Sort of box. Here is the same box that we're looking at here, and so we have Syracuse your route to get to Wanakena typically is to come all the way up. 80, one I-81 and then you cut off on to State Route 3, which brings you right down through the town of Star Lake and into the town of Wanakena. And it's again. It's about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Syracuse. Again, it's a fairly remote location. We're in the western foothills of the at around acts were right on the edge of the five ponds wilderness area.

And it's a beautiful and remote area and lots of great opportunities to learn about forestry and natural resources.

So again, we're a satellite campus of ESF an we offer ESF's associates of Applied Science degree program where the only AAS degree granting arm I guess of ESF, and we have three programs. Forest technology has been a program here since 1912 when the school was first started and I'll talk a little bit about that in a moment.

In about 1995 we formalized a degree program in land surveying technology and then just recently in 2012 we implemented the environmental and Natural Resources Conservation Degree program.

All of these programs are taught in one year here at the Ranger School, and you would therefore come here with 20 credits from Community College, a local college ESF, sometimes directly from high school. If you have enough college and AP credits and Mr. Fletcher will cover this a little bit more in his presentation in a few minutes.

The Ranger School was founded back around 1912 and at this time the rich lumber company owned a mill and the town of Wanakena was actually the Milltown. So this is where the workers lived and the people that ran the company lived here and.

As a typical practice, at that time, the lumber companies would often have a sawmill, an they would harvest what timber they could within reasonable access of that Milan. Then when they had logged pretty much everything they could, they would close down the mill and moved to a new area so the rich lumber company in about 1911 had pretty much logged the area out and so they made a decision to or an offer. I should say to donate that land.

To the New York State College of forestry. It was it was donated to Syracus University to be held for the New York State College of Forestry and it was about 2000 acres and it was specifically for the purpose of educating men for the right kind of practical work in forestry. So the terminology there is directly from the original documents that transferred the land to the college. So the first students arrived in September 1912 and they graduated.

In the fall of 1913, so back in the original day, the Ranger School was a full calendar year, so it would run from fall to fall.

The Ranger School has had a graduating class every year with the exception of 1942 and at that time World War Two was underway and the young men were off in the war fighting the war, and so there was no graduating class that year.

The Ranger School nonetheless has continued the tradition of educating people in forestry and natural resources, and has had a graduation except for 1942 every year up to an including this year. So some of the things that we do now that are the same and we're very big on tradition at the Ranger School. We are still very much in intensive field oriented hands-on program, so this is very much for you if you are interested in.

Learning about things in the classroom, but then going out and getting your hands dirty doing the work and learning experientially.

Our coursework includes things like dendrology, which is tree identification surveying.

Measurements, and this includes all natural resources measurements, so trees, streams, vegetation, Woody material, variety of different things that we want to be able to measure and understand as part of making management decisions on the landscape.

We work on mapping and this is both mapping by hand and using computer programs to help us with mapping.

We learn first aid tool use.

We work in forest and Natural Resources Management. You learn communication skills and these are all just sort of a sampling of a number of things that you'll learn during the programs here.

We continue these are I would also back up and point out that these are all things that we've taught pretty much since the beginning, because these are all essential skills to be able to work and navigate and understand what you're doing out in the field. We continue to be a residential living scenario, so all of our students live on campus in the dorms. Exceptions to that are only made by permission of the director, so we do have an expectation that students live.

On campus during the year so we also share meals together in the cafeteria so we have. We have a dining Hall and regular meal schedule.

And we'll learn a little bit more about the residential living in the quarters. Will share a little bit more about that a little bit later in the presentation as well.

Another big tradition that we continue today even at the Ranger School, is the idea of building teamwork, so there's certainly a high expectation that you learn to work on your own in identifying trees and taking measurements and all these different skills. But we also spend a lot of time working on teams, and so you have to learn to be able to work with other people. Sometimes you may be assigned as the team leader, so you'll be responsible for things like checking out equipment at the equipment room, being responsible for the equipment while you're in the field.

Returning it at the appropriate time. Clean, organized, timely, and we very much focus on on that team aspect here at the Ranger School. An interesting Lee. Very often one of the first questions that we get from employers when they call to get references for students is how are they at teamwork? How do they work with other people? So it's an important skill. It's not one that you'll see on our list of courses, but it's one that's built into everything that we teach. And again, this is a traditional piece that goes back to the beginning of the Ranger School.

Some things that are different or that we still do our program in one year, but we're now in an academic year setting, so we start in August. We go through May. It's about it's a little over nine months, and so we typically run about a week longer than each semester than you would at the main campus down at ESF. So we're just a little bit longer semester importantly, not just for men anymore. Initially, a very was.

Very much was oriented towards men are first woman graduated in 1974 and we presently run about 20 to 25% women in the class. So at present I have 11 women here in a class of 54.

Our facilities are much improved since 1912. We now have, so it was it's sort of funny to read some of the stories. In 1912 the students arrived and they they had to build everything from. They had tents and then they had to build their classrooms, build the privies an so there's some very interesting stories, so we have all that built for you now so you don't have to build anything when you get here. We have dormitories, we have nice classrooms. We have lab spaces. We have high speed Internet.

And we're actually the Internet hub for the local area, so we have a server room right on campus that also serves the local area. So we're very good with our connectivity. You still do not have good cell phone coverage here and wanakena, so for most students and faculty I tie into the wireless network with our cell phones in order to be able to communicate. So we do have good communication, but that cell phone coverage is still something that.

We don't quite have here yet.

And again, different from 1912 is that we now have the three programs of study rather than just one. And as I mentioned earlier, I've got them abbreviated here. But those are forest technology, land surveying, technology and environmental and Natural Resources Conservation.

The daily life of a Ranger School student. Again, it's a pretty intensive schedule, so we are in classes every day from Monday through Friday 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

You don't get breaks.

Breaks in the sense that you don't get hours off typically during the day, you're typically going to be in the classroom for four hours each morning from 8 to noon, and that's 450 minute hours, so you get a 10 minute break between lecture periods, but you're expected to be in the classroom the rest of that time. We have a one hour break for lunch, and then the afternoons are typically devoted to lab now, for the most part, these are outdoor labs, so you'll be out learning the surveying skills. That re measurement skills that re identification skills.

You will also have to work with computers, one of the.

Fairly consistent job requirements that we see employers asking for now is the ability to work with the geographic information system or a GIS which allows us to look at Maps and other information in a graphical format, and so you will learn how to do that here, and that's going to require some time on a computer so we do have a nice computer lab where you'll learn your remote sensing and geographic information.

System skills.

Now the courses that you take are determined by your program of study.

But I'm going to offer you some generalizations Here about how this might look.

So first of all, I just wanted to show you a picture of the main classroom. So this is where you would be spending those four morning lecture hours.

And.

This is a view looking from sort of the front entrance of the room towards the back of the room, but at the front of the room there's two large projection screens, and there's a teaching station there so we can project the lecture material or movies or whatever we're doing that day into the classroom setting. So in the fall semester.

You're going to be coming in here for the most part in the mornings.

And then in the afternoon you're going to be going out into the field and in the fall all three of the programs take for the most part the same classes. So everyone, regardless of program, will learn dendrology, which again is tree identification skills. You'll learn basic surveying, so you'll be able to run a transit an understand measurements. You will also, in the surveying course learn how to use your feet to measure where you're going in the field.

So we can measure the number of steps or paces that it takes us to get a particular distance. And once you know your pace, you can then use that to help navigate in the field, so your feet for measurement together with your compass is a pacing encompass skill very important for everyone to learn so that you can navigate.

Safely through the Woods and we can find you again at the end of the day, that's always helpful too.

Natural resources measurements. Again everyone takes this. This is where we learn our basic skills on how we measure trees. It does involve having to know species of trees.

And in addition to looking at trees, we look at things like water flow. There's a few different measurements you might learn having to do with wildlife measurements, both looking at habitat considerations and in some cases evidence of wildlife itself. We look a little bit at what we call coarse Woody debris, which is really sort of the logs and branches and different things laying on the ground. 'cause it turns out that's important both in some cases for wildlife habitat, but also for things like carbon.

Because carbon is is stored in.

Organic material, so there's a variety of different reasons why we learn to measure these different things, but those basic skills of how are something that you learn in the natural resources measurements class.

Forest ecology is the Class I teach, so that's my favorite class and we spend time in forest ecologies, learning a little bit about how individual trees interact with each other in the environment, how they grow, why are they shaped the way they are? Why do trees look the way they do, and then we start branching out a little bit, no pun.

Ended and looking at how trees interact with each other in the forest environment, what is the stand of trees and what we're working on right now? In fact, within the next couple of weeks, we're going to be heading out an using aerial photographs to map different kinds of forest communities on the landscape, which is a basic first step. If you're going to move on to working on natural resources management or force management plans which will move to next semester in another class.

Communications and safety. This is where you learn about hand tools, power, tools, safe use of hand and power tools, and this class is also where you will get certified in basic first aid and wilderness first aid and you get to learn how to run a chainsaw and drive a skitter, which is a large piece of equipment that we use to hold harvested logs around in the field.

And there's other things there as well. Remote sensing and geographic information system. I mentioned this earlier. This is where we use computer software programs in order to map spatial information about the landscape so we can look at boundaries. We can look at different resources and get a good sense of what we're looking at on the ground, and this is also a program that we can use to create good Maps to use for management purposes. Navigational purposes.

