Planting the Seed

As she sat in the passenger seat, driving home to St. Louis from Iowa with a DJM Ecological Services crew, Mary Hruz ‘20 couldn’t help but think, “Wow, did I just do that?” She had just completed a data collection project for DJM’s client, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, on a forest in Iowa that suffered major flooding the past couple of years. The data Mary helped collect would contribute to determining the Army Corps’ strategy for habitat restoration in this area. The answer was, “Yes.” Yes, you did just do that, Mary.

In her early years as a student at Cor Jesu, Mary knew she was interested in plants, animals and working outdoors, but she wasn’t sure how that translated to a job in the real world. To attempt to figure it out, Mary participated in Cor Jesu’s annual exp3 day – a program where students spend a full day immersed in a career experience of their choice, interacting with professionals on-site and participating in hands-on activities.

Keeping animals in mind, Mary chose to spend her first exp3 day at Royal Canin, thinking that veterinary work might be her calling. The only problem with that was it didn’t give her the ecological experience she was looking to obtain in her future career. So, the next year, her junior year, she participated in exp3 again, this time visiting DJM Ecological Services. DJM is a St. Louis-based company that provides comprehensive ecological restoration and management of native plant communities. It offers a variety of services, including: ecological consulting services; ecological contracting services, which ensure full leverage of a site’s ecology to produce an attractive, functional and compliant landscape solution; and native plant specialist services, which provide site specific, custom native seed mixes for each unique project. After spending a day with CJA alumna and project ecologist at DJM, Becky Matye McMahon ‘94, Mary was hooked.

“My exp3 day with DJM was amazing,” Mary said. “We visited all kinds of different project sites in St. Louis and got hands-on experience with ecological services that I loved. I knew I never wanted to go to the same place for work every single day, so the moving around aspect really appealed to me.”

“Since its first year as an exp3 site in 2013, DJM has done a phenomenal job of including hands-on experiences on exp3 day,” said Cynthia Wilhelm, Director of CJA’s Career, College & Wellness (CCW) Center. “We work really hard to create meaningful experiences where students get a realistic glimpse of what it would look and feel like to enter a certain career field, and DJM has been a great partner with us in that mission.”

In the past, some students have been surprised to find themselves on job sites, pulling weeds with DJM.

“A lot of people have a misconception of what habitat restoration or ecological services entails,” Doug Bauer, President of DJM, said. “We aim to eliminate that misconception and give students a realistic experience so they can make an informed decision later as to if this is the right career path for them or not.”

For Mary, it was right. Thanks to her exp3 experience, she knew during her college search that she wanted to find a university with some type of environmental science program. Iowa State University was on her list of options. When she visited, they recommended she explore the school’s natural resources department.

“Seeing an entire department dedicated to natural resources made me realize that there were so many options within this field,” Mary said. “And that got me excited.”

Mary chose Iowa State University and entered the school’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in the fall of 2020. She declared a Forestry major within its Natural Resources Department and is on track to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in forestry and minor in animal ecology in 2024.

Fortunately, Mary won’t just graduate with her degree, but also with valuable field experience that connects back to her exp3 day visit with DJM.

In the spring of 2021, while exchanging emails about plans for DJM’s ninth exp3 day, Doug sent Cynthia the job description for a summer Restoration

Technician, inviting her to share it with interested alumnae. Cynthia recalled Mary’s interest in the field and that her college and degree program aligned, so she reached out to Mary with the opportunity.

“I was ecstatic when Mrs. Wilhelm contacted me about working with DJM over the summer,” Mary said. “Not a lot of internships would take me after only my freshman year, but since I had the connection with DJM in high school and the interest in the field, they hired me!”

“It’s exactly what the Corporate Partners Initiative is about,” Cynthia said. “We want to help our students explore a vast variety of career fields while they are in high school and facilitate these meaningful connections that come back around and turn into real opportunities.”

And in the ecological services field, making these connections and gaining these experiences early is especially key.

“In our field, there’s a big combination of hard and soft skills,” Doug said. “It’s better to get people started young and have them gain exposure to everything so that when they are ready to get to work, they are adequately prepared with their education and actual work experience. Someone like Mary, who now has had exposure to this line of work since she was 16, is going to have better chances for upward mobility while she’s young.”

It’s been a win-win for both parties. For Mary, she is learning those hard and soft skills, and gaining valuable experience earlier in her educational career than most. For DJM, they are spreading the word about their field to bright young women at Cor Jesu, who might be interested, but, like Mary, may not otherwise know how to define their interests in a job title.

Who knows? Maybe someday, it will be Mary in the driver’s seat, and a future Cor Jesu graduate riding along to Iowa for her first data collection trip with DJM…all because of the connections and experiences created through CJA’s evergrowing Corporate Partners Initiative.