A variety of different ways of communicating what we see on the landscape.

So those the classes I just listed, those are all classes that are taken by everyone in the fall semester in the spring semester, there's one additional class that all three programs take, and that is a GIS practicum. So that is GIS. Here is the same geographic information systems as just shown previously, but this is an opportunity for every student to work by themselves or with a partner on a independent geographic information system project.

And the.

One thing we know about GIS skills is it something that you really learn best by doing so. This is an opportunity for everyone to get their hands in there and really just work on their own GIS project. It helps in for reinforce and enhance your GIS skills and really gives us confidence when you're walking out the door that you can say. Yes, I do have these GIS skills.

So that's our fall semester. Here's some fun pictures of the fall semester. This is some we've got some serving students on the upper left.

Out learning how to use a transit so this is an introductory lab before they go start taking measurements with this device around the perimeters of campus.

We do have a nice set of canoes and we're right on a Lake here, and so every once in awhile for class will hop in canoes and paddle downstream. Man in this case these students this was earlier this fall and they were just headed out to do a tree identification. So a dendrology lab.

And then on the right there are some students working in the natural resources measurements class looks like they're probably measuring down Woody debris there.

And again, a lot of our time, again in the afternoon is outdoors. Just don't forget that they're not always going to be outside 'cause there's those few times that we do have to have you in on the computers to learn those computer based skills.

So in the spring semester, this is when we tend to split off a little bit more into the focused programs. So forest technology, for example, will spend a little bit more time with some classes on things like wildland firefighting. Any cology we do, a timber inventory practicum or a timber cruise, you'll do wood identification. You'll learn a little bit more about timber transportation in Utilization, so a little bit more about how to build roads for in the forest, whether it's for logging or for other uses.

There's also a class in logging now.

Now getting.

Two complex, all three of the programs have one class in the fall semester that they do take independently of each other, and that horse happens in October, and so that does give you if you come to the Ranger School, you're not sure you decide to enroll in force technology, and you get here and you learn a little bit more about the program, decide that you think the Environmental Natural Resources Conservation Program, for example, is a better fit. You still have time to change, so we give you.

About six weeks at the beginning of the semester to learn a little bit more about the programs, and then we'll need you to make that decision about which program you want to be in by about the first week in October, because that's when we first start to split into the three different programs. So in the fall for forest technology, this is when they do student logging.

For the land surveying technology, students in the fall, they'll do one course in Scad CADD. It's computer aided drafting and design.

And then the Environmental Natural Resources Conservation students in the fall semester will have one class where they focus a little bit on wildlife techniques, and then they'll also take a class in what we call at around at cultural ecologies. So a little bit more about the sociopolitical aspects of the adirondacks. OK, so, but other than that, most of the programs.

Differentiate a little bit more in the spring semester. So with the land surveying technology in the spring semester, they are going to be focusing a little bit more on survey law, boundary surveying, subdivision surveying, there's a construction and Topa Graphic survey that they do, and then they continue to work with that computer aided drafting and Design an again that is another computer skill and it's going to be very important for the surveyors moving forward. That's going to typically be used in.

Creating

survey Maps for property boundaries, for example.

The environmental and Natural Resources Conservation Program in the spring semester, they spend a little bit more time on wildlife techniques and we were very excited. We have our for she's now here in her third year. Fairly new faculty. Member, doctor Vanessa Rojas and she will spend time both in the fall in the spring semester, helping students with.

Learning about different kinds of wildlife and then a number of different hands-on techniques for working with wildlife so she does have permits to be able to handle small mammals, birds on different animals, different animals, so we can do a little bit of trapping and looking at animals and releasing them. You also will have courses in water resources and soil resources.

Environmental interpretation, recreation an environmental interpretation techniques. So this is learning a little bit about how. What are the best techniques for creating, for example, signage on trails to tell people a little bit about what they are seeing, so interpreting the environment for the general public.

Now the force technology and environmental and Natural Resources Conservation Program do take a few more classes together in the spring. I haven't added them to this list, but they include things like Natural Resources Management, Forest, insects, and disease.

Um?

I there's probably oh and recreation, introduction to recreation, so there's a little bit more overlap between Forest Technology, an environmental Natural Resources Conservation land surveying technology, really pretty pretty independent. Lee focuses on the law that the surveying, the boundaries, topography, and so on.

Alright, so that's our spring program. Just some more pictures on the left here. We have some students in the soil and water class doing some water quality estimates out in front of the school. We have a surveyor looking through a total station which I can't tell you much more about that other than I know that's the name of it. And then there's a little bit of student logging going on on the on the right there and again, that's the fall course for the forest technician students.

I wanted to share just so you can think ahead a little bit to what might you do with these 3 degrees. And again, you're probably thinking about what which degree you want to go into and what the possible job opportunities are. So I want to talk a little bit about that. But again, I want to really emphasize that for all three of these programs, you come here, you're going to spend the fall semester all learning a lot of the same things. And once you're here, you do have the opportunity to learn a little bit more about the other programs. And if you think you'd like to switch into a different program.

We can usually make that happen.

So I want to start with forest technology, so are forced technology program. Again, this is one that's been around the longest. Our graduation rate is 98%, our employment rate going coming out of this program. I don't have calculated numbers for, but what I can tell you is that there's usually more jobs.

Being circulated to us then there are students taking them, so students that want jobs are able to get jobs.

In the last five years, we've had the bulk of the students are going into jobs that are somehow part of the forestry sector, so this might be a forest inventory job. It might be something where they're out surveying for invasive insects, or.

Plants or other invasive species. We also have a pretty significant component, about 19% going into the tree care industry, so this is going to be folks working with organizations or companies like Davey tree that are going to go around and do urban forests. Call it urban forestry? But you're going to be doing tree work, so helping people with trees in urban landscapes so yard trees park trees in that sort of thing. About 18% of the force technology students will go into something related to recreation.

And in this bit, I'm including students that might go work in trails or workers, wilderness stewards, or work as something like an assistant assistant forest Ranger would fall into that category, and then we have maybe 2% that do some surveying and then about 5% that don't go into something related to forest technology. And again, we typically have more jobs than we have students that take them, and a lot of times this is just personal choice of students who simply.

Maybe don't want to leave home or just want to, you know work with their family at their family business for another year or two before they go on.

So that's our forced technology program.

Now our environmental and Natural Resources Conservation Program. Again, our graduation rate. There is about 98%. It's about the same and what we see here is a little bit less work. We still have a significant number that work somehow in the forest industry, and again some intrigue here. But here we're starting to see a significantly more students tend more towards the recreation side of the job, and we also start to pick up some students that get work in the wildlife sector. And again, about 3%.

Do you go on and take surveying jobs in about 4% with other jobs? So again, the programs are fairly similar to each other. In some senses the force technicians tend to be more a little bit more in the forestry and tree care work and the Environmental Natural Resources. Maybe a little bit less so, but still a lot of them are out working in in the Woods and with tree care, but a little bit more of the human interaction in the recreation and wildlife components here.

Now serving.

We'll move on to that one, serving soul and serving technology. This is a little bit of a tougher program 'cause you have to do math, so there's a lot of math involved here. Our graduation rate is still good, though at 95% and far and away. Most of these students go into surveying when they leave.

Are surveying students.

It's virtually 100% employment rate upon graduation and very often they're going directly into full-time year round jobs, and so I should emphasize that the NRC in the forest technology programs. While we have lots of jobs for those students, in some cases, in many cases, probably those are seasonal jobs, which is a great opportunity to get some experience, get your foot in the door, and build towards that longer term karere, but with land surveying technology, very often you're able to walk right into a full time job.

On your way out the door, so that's I think a useful thing now.

About half of our students will go directly to the workforce once they graduate.

But about half of them will also consider continuing their education down at the main campus and again, Mr Fletcher here in a few minutes can talk a little bit about this, but going forward if you choose to continue your education, you are getting 44 credit hours at the Ranger School. You can transfer to a number of four year degree programs at ESF, both in the Sustainable Resources Management Department and in the environmental and Forest Biology Department an I think Mr Fletcher can share with us a little bit more about the.

But we call the 1 + 1 + 2 pathways, which is basically one year of freshman credits at an institution of your choice, or DSF.

Um?

Plus one year here at the Ranger School, plus two years at another institution to get that four year degree, but also pick up an AS2 year degree along the way. So that's a pretty useful thing. Some of our students will transfer to other institutions. An example there is that land serving students. If you want a four year degree in that, typically you'll go down to Alfred State College to finish that up, and some of our students go to other States and other places, so there are opportunities to transfer these credits.

And use them to build probably much stronger bachelors degree because you're going to go in there with an excellent background in hands on in the field, able to move around outdoors and get the job done. So I'm going to I'm going to wrap it up there, but one of the things that I want to emphasize is that one of the things we're very well known for at the Ranger School is building a sense of community amongst the students you built bonds here. That last a lifetime.

You make friends that you continue to be friends with for years and years, and so it's a. It's a. It's a hard experience. It's an intensive experience, but you build some amazing bonds and community moving forward.

So that's what I have to say here. I probably should be monitoring for questions, but I don't see any, so that's a good thing and.

If there are no questions at this point.

Scroll through here. I think I'm gonna go ahead and turn this over to Mr Fletcher and let him talk a little bit more about the admissions process.

Thank you doctor Johnston and congratulations on your appointment as the Ranger School director and as you know we have worked together as when you were on the faculty so this is no real change for us in admissions, but we are happy for you and we know the Ranger schools and very very solid hands. My name is Tom Fletcher, I'm the associate director of admissions city SF so.

I'm a really very strong supporter of the Ranger School. My role at ESF is I work with students who choose to enroll at the Syracuse campus and then spend their second year at the Ranger School. I also visit the Ranger School and work with students who are attending the Ranger School who did their first year somewhere else and want to join us down at ESF for a bachelors degree who are coming to USF for the very first time.

So that's a big part of what I do with certain times of the year, so you will see me around in a new normal you will see me at the school. This year will probably have to do things a little more virtually, but I was also scout leader and I used to bring my scout troop to Ranger School and we would camp and hike and canoe and kayak can enjoy the beautiful setting of the Ranger School. So I just like to tell you it almost personal and professional level.

I I'm a strong supporter of the Ranger School and believe it is a tremendous educational opportunity for the right student, so I'd like to talk a little bit more about.

Trying to advance my slides here, I don't know rocky if you have to advance my slides.

I'm having trouble advancing the slides.

Tom down at the bottom there. Did you click on control slides up at the top?

Oh I will yeah OK thank you sorry.

Uh.

Yes, and then you just have to click through on each slide to.

Right OK thanks yeah.

I had to take over control of the slides so.

So we'll move on.

This virtual learning is hard for students as well as staff, right? So so some of what I want to talk about is already been covered. So you learn that the Ranger School is part of ESF, so when there's no need to really talk much more about that, but to just to be clear, the Ranger School is a unique educational environment, and the fact that it is a two year degree, but we only deliver the second year. So it's really important to recall that the first year coursework.

Which is a combination 20 credits first year combined with 44 credits in the second year will earn the 64 credit associate in Applied Science degree. The first year can be done at the College of your choice or as part of a bachelors degree on the main on the main campus, and that's how you earn your IIS and then combine and then we give you a year of credit from the Ranger School into nine different.

Ranger School, excuse me. 9 different ESF Bachelor degree programs that will talk more about in in a few minutes. Doctor Johnston talked about the three programs, so if you do your first year coursework at another college or as part of a bachelors degree DSF these are the 1st 20 credits that are required at to get the Environmental Natural Resources Conservation Major.

So that is a course in general biology with a laboratory. A second science course in either general biology, two or general physics one or general chemistry, and all of this information is on the website.

But it is important that we cover it. 6 credits of English composition or three credits of English composition and three credits of English literature. You are also required to have one course in either economics, government or policy. You need to have a mathematics course of college level trigonometry or higher and not everyone.

Attends the Ranger School having completed all 20 credits. We do make exceptions. I think it's important to note that the admissions office in Syracuse is the admissions office for the Ranger School, so all admissions decisions and your applications are processed down in Syracuse an when you call the admissions office in Syracuse, the staff there are all well versed to answer your questions about.

The first year coursework equivalencies and how you make this all come together.

In the forest technology program, it is the same 20 credits as in the Environmental Natural Resource Conservation Program, so we don't need to report that. Repeat that. So for NRC or forest tech, the 1st 20 credits are the same general biology, 2nd science of your choice, English economics, and the math all are the same. Land surveying differs a little bit. You still have to have the general biology one with the laboratory.

But the 2nd science is physics. We do allow students to start at the Ranger School in land surveying without general physics with a lab, and that is algebra based. That's not calculus based physics like engineers take, so that's algebra level, general physics, but it is best that you take the general physics before you come because of your survey, or you're going to get a job and you want to not have that need to complete physics.

Hanging over your head when you're out making making money as a surveyor, but it's not uncommon that students start without it. OK again, the same 6 credits of English, either English comp, two semesters or English composition. An English literature. Same requirement in economics, government or policy and then math of trigonometry or higher. And again there is some flexibility to enroll to Ranger School without all 20 credits, but that needs discussion.

With the admissions office, if you do not have all 20 credits, OK, so pathways to a bachelors degree. Doctor Johnston talked about this concept that we like to refer to as a 1 + 1 + 2 program. We've discussed what that is. First year entry at the Syracuse campus at one of our bachelors degrees or another or college.

Another College of your choice. Sorry showing some Friday afternoon fatigue your software years spent at the Ranger School. Junior and senior years spent at the main campus in Syracuse.

And usually a bachelors degree can be completed in two additional years.

OK, the first year course preparation for a bachelors degree. We have 39 cooperative college partnerships. Those are available from if you go to our website esf.edu and you click on transfer students click on cooperative colleges, click on the partnership school. You can see the course equivalencies to get the 20 credits to go to the Ranger School you can see the bachelors degree requirements.

In the nine majors that I'm talking bout that fit the 1 + 1 + 2 pathways and then you can pick from the list of required courses to complete additional coursework. Obviously 20 credits is not two full time semesters, so students often want to know what else can I take to fill out my schedule so that was less those course equivalency charts are available on the ESF website.

I mentioned that there are nine 1 + 1 + 2 programs, so these are the bachelors degree programs that you can start in at the Syracuse campus. Come to the Ranger School for the second year and then complete a bachelors degree back on main campus in two additional years. Those programs are Aquatics and Fishery Science, Conservation Biology, Environmental Biology, Environmental Science, Forest Ecosystem Science.

Forest Health Forest Resources Management Natural Resources Management and Wildlife Science so I see Martin has a question asking for clarification.

About English, says he was told this week that English literature was required, not just English composition. The answer to that Martin is if you only worried about completing the 20 credits to go to the Ranger School, you can do that by completing 2 English composition courses. If you're thinking about going to main campus to get a bachelors degree, you're better off taking one English.

Position in one English literature because that is required in the bachelors degree program, so I hope that's I hope that's clear.

So admissions options not going to spend a lot of time on this on the website esf.edu how to apply. There's a chart that talks about the dates for applying for admission, so the options are these. If you think you have the all 20 requirements to go to the Ranger School out of high school and there are usually a couple students that do that, order more in a given year.

You have to apply for first year admission at the main campus because we have to accept you and verify that you have all 20 credits before you can be switched over to a first year student at the Ranger School. Alot of students think they have the credits and then they end up not having the requirements to go right out of high school. So we require students who think they're going to go right out of high school to apply for either early decision. The regular freshman entry.

Um?

And then the rest of the students apply as transfer students. OK, so if you're interested in going to Ranger School right out of high school, it's best that you call the office and talk to one of us directly, and then we can figure out whether or not we think you have the requirements. The rest of you will be a try. Will be applying as transfer students.

OK, what we look for? If you're applying as a transfer student from A the College of your choice, we're looking for 2.5 or higher grade point average to be considered. We want you to complete the required 20 credits or certainly most of the required first year coursework in order to be considered. If you are coming directly from high school, we are looking for students who have a college prep background who have completed three years of college level math and science.

And this year we're giving students the option of being test optional so you don't have to have SAT or AC T scores. So I would say a high school average of about an 85 or higher, three years of college prep, math, science, and again, essay Tees are optional this year. If you select that you want to go test optional.

So I'm rushing through this because we got a late start, so I know there will be questions because every transfer student or student trying to enter the range of school is unique. So it's important that we have an individual conversation with you at some point and you can do that by emailing the office at esf.info@esf.edu, setting up either telephone, call, a zoom chat or we are open now for face to face appointments.

On a limited basis, one in the morning 1:00 in the afternoon or and of course we're answering the telephones. Now we have returned to the office so people are answering our main line 315-470-6600. OK, because this does get complicated, so we have people that can answer your questions, like Nina's question like what is the math level at my particular school? Anne, how do I know that I've reached the algebra and trig requirement?

It those those course numbers, of course, vary at the schools that you're attending, so it's best there are resources on the web on our website to answer these questions for yourself, but it's best that you call or email. We have people that can help you, or you have people on call every day to answer your questions, because this does get complicated because of the nature of the 1 + 1 program. To get the Ranger School, Ranger School is a special place. Special people special location.

It is an unmatched educational experience. Would tremendous outcomes, whether that's a job or going on to a four year schools other than ESF or coming down to the Syracuse campus to complete your degree. My goal is to assist you with making this translator transition seamless. Whether you start with us in Syracuse, then go to the Ranger School and back, or whether you choose to start at another College of your choice and then do the Ranger School and then to main campus, you know.

That's a big part of what I do, and I'm committed to working with you to make this as Seamless in a transition as possible, and we've done it in my 22 years at ESF. We've done it for hundreds of students and they have an amazing experience at the Ranger School combined with a bachelors degree at ESF launches them to a long, successful careers in their field of study. So it's my pleasure.

To have an opportunity to chat with you and I'll look forward to working with you as we move forward throughout the second emick here.

Great, thank you so much Tom.

Next up on our slate we have Mr. Mark Hill from the financial aid office and Mark.

Yeah, so I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to you and you have your broadcast on.

Have control of the slides and you're good to go.

OK, sounds good. Can someone just give me a quick thumbs up that you can hear me? I had some trouble with audio in a past presentation. I want to make sure we're we're OK. Can everyone hear me alright?

I can hear you just great.

Wonderful thank you so very much. OK, well, welcome everyone. And thanks for coming out tonight. I always like to start nowadays by letting everyone know how much I wish I could be doing this in person. You know it's it's tough because that's part of the job I really enjoy and I love to see people face to face and I think that questions and conversation can happen much more easilly in that environment. So we'll do our best tonight to try to get you some information remotely an like the others. I would encourage you to reach out with any questions that you might have.

I'll provide plenty of contact information and hopefully this will be a little helpful for you. I know that a lot of you may have already gone through financial aid before, or maybe already through part of the process, so it's a little bit difficult to say exactly what information will be most helpful. So what I try to do for this session, given the limited amount of time, is just to give you some general info about financial aid procedures you'll need to go through what kind of financial aid is available, how to get more information, and so forth.

So again, because it's limited amount of time, I think I'll jump right in and feel free to add questions as you want through the chat and I'll try to keep an eye on those and then I can also address some at the end as I read those. If you'd like me to, and then again I'll provide some contact information so you can see here. The four areas I want to try to cover and I'll jump right into this. I always like to start with just kind of a general discussion of what really is financial aid, and I'd like to do that because sometimes there can be misconceptions about what is available. So when I'm talking to.

A family or students. When I say financial aid, usually the families are thinking of what's known as Gift Aid, which is going to be your scholarships or your grants and these can vary quite a bit, but generally speaking, all of this Gift Aid is basically meaning aid that you do not have to repay. We're going to be giving that to you, or some source is going to be given that to you for scholarships. Typically those are going to be tide to some kind of academic or other merit criteria, and you can see there are a number of different sources of these.

And they will oftentimes have some kind of a renewal requirement. That's also tide to academics, so your GPA or how many credits you complete and so forth. And then there are also the grants that may be based on academic qualifications, but more often are going to be based on other factors very often on financial need, extracurricular activities, interests, and those sorts of things. Similar sorts of sources for those, and they're not as likely to have any kind of grade requirements, but in some cases they do. For example at ESF.

We do have a requirement for most of our grants of a 2.5 cumulative grade point average, whereas if we're giving a scholarship which is based on merit, typically those have a 3.0 GPA requirement, so you always want to make sure you're aware of what kind of requirements you might have to not only get a scholarship or grant, but also what you might need to keep those. When I talk to, or when you talk to the families you want to be, or when you talk to the next colleges. I'm sorry you also want to be aware of this other type of financial aid, which we call self help financial aid.

So in our world we don't limit it just to that Gift Aid. But we're also thinking about these things like student loans, parent loans, and work study programs. So many of you have probably looked into these already, but just a few notes about them. When you hear about federal student loans, you might hear a lot of different names, so you can see Stafford here. These are also known as William D. Ford direct student loans, or just generally federal loans. So as you see these terms, be aware that typically that's going to mean the same thing, and most commonly William D. Ford direct loans is what you might hear, and that direct term.

Is really important because you're going to work with the schools to be able to obtain those loans. If you want them, you do not have to go out and find a lender or select the bank that you want to work with through the federal government. There are also loans for lucky parents if they would like to be borrowers on behalf of the students. And just like the Student Loans, those would go through the college as well and then a lot of families will also consider what are known as private student loans or also known as alternative student loans, and these are done privately and in these situations you would have to go out and seek.

A lender that you want to work with and there are a lot of these out there. A lot of Banks a lot of products, so it's very important that you shop around a bit when you start to look at this option. If you choose to do so, you can start on our website. You can look at lender websites directly, but I would just encourage folks to shop around. Be very careful about fine print if you decide to go this route, and please know with all of these that there is no requirement that you ever do alone and there's never a requirement that you work with any lender that we might recommend or have on our website.

You have all the options that you might have all kinds of flexibility with what you might like to do. So in addition to loans another type of self help aid is work study, which is basically a program where a student would be awarded a grant amount through this program. So for example, say $2000 and that grant amount is not ever going to be on a bill for a student like other grants. Instead, that amount of money is set aside and is available to help pay a student's wages if they get a job through the work study program.

So if you see this in an aid package, know that it's not going to be a credit, but it's basically a job like any other. You could do a work study job. You could do any other type of off campus or on campus employment, and for any of those you're going to get a paycheck based on the hours that you work, and you're going to be able to use that money for whatever expenses you choose. So just be cautious with work study with regards to expectations because it's not going to lower what you owe to the school.

So what are we going to do in the financial aid process? First step, we're going to take is to create something known as your cost of attendance, and this is basically a budget of what we think the costs are going to be for one year, and this can include what are known as direct costs, which are more likely, the things you're going to see on a bill, but also indirect costs which are true expenses that you might have, but that the school is not necessarily going to bill you for. So in most cases, if you're living on campus, you're going to see those first 2 bulleted items.

As direct costs so your tuition, fees, room and board, the school may be billing you for the other. Items are more commonly known as the indirect expenses, so we can include them in our cost budget, but you're not likely to be billed by the school for those. You'll also see that little special budget items portion at the bottom there. This is a nice theme in financial aid and that is basically that if you have anything unique that's going on that you don't think has been considered, you can reach out to the school and we can certainly provide some additional guidance and sometimes help out with those expenses or circumstances.

So examples here in this area would be if you have expenses that are required for your educational program or that are essential for your living expenses. But we did not include them in your cost of attendance, budget, or say we put a number in, but it isn't very accurate for your circumstances. You can reach out to the school and provide us documentation and we can adjust that to more accurately reflect what your actual costs are. So knowing what we're doing there, here is what I sometimes think of as my sticker shock slide.

Not as much with this presentation. If you start looking at some private school costs, you can see numbers up in the high 70s. In some cases nowadays, but the point here is to give you an idea of the types of overall cost of attendance numbers that you'll see for both the main campus here in Syracuse and the Ranger School campus so you can see what those are. I won't go through reading them all. You can review them. These are also available on our website, but I do like to point out a few things with this. Just to kind of highlight them for you first and foremost.

Is while you compare schools as you shop around as you're looking at the various aid offers and costs, make sure that you do a comparison of the cost of attendance at each of these schools instead of just looking at individual cost items. So by that I mean don't get caught looking just at tuition at a school, so if you look at these columns here, you'll see tuition especially in that instate column can look pretty reasonable at 7270, but if you forget about the room and board cost, that's going to be a majority of what the overall budget is.

So make sure you plan your expenses and what kind of resources you might need to come up with that you're looking at that total amount at the bottom based on your situation.

You'll also notice I have notes about the overall commuter budget amounts there. We don't get very many commuters at the Ranger School campus just because of the nature of the area, but if students do elect and can commute, that refers to a student who is living with parents, not just living off campus. So in that situation the cost of attendance is typically lower because there are assumptions made about what expenses might already be covered by the parents that the student is living with, but that'll give you an idea of the kind of ranges that we're looking at for costs here.

So now onto our aid philosophy, and this is the philosophy with ESF, but I think you'll find this is a pretty common philosophy across a lot of the providers of financial aid. So definitely the federal and state government areas about a lot of private providers as well. And this is basically just saying that the family, meaning the student and the parents have responsibility to help pay for college. Now, that doesn't mean that there's some kind of rule or law that says a parent has to provide money, but what it means is that.

When eight eligibility is determined, the resources available to both the student and the parents will be considered in all those different calculations. So you want to go and understanding that philosophy. Another really big important part of the process is what's known as the financial need formula, which a lot of these aid programs are going to be based on. It's really straightforward, pretty simple. Actually, we're going to take the cost of attendance at our school, which what you want to keep in mind there is. That can vary by school.

So as you look at the ESF cost of attendance, don't forget that if you're looking at a private school or a different school that will vary based on whatever costs they have zero for the SF process, we're going to take our cost of attendance for each student, and we're going to subtract the expected family contribution or the FC, which is a formula put out by the federal government, which basically takes all the information from your aid application and comes out with by definition what the government says is a reasonable amount.

That the family should be able to contribute from all of their resources towards the costs. And I'll warn you that the government's perspective on what's reasonable is probably not going to match up with what the family's expectation of what's reasonable is. So don't be surprised if that number can be more than you might think it should be. That's just a result of the formula. Also important to know that the FC is not meant to tell you what you have to pay. A lot of families kind of get hung up with the FC worrying about it, thinking that they have to write a check or make a payment for that amount.

But most of the time it really just is a distraction. It's more or less an index that we're going to use to determine 8 eligibility, so it can be important to know what it is, but don't get hung up on it. Once you know you can kind of set it aside and instead wait for the actual financial aid info that the schools are going to provide, because I think that's going to be a lot more informative for you. So once we have a financial need level calculated, that's going to tell us what types of financial aid we can give and how much of each type we can offer to you.

So what is our role in the financial aid office? How are we supposed to get this to how we supposed to help you out? So first and foremost, our job is to determine your eligibility for all those different sources of eight, and we're going to then look at all the different programs and we're going to hopefully put together what I like to think is a clear financial aid package and that financial aid package is supposed to provide you with all of the important pieces of the formula and show you what kind of eligibility you hopefully can expect.

As the for the yearly expenses, so we're going to give you an estimated cost of attendance. I'd like to stress the estimated part there because in many cases we don't know exactly what your costs are going to be when we create those numbers, and in some cases we'll never know what they are. For example, a student living off campus. We don't collect information about what your rent is. We're going to use an estimate for that, so it's not telling you what your bill is going to be. It's really just meant to give you that overall estimated full amount that you might have to come up with for a year.

But it's not meant to be exact. We're also going to list out what that expected family contribution number is. You should likely already know that from when you raid application is processed, we're going to show you the financial need, which is the result of that formula, and then the important part is we're going to list out each of the different aid amounts and sources that you can receive, and all the details that go along with them. So don't worry if you can't see this. I don't intend for you to see all that text that's on there when I'm hoping to just show you. Here is the format.

Of what you might want to look for as you're getting financial aid award notification letters. So not all schools will use this template as their main award letter, but at some level either on their website or available by Mail or by request, you should be able to find something that looks similar to this, and this may be called the Sooney Smarttrack Award letter. It might be called the New York state financial aid award letter. The federal shopping sheet or the college financing plan. So as you can tell.

There's a lot of different names that this might go by, but the idea here is to provide a consistent format so that it makes it easier for the family to collect information and also to compare the info from schools to school. And I put that red box there just because I'm going to go through a few of the components here, and I want you to remember kind of where that is in the package so that you'll know where to look when the time comes. So as I was saying what our role is in the financial aid office, this letter is supposed to provide all these components for you. So the first section is going to show you.

The estimated cost of attendance and will list out the amounts for you at ESF or whatever school you're looking at will list those out for you. Then we're going to list out all the even individual Gift Aid sources that you hopefully will be eligible for. Some of these may be estimated, so keep that in mind, but it will list these out and then total them up for you. And this next part is what I think is the most important and what we're going to do here is subtract the total amount of grants and scholarships from the overall cost of attendance.

And that's going to be in that red box, which is usually known as the net costs or the net bottom line or something similar. This is the closest we're probably going to get to that magic question of what is college going to cost me out of pocket? So as you're looking at schools, try to find this document and I always suggest to folks just printing them out, setting them on a table side by side and finding that net cost item on each of those. And that's going to be the best way for you to compare.

And see what you might need to come up with Out of pocket, or with loans, or with whatever options you choose to be able to pay the gap. After that, free money is taken into account, so this is a really important part of this process, and then next then the award letter is where we're going to show the self help forms of aid. So the work study eligibility, the loan programs and so forth. And then there will be some additional pages that have definitions and terms and conditions and so forth. So watch for this. Try to get this when it's available. It's also important to note that the time frame can really vary from school to school.

So you may look at one school and apply for aid and get an award letter from them within a few weeks. Others may wait a couple months before they start to send this information out, so don't be worried or surprised if you don't see all of your aid packages from all the schools you're looking at right away. Also, though it doesn't hurt to reach out to the schools if you're not receiving anything just to make sure that you have everything in place.

So now that you know what you can expect to come, let's talk about how you actually apply for all the different sources of financial aid, so this can vary from school to school as well, but for ESF, there are basically three categories that you want to look at, the first being the SF admissions application, not a financial aid application, but we use all the data you provide on your admissions application for any of the merit scholarships that we offer. So we're going to look at things like GPA. We used to look at Test scores, although it's not likely we're going to be doing that for this year with the test optional MoD.

Well, but we're going to look at admissions application information when we determine eligibility for any scholarships that we give, regardless of what your financial need. Maybe next you want to be thinking about the federal application for aid, which is known as the FAFSA. I'm guessing most folks have heard of that before. If not, that's the free application for federal student aid. It's important to remember that it's free, so you never want to pay anyone to help you do this. This is going to be used to determine eligibility for all the different federal programs.

Which could be federal grants and scholarships. the Student Loans and the work study and even parent loans. But we're also going to use this to determine eligibility for our institutional need based grants. So a lot of folks will ask us, do I need to do the FAFSA if I don't think I'm going to qualify for aid and the general guidance is yes, it's always a good idea because you never know what kind of doors it might open for eligibility. And if you don't fill it out, you're never going to be considered for some of those sources of aid. And then Lastly, you want to think about your New York State.

Aid applications, which would cover primarily the tuition assistance program from New York State, but also other state programs, such as the Excelsior Scholarship. The stem grant incentive program, and a number of other smaller ones. So four ESF. These three are important. Most schools will require these or want you to do these as well, but if you're looking at other schools, make sure you know if they require any other types of applications, most notably the private schools oftentimes will request something known as the CSS profile.

So be sure you know what might be required of you. So the fastest the main federal aid application there is a paper version of this available, but I'd highly recommend not using that simply because just to get it, you have to go out to the website anyway and a lot of the steps you're going to be taking later on or going to be done online anyway, so you might as well start it that way. The goal of the FAFSA is simply to collect all of the income, asset and household information that's used to, then calculate that expected family contribution that goes into our need formula.

So that's going to be a nice long four page formula the government uses, which is why it's asking for so much information.

You do need to do this application each year to be considered for aid, and it becomes available each year on October 1, and general guidance is to do it as quickly as you can after that point. Now that doesn't necessarily mean rush home, and do that if you haven't yet, but typically by October and November you want to make sure you have this in also another time when it doesn't hurt to reach out to the schools to see if they have any kind of priority deadline to make sure you meet that the FAFSA and most aid applications are going to use.

Tax data from a couple years ago. So in this scenario, most of you are looking for the 2021 to 22 school year, which means it's using 2019 tax data and then for the year after that 2223 it's going to look at 2020 tax data, so keep that in mind. Make sure you fill out the applications that you're using the right information.

Some of you may have done the FAFSA already. I'm hoping that as you did it, you realized it's really not as bad as rumors might indicate it. Folks haven't done a FAFSA before. Please don't be scared away by any kind of stories you might have heard, or if you've talked to family or friends who said it was difficult. Average completion time of the FAFSA is just 20 minutes, and for a large majority of people, it's pretty straightforward. If however, you get into other applications again, notably that CSS profile form, that can be much more involved.

And a little tricky to do so please go into this with an open mind and don't expect the Pfaff set to be terribly hard. Just make sure you read carefully and follow the instructions, and that will make it much easier as you go through it in order to fill out the FAFSA, you're going to need a username and password that will allow you to both sign in to start the application and to provide electronic signatures so it does say here you need two FSA ID's. For most families. This is because the student who is the person applying for.

Financial aid will need an FSA ID to sign in, but also sense apparent will have to provide information in most cases that parent is going to need an FSA ID as well to provide their electronic signature. So if you don't have these you can request them anytime. Think of this as your unique electronic identity, so if you have one, you can use it for all things federal aid. So if you're a parent and you want to use your FSA ID to sign your child faster, you can do that.

You can also use that same SSID if you are a parent you want to go to college and apply for aid yourself. So just make sure you keep these very safe as well. This is your personal data and if anyone gets their hands on this, they're going to have all kinds of information like your Social Security number, date of birth, and all of that, so please be cautious with that. Another nice thing with the federal aid processes that you can use, a tool known as the IRS data retrieval tool. So this is one of the things that makes the FAFSA really straightforward and in many ways.

Easy, this is an optional tool and you have to opt in to use it, but if you do so you can basically link your fasa to your tax data in the IRS database and it will automatically move that data into the FAFSA for you. And when you've done that, you've finished about 90% of the FAFSA at that point, so if able to use this, it's highly recommended that you do so. It's going to make the whole process a lot easier for you.

So into the New York state aid packages are aid applications. Tuition assistance program is the main state program and this is 1 you're going to want to fill out, but it is a separate application, but you can complete it along with your FAFSA. So when you get to the FAFSA confirmation page that says thanks for submitting your FAFSA, they will provide a link that will take you right to that application and it will automatically load the data from your fasa into that application and make that.

It's much easier as well, so pretty much the same time frame for applying. You do have to have what's known as a pin number to access your account here, it's just a four digit number like any other pin number. You might know Ann again using the same year from tax information, but for the state application it's going to look at your state taxes rather than your federal taxes, and then you'll see that note about the awards being estimated as financial aid packages are created. It's not uncommon for those awards to not be determined yet by the state.

So we will estimate what we think you're going to receive, and then that'll be updated to accurate and actual information later on.

The Excelsior scholarship lot of folks were interested in this one. They're looking at as soon as school. We had a few hurdles along the way to have programs at the range of school for students to be eligible, but we did get approval from the state on all of those, and for the most part, now all students who are in the program already, or who would like to apply can actually participate in the Excelsior program, not only at the Ranger School but at the main campus in Syracuse as well. So just briefly, because not everyone will apply for this, but some of the rules on this one.

I have to be in New York State resident and you have to be going to a Sony School. This award covers up to a certain set tuition amount. Right now that is 6470, but that's going to be reduced by other grants and scholarships that the student receives in most cases. So if you get a lot of say, Pell Grant from the federal government or tap grant from the state, you may not qualify for as much or even any in this Excelsior program. This one does have its own separate application outside of the FAFSA and that application.

And this does have the income level that you can see there. Just note that is total family adjusted gross income, so they're going to take the parents and the students adjusted gross income and add those together to make sure the student qualifies. So don't get misled by that one. This also has credit requirements, which is true of many of the state programs. So to qualify for most of these, you have to be taking at least 12 degree applicable credits each term, which is typically no problem at the Ranger School given the.

Rigorous coursework that they have for you and then also students have to complete at least 30 degree applicable credits each year. Again, not a challenge at the Ranger School because students typically will end up with 44 at the end of the year there. If a student is short of the 30 credit requirement though, they can use both summer and winter term credits if they're available to add to that 30 credit number. And then again if students have what are known as banked credits or pre matriculation credits, those would be credits that students have earned through courses in high school.

Or other areas prior to going to college that meet degree requirements. They can be stored up and used to be added in to help a student meet that 30 credit requirement. One important note here, however, for transfer students which is student coming into the Ranger School would be.

Those students have to have at least 30 credits from each year of college that are accepted at the new institution. Now, that's the general rule. Luckily for us, new students coming in at the Ranger School will only be allowed to bring in 20 credits, but we have a special allowance from the state that makes that eligible. So as long as you have your 20 credits from your previous schooling that are going towards your Ranger School program, you'll be OK and stay eligible.

With this program and some other state programs, there's a contract. The student has to sign, and in this case it basically says the student has to live in New York for a number of years equal to the number of years the grant was received, and if working during that time that employment has to be in New York State as well. And if the student doesn't meet those requirements than the money that has been received turns into a loan that would have to be repaid. But to your benefit there's no interest on that loan at any point.

So I've gone really quick through all of this. A few kind of final notes as you're going through the financial aid process that I think can be very helpful. First things is create a budget for yourself, so don't rely on our budget necessarily as your exact amount of costs. Feel free to look at your own situation and decide what kind of expenses you want to consider and come up with a number that you think is realistic that you want to plan for.

And that will show you what kind of resources you need to come up with. Once you have that, make sure that you're looking all of the available resources and making sure that those equal up to whatever that budget is. So look at the financial aid being offered from the school. Look at what you might have available from your own bank accounts or whatever you've saved up and try to determine if you're going to have enough from all of those sources to equal that cost of attendance that you're looking at. And if you can do that, that potentially makes the school affordable and something you can do.

Make sure as well you're looking at that bottom line cost, so if you think back to that award letter with the red box. If you're looking at in particular, public versus private schools, the cost of attendance numbers can be very different and can be very scary, but it's very likely that once all of the aid is considered, the net cost at each of those schools could be a lot more.

Comprable, so make sure you're looking at that net cost rather than just the starting price tag. Also, be careful that you don't look at total amounts of scholarships or grants that are offered because again, those more expensive schools are probably going to offer more of their own institutional money an if you're not looking at that bottom line cost, it's going to mislead you. Make sure you have a good ratio of the free money and the self help aid. Make sure you know what you're seeing in there is in what category, so make sure you know if you see a number that you know. If it's cell pal.

Self help versus some kind of Gift Aid because you don't want to get misled with high numbers that you think are grants or scholarships. One really, it's some kind of loan. If you do have work, study as part of your aid package and make sure that the amount is reasonable because you're going to have to work to earn that money. And if you can't work enough to earn it, you're not going to get it. You're going to have a gap. You're going to have to fill. Make sure you know what the criteria is for all the grants and scholarships that you have, and then make sure that as much as possible you're seeking out any kind of outside sources of funding.

That might be available to you.

So I think that was my last one there. If I haven't bored you too much here. I also have a presentation that I do for high schools in our area that's available on our website that you can watch, which goes into a lot more detail about financial aid, and you're welcome to take advantage of that if you'd like to. It's listed right there. I will warn you up front though, that one goes about an hour and a half, so you might want to watch it in segments if you plan on watching it, or at least leave yourself enough time so that you're not sound asleep by the end of it.

So with that I'm not sure if there are other questions out here. I saw a few kind of popping up and I'll take a look here. One I see about out of student out of state students taking advantage of tap. Unfortunately, out of state students do not qualify for any of the state programs. You have to be a state resident and you have to be going to one of the New York state schools to be able to qualify for that. Another question about using different income information on the FAFSA. Unfortunately, no, you cannot change.

The tax year that's used when you're filling out the applications. That is something that's required. You have to use the exact specified tax year when you're filling it out. However, if you have a situation where your current income is significantly different from what you're reporting with the taxes, what you can do is fill out the application as instructed, but then reach out to the schools that you're considering to request some kind of a special circumstance review. So what we can do then is we can work with you directly to collect documentation.

And as long as we have enough info and we can support whatever changes we can actually go into the FAFSA application for you and change that to look more accurate. So please don't do that on your own on the FAFSA. Make sure you fill it out appropriately, but work with us and then let us make those changes for you.

OK, so one question about transfer students. So by transfer students, what I mean is someone who has been in college either addie S after the main campus or another institution already so high school student coming in would typically be considered a new first year student. Even if you have earned some credits from your time in high school, you're still considered a new first year student, but students coming into the Ranger School are typically going to be transfers because they have gone somewhere else for year one and transfer credits will be evaluated as they come in.

So I think that covers all the questions that I'm seeing here. I'm going to post my phone number and our email address for financial aid into the chat box so that that will be available to you later on. Again, if you have any questions, I'll stick around and answer in the chat. If you have those. But overall, like to thank you all again for being with us tonight and I'll be available if you do have anything and wish you all the best of luck as you work on your college searches.

Thank you.

Oh, good evening, how you doing? Hopefully everyone can hear me. I am Tim Merriam, the resident Hall director of the Ranger School, and I appreciate you.

Taking a time on your Friday evening to check us out.

I have been here 10 years. I've started in 2010 and once again I am the resident Hall director, which means I live right in this building right? And at the Rangers school and what you're looking at right now is a couple of our students that are on top of Hurricane Mountain that's from last year's class. So I'm briefly going to go over where we're located. I'm going to get into the dorm into the main building, and then I'm going to go into the student life student activities.

If you have any questions, feel free to write him down in chat and hopefully I respond so.

Here is for slide. This is the order under Park. If you don't know anything about the header on Park, I assume most of you do. It is 1/5 the size of New York State.

It is roughly the size of the state of Vermont.

And if you can, our logo is roughly where we are. It's of course not the scale we are in the northwestern portion of the atar on deck park.

And this shows a little more accurately where we are now entering the park. If you can see it, we are that star on the end of Cranberry Lake. We are on the Ostrogoths River, which goes into the Dead Creek flow, which goes into cranberry Lake. Big part of being in the Ranger School is being in the blue line. The blue line is the Atar on deck park which was established in 1892 and once again and around Park is enormous. It is 3 times the size of Yellowstone.

So being a little closer.

Where that Red Arrow is, that is the Ranger School and this is a map of cranberry Lake.

You see that little yellow line around Cranberry Lake? It's the cranberry 50. It's a hiking challenge.

You notice that ironic have a lot of hiking challenges. You have the 46, you have Tupper Lake Triad.

For this area are hiking challenges to Cranberry Lake 50 and I think it was a few weekends ago. We had a couple group of students that did it in two days and one group of students that did it in 17 hours so you don't have to do in 17 hours. That's a bit extreme, but every now and again we do have students to go on and accept the challenge and there are plenty of places to camp around the Lake. You'll notice if you can see it, there's lean 2 icons scattered throughout the cranberry 50 where you can camp for the night.

This is a great representation of where we're located.

Cranberry Lake is one of the bigger lakes in the outer endex, and it provides all sorts of recreation. If you can tell.

There's all sorts of look. They look like little triangles. Those are primitive campsites, so the students when the weather is nice, can take one of our Canoes and kayaks provided they pass or swim test.

And go camping for the evening, typically on a weekend. Joe Indian Island is that island in the middle of Cranberry Lake.

It has campsites all the way around, and it's a great place to spend a Saturday afternoon evening.

Now we're going to get a little closer and this.

Is the dubar forest. This is the twenty 2800 acres that comprise our campus and the forest. This is your classroom.

Little friend over there is a bear resident of the dubar forest that was caught on a trail Cam.

That was put out there for, I believe the wildlife techniques class. We provided the hard hat, but this is one of our friends out in the forest.

The most dangerous thing in this forest is not that bear. It's not the Fisher. It's not the Coyotes.

It's not the Martins, it is the black flies and the deer flies. But what's nice about starting in August and ending in May as you are on the tail end?

Of the when those little demons come out, so you won't really have to worry about it unless you're here in like June and July and early part of August. Like I said, the deer flies and the black flies are the most dangerous thing in our forest.

What's nice is that yeah, you won't really have to do him too much.

The high point of our forest is our fire tower. We have a fire tower and Cathedral Rock.

And this is part of the fire tower challenge throughout the Atar on deck. So hikers do come here.

To hike up to the Rock and then go to the fire tower and you will be there often.

Moving on.

So this is the Ranger School campus map. This gives you a good idea of the campus proper and how it fits into the forest. Of course, the big rectangle weird rectangle is the main building, and if you notice there's a number of faculty houses throughout campus right now, I believe we have four faculty members.

That live right on campus and three staff members so the campus community is broader, bigger than just students on campus. You have faculty members, families, cats, dogs.

And lowly resident Hall directors will live right with the students right on campus with the students for your nine months.

Next, slide so this is the main building. Doctor Johnson showed you a picture of the main building before.

This is your dormitory. This is your classroom. This is your cafeteria. This is your student lounge. This is your fitness room. It is all comprised within this building.

You will never have a snow day.

Because everything is right here. If the power goes out, we have an enormous generator in the center of this building that will run the entire building so they will never have a snow day at the Rangers school.

Our neighbor right in front of school is that also Gachi River.

And this provides you know all sorts of outdoor entertainment in terms of canoeing, kayaking, and skating. One of the first things you'll do when you get here during orientation is jumping this River that is our swim dock.

And I think it's the second or third day we will.

Hey just one test and you swing from this doc to New York. Talk back to this doc and the swim test provides you the ability to take out a canoe or kayak.

On your own, provided you have the Costa PFD on there are.

Miles and miles of Cranberry Lake to explore, so do take advantage.

If you become a student, here are confusing tags. We have quite a number of you're free to bring your own. You can bring a mountain bike as well, nothing with a motor on it. So canoes, kayaks, mountain bikes perfectly fine. Anything that is not self powered that Sonoco.

So moving along.

A hallway. I know it's boring, but we're going to go from East to West down this hallway and the door on the left that is the Student Lounge. The store on the right is the student kitchen, an 3 Doors Down on the right path. That Billboard is the laundry room.

And we will go to the store lounge.

This is one of the two rooms that has a television in it. That fireplace does work. It is the product of your labor, so you're going to go out in certain classes. Timber harvests. Timber harvesting is an example where you will cut down trees.

And some of those trees will become fuel for that fireplace. All of these rooms are open for the students 24 hours a day. It's a great place to study, relax, watch a football game Sunday afternoon evening. Like I said and there's a pool table. See the right hand corner.

And like I said, This is available to students 24 hours a day.

Here's the student kitchen right across the hallway from the Student Lounge.

And this is open all the time as well. So you know after dinner if you're hungry or before breakfast, feel free to come down. That fridge is for everyone. We do recommend that you get a little micro fridge for your room because someone steals your milk is not my problem so.

Get a little microfridge, but that fridge is there just in case you need a little extra room. Very important room next.

Not terribly exciting, but the laundry room.

So if three washers, three dryers, they are free of charge.

So the biggest obstacle will be trying to figure out when the window is that you can go and do your laundry as you're competing with 5060 other students. If you notice on the left hand wall, there is a dry erase board. Write your name in there and hopefully remember that your wash is in the washing machine and you can put it in the dryer before there's a backlog.

OK will be down the hallway.

The fitness center. This is in the center of the building and once again this is open at all hours of the day. Feel free to use it.

Anytime, day or night, provided that you're not in class, my preferred torture device is the elliptical. It's right at the bottom of your screen, but there is. We have free weights. There is a squat rack. There's a nautical machine, an.

Two treadmills and you can hardly see it, but there's a bike on your far right corner.

Moving down the hallway.

The cafeteria now breakfast is at 7:15 every morning. Lunch is at noon. Dinner at 5:30.

For the weekends or if you have a day off, you're going to have brunch, which a hot brunch begins at 11:15 and dinner at 5:30. Any dietary restrictions or if you're vegan, vegetarian, whatever, it may be, just let us know ahead of time and they are more than accommodating.

OK, moving up to the second floor.

So going to the main classroom.

This is the main classroom.

A lot of just really nice picture of great space. A lot of your lecture, especially in the first semester, be right in the main classroom.

Right next to main classroom down the hallway. Now we're going West to East is the men's doubles. So this.

Representation of the room, 2 beds, couple dressers, two desks.

And the majority of our students are going to have a double. So if you look at the cost, this is what the cost is for the room. It's based on immense double for immense single. Be a little more.

Going down the hallway, run into the dry lab. Just a typical science classroom. If you're doing a leap collection, you're doing something to get hands a little dirty. You're doing your wood project. This is a great room. The study to work on something and like I said, all of these rooms are open 24 hours a day, so if you have to study at 2 in the morning, this will be available.

Across the Hall from the dry lab.

Is where our professors offices are and this is assistant Professor Guild. In there he is our new professor and all of our professors will be on duty from roughly Monday through Friday or excuse me right back up there will be a professor on duty Monday through Thursday, typically 6:00 to 9:00 or 6:30 to 9:00. So if you have any questions, any academic questions or questions about life, feel free. There will be someone there, a professor there to help you.

This is a valid invaluable resource, especially if you're running a little bit behind on your measurements class. Mr. Gildner will take the time to sit down and discuss things. If you had a problem with surveying, Mr Thompson will be there.

I believe he's on Thursday nights.

So a professor is available to you Monday through Thursday after dinner. That's invaluable.

So moving on.

Library great place to study.

Not necessarily quiet spot, but we have a lot of group work and this is a great place to do the group work. It has a great view of the House of God. You can't see it here.

But it's just a great study space. Like I said, if you want a quiet space, maybe not the best spot.

But has wonderful computer lab.

This is right across from the library. You're going to do projects in GIS and CAD and you're going to spend some time in the computer lab. You can see there's a bunch of computers that are housed in those desks. I believe there's 24 computers in there.

We know.

Men single is on the eastern 2nd floor and we have 9 rooms in nine men single rooms. These rooms go quickly so if you do decide to come to the Ranger School and you want to men single you have to when you get.

The information get a little packet, it'll email and ask for room preferences. You have to submit that that day or you will not get a Med center.

OK, now we're going downstairs.

Women's doubles

this traditional women tell room. This is the only room that has a bunk bed. Most rooms do not have a bunk bed. Of course you have two desk, couple dressers and you'll have this cabinet.

These rooms tend to be slightly bigger than the men's doubles.

Student activities, so being in the Outer Endex, it provides us with opportunity to go out to the high peaks or other hikes and we do of course have the Obligation River. The top left hand picture is some students and join a canoe trip and also got your River. The picture in the middle is actually our woodsman's team in Dartmouth. That was the final woodsmen's meet for that year.

Then there is.

The tab 1 where you see the student kind of peeking out through those trees, that is, Bear Mountain, Cranberry Lake. There's a guy fishing. There's our hockey club and at the bottom picture is one of our more recent hikes to Newmark Mountain is, as you can tell, everyone is wearing a mask.

So.

Moving on Hockey Club, this is one of our more popular clubs that we have and basically we're enticed in the spring store in the fall and spring semester Saturday evenings in the fall semester and Tuesdays and Saturdays in the spring semesters. So at the end of the spring semester we have an alumni hockey game where our students will play the Ranger School Alumni and this is the picture after that game was completed.

We just play each other for the majority of games. The only game we play anyone else will be alumni hockey game. So it's really kind of a pickup hockey game. It's a lot of fun. You don't have to be able to escape, so there's no prereqs. We do have all the equipment here, will throw some skates on you, put a helmet on ya and will push out on the ice for the rest of us that can skate a little bit. It makes me feel really good about my skills, so thank you for that.

In the middle picture here.

I know someone mentioned being anisio or Forest Ranger. There are two students here that are eceo once in ECL and once a forest Ranger and there's two people here that actually work at the Rangers school.

So the far left, the guy with the Green Ranger School hoodie is perceptive professor Vavricek on the far right. The guy with the white Jersey is yours truly? Miss Romera.

The gentleman with the New York Rangers Jersey. He is the forest Ranger in Old Forge.

And the guy to his right.

With the long hair with the goofy look on his face that is officer Harvey, he's anisio in Manhattan.

And this is just a great picture of the Ostrogoths River. Winter freezes over one of my favorite things to do is skate 'cause you can skate if the conditions are right. You can skate from the Ranger School all the way to Cranberry Lake, it's amazing.

And you can have a pickup hockey game. I'm hoping the temperature is right. Last year wasn't great. Got a lot of snow, it just didn't workout, but when the conditions are right, it's a beautiful thing. But there's a full moon out. You can skate and you can see for miles, awesome. So here's the outing club.

The Audi club tends to do hiking trips.

And write this picture. Here is the students from last year on Ampersand Mountain November. It was dreadfully cold that day, but the outing club also does ski trips. We also do trips when we're allowed to go into Canada. We've gone to Ottawa. We come to Montreal. We've actually seen Les mis.

Anything the students want to do were flexible enough.

Within reason to do it, but typically This Is Us going to different mountains in the atar on deck's this was Newmark Mountain.

OK, so I'm just going to go through this quickly. I've gotten the hook. So Newmark Mountain this is. We did this a few weeks ago. This is Cascade from a few years ago. We did Hopkins Mountain last weekend. This is a picture from last weekend. White water rafting happens in the spring. This is in the Hudson River.

Woodman's team the woodsman's team is the actual an actual timber sports team that competes against other schools. I believe there are pulse miss at this event and it's nice because it's nice that we have students for only a year. We don't have any upperclassmen so anyone can compete. It doesn't make a difference if you have any experience in Timbersports you can compete. We encourage you to compete. The students that actually do academically. The best in school, at least here at the Ranger School, are the ones that.

Do the activities and this is just some events. This is the cross saw event from a woman's match. Here is some of the yearbooks. We do have a yearbook committee that forms in the spring.

Here's

couple pages from that yearbook. I have to. I have to talk about dodgeball for one second. We do dodgeball in the spring after hockey. It is Mrs Rivera's brainchild. She is in assistant. What is she? Isa associates. Whatever that stands for this is her, her brainchild. She loves dodgeball. So if I didn't include this, she would be very upset.

OK, moving on where we are in Wanakena, New York. This picture wanakena and this is a picture of Ranger School. The way it used to be. I every time I do a presentation I have to show this picture of this man with his pet raccoon. I just throw it in there because I just this. This picture just tickles me. Unfortunately we don't have any pet raccoons anymore, so moving on.

And this is the class of 2020 twenty and the class of 1913. You are part when you come to the Ranger School. You're part of a special group of folks. We only have 50 to 60 students every year, and they are a Hardy bunch and you become hard of the family. The Ranger School family by coming here.

You have any questions or if you want to actually have a tour. We are available any day of the week. I will walk around with my iPad or walk around the school, walk around dorm rooms, an answer. Any questions I know I was a bit rushed. I'm trying to get you to speak to some students here, so thank you for your time and I'll let doctor J take it from here.

Thank you Mr. Omeara, Uh so hi everyone, we have some students that have joined us here this afternoon and I wanted to just give them a few minutes to share a little bit of with you about who they are and a little bit about the Ranger School and really give you all an opportunity to ask some questions about life at the Ranger School. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to our students.

My name is Shane Mensing I'm from.

Stop.

How are you up?

I.

First, check here.

Shut up.

I'm sorry Mr. Romera, could you please mute your microphone? Thank you.

Sorry for the interruption.

Update and decided it wasn't for me.

Ranger School, my greatgrandfather went here, so there's a sense of pride. Have having family here and make them proud so.

Go at the end of the day. It's become Forest Ranger. And yeah, I think that pretty much covers that. I think they're gonna have questions, so feel free to ask me anything. Thank you.

Hello Mellie.

Downstate New York I did my first year of college at main campus.

Urban's planning on working forestry and.

Working for them.

Hold you.

On here.

My only record. I'm from Buffalo. I'm 27 years old. I had a career in marketing before I came here and decided that I did not like working in an office and I wanted to have a career that had to do with the outdoors and conservation and in the environmental and Natural Resources Conservation Program. And I had a goals of becoming a forest Ranger when I got here. But now I've realized there's so many other opportunities in the forestry world.

So we'll see what happens.

Everyone, I'm Mr Tyler to these guys, but you can call me Nate. I am a graduate student this year working with doctor Johnson, the director of the Ranger School. But I came here as a student two years ago. I was in the Environmental Natural Resources Conservation Program and then I finished up my bachelors at the main campus in Syracuse and now I'm back for more. So I definitely loved it here and I decided to come back so.

If you have any questions about that, you can direct them to me.

Good alright so?

You can't see me now, but you should be able to hear me. We have time for you to ask questions of the students. If you don't have any questions, I might softball something to you like.

What's one of the favorite things about the Ranger School so far?

Taking first, whoever wants to go, I think probably like I came in here with expectations of what this was going to be. In some ways those were met and a lot of ways they were exceeded. The biggest way was I met so many different people from so many different places, even all over the country, even from different backgrounds, different ages and you learn a lot from your peers. Just a lot of life stuff. I'm 26, didn't expect to learn much.

From a bunch of what I thought was going to be 19 year olds and learn from everybody here. Obviously the school experience is great, but the relationships you form here are will be life lasting, so that's probably my favorite thing.

Already.

Everything about Ranger School well.

I I think I can say that this is the.

The Wackiest isn't a good worth of one of the most unique colleges you can go to. This isn't a regular place, that's something very special, you know there's.

No, their school. I don't think I can't think of any other school or anyone I know going somewhere where you know.

You're getting strained with a 22 credit week, but you know you're going outside for four hours a day. You know you go from.

Writing a lab report to driving a skitter to you know?

If if you want to work outdoors, if you want to work in Forestry.

The academics are incredibly important, but also the field work and that experience is also just as important, and I don't think.

You get nearly as good of a field education from like a summer program or anything like that. You know, really, spending a year, being immersed, and the forest is.

I think incredibly important for forced education education, so yeah, so.

I have to say my favorite thing about Ranger School is definitely the community. Like Shane said, I came here. I didn't know anybody. I didn't have any friends coming here. It's been awhile since I've been in college and coming here meeting people just so many like minded people. I don't have friends back home that like to hike and be outside and that go birding but I came here and have met so many people that do those things and besides learning together and learning new things together about the forest in general.

We also do a lot of group activities together, even if it's something that is a plan by the school. We're all getting together all the time and hanging out specially right now during all the kovid stuff and being on lock down and things like that throughout the semester. We really do try to get together as a class. We have movie nights and we go and have fires outside and just hang out. And it's it's really great.

Alright, so and Mr Tyler as you go I also there's a question about how likely you are to continue with a four year degree in pros and cons of continuing. And since you've done both the Ranger School and the four year degree and now you're back as a graduate student, maybe you could address that as well. Yeah, so this place definitely sets you in a direction where you could go back to main campus for your four year degree. But you also don't have to, so don't feel obligated. You can change your mind when you're here so you can come here and experience lots of things and.

Meet other faculty and explore your options. Here is really what I would say. You know you're going to find a lot of people in other faculty members that are going to throw things at you that you didn't even think we're going to happen or kind of in a direction you weren't thinking you were planning on going. But it's totally like out of left field and you're like, well, this is crazy. That happens to almost every single person when they get here they realized that forestry isn't always about chainsaws and that you know, it's not always about wildlife. There's way more to it.

And I think going to main campus has its own benefits, especially in a in an educational standpoint. You know you get your bachelors degree, sometimes more employable in certain fields, but in another way you don't need that. Like I know many people that have come here and got a two year degree and have gone off and started working right from the render school and they're still working there. Still employed even through Covid.

But also this year Ranger schools really show me that you can come here and be successful almost doing anything you want. I know people that came here an after a year or two. They're like you know what I want to go back and get my bachelors. I'm going to finish off at main campus and they still had that opportunity to go back even after coming here. So it definitely goes to show that it's not a scary place and you know, college is definitely worth it. It's it's more of a time investment than it is anything else.

And if you're willing to put in the hard work and dedication here, you can definitely do it at main campus. It's going to be way easier. You're going to many people just from being here and so immersed. Mr. Management Lee talked about being immersed this whole group of people.

Go to main campus together and kind of have like a unit or a pack. You know you're going to be in a lot of similar classes even after being here, so nothing to be too scared of.

Any of you have long term career goals you wish to share?

I definitely want to go the DC route. I'm kind of figuring out whether I want to be a Ranger and B or B Anicio. That's kind of a steadfast goal of mine down the road. I'd probably want to work at a federal level, whether that's law enforcement related or not, but I'm pretty well decided on that route for sure.

Well.

I can't say I have the whole long term plan figured out, but I think.

A bit something that was very appealing to me in forestry was.

There's a lot of different people from different backgrounds in it, and you kind of go a lot of different directions with it right now.

Definitely the summer. Maybe the next few years looking into trying to fight wildfires. That seems like some really challenging career or something.

Travel the country, meet a lot of new people, see a lot of cool places. That's that's my plan right now.

I had intentions of trying to be a forest Ranger, but then I got here and realized there's so many other things I can do.

I'm really interested in Wildlife Conservation.

And so I don't know. I'll see what happens when I graduate, but I'm also registered guide with the New York state, DC for White.

Rafting, camping and hiking. So maybe I'll just guide for a year and then get a job.

I think my path is kind of leading me down towards a large forest management and not just timber, but wildlife, water, soil. All the natural resources of a large scale. Maybe in National Forest? That's kind of the direction I'm heading in. I would love to go out West too so I haven't limited my options yet, but somewhere in that conservation and management aspect of Forestry.

Alright, I've got one question about.

Is there a town nearby and do you go to downtown and is a part of life at the Ranger School?

So with kovid, it's been interesting. We've I think the whole community here is really centered on safety and keeping everyone in school and getting the program finished. That's been paramount, but we have had chances to venture out. I think, for the most part, people have gone on hikes with her through the outing club, or doing things on their own, whether it be 50 or their own independent hikes. But there are little towns, little restaurants around that are really cool.

You had down Tord Starlake, you UBS, right, UBS Mercantile, they've got. I think they have a pancake eating competition there, or some kind of challenge. You know, it is a remote area, but there are cool little spots you can go check out. And I think everybody's here for the outdoor aspect of things. And I think that's kind of where most people end up heading to.

You can do some traveling and you can head out towards governor and potentially Watertown, depending on what the kovit situation looks like, but there's plenty to do around here. Plenty so.

But maybe Mr. Tyler, maybe you can. I think we're going to wrap it up, probably with this question, but maybe Mr. Tyler if you could speak to non covid. You know, I don't know when Covid isn't a thing, how much time people spend in towns. Anyway, my sense is it still similar to what changes described? But yeah.

This is interesting. 'cause you know two years ago probably wasn't a thing and you would think that we would leave every weekend and just like go travel or go hike or go see our friends and.

It really depended on the weekend. Like in the fall when the leaves are changing color. It felt like everybody was hiking every weekend just the same and we've basically been able to do that this year and the two or three places we would go all the time. We still go to this year. We still go to the local, you know, diners and gas stations and everything that's pretty much close by. That hasn't changed, really.

Even people going just camping and stuff they haven't had a problem. The biggest stuff is that we don't really go away for the whole weekend to a big city, you know. And I would say before.

We didn't really do that a whole lot either. You know you had homework to do, and even if you decide to go to a big city like you had to plan and prepare to do that just in a normal week, getting your work done and trying to self manage your time that way. Honestly, not that much has changed so.

In that regard, not much has changed.

Right so.

See if I get in here there I am so I don't see a whole lot more questions, but.

Did you want to say thank you to all of our students for spending some time in coming in here and talking to us? Those of you that are watching from remotely, please feel free to contact us at the Ranger School. We can do virtual tours. We're happy to talk to you on the phone an get you up to speed on what what else you'd like to know about the Ranger School.

So thank you so much for your time.