Tree doctor looking for the right mix

Patrick Sherwood has just started his job as PSR, programme director of studies. His programme, Forest & Landscape, is also undergoing one of its regular audits. Patrick admits he’s slightly nervous.

- It’s exciting but what’s being audited is mainly what my predecessors have done. I only started in July, formally speaking, so it’s still pretty new to me. My main job will be to oversee the whole programme and ensure that our students get a high-quality education that meets its intended targets. That’s a very broad set of challenges.

Most of the pressure on Patrick Sherwood as PSR doesn’t come from the audit process but from his and his colleagues’ own expectations and goals.

- As far as pressure is concerned, I mainly feel it in relation to the students and the programme at large. I want things to be as good as they possibly can be. That the students get the best possible education. And it’s not always easy having that bird’s eye view that you need, where you have an overlook of everything.

Tree doctor

Aside from being a PSR, Patrick does his own research, focusing primarily on tree disease. He jokingly refers to himself as a tree doctor.

- Mainly I research tree health. What I’m mostly focused on is substances that trees emit when they’re sick or damaged. Trees don’t have an immune system like we do, but changes in their chemistry can tell you a lot about their health. I call myself a tree doctor because it’s a good description and something people can understand and relate to, says Patrick.

Patrick Sherwood was born and raised in the industrial city of Pittsburgh in eastern USA. As a child, he enjoyed playing outdoors but his interest in trees and tree health didn’t come naturally. On the contrary, it was very much a coincidence:

- Forestry is not a big industry in my part of the US. So it didn’t come naturally to me. I actually got my degree in molecular genetics. Then I was sort of leafing through a course catalogue one day saw that they offered courses in plant disease. And that’s how it happened.

Specifically, it was his parents’ stories of chestnut blight that triggered his passion for trees and tree disease:

- On of the examples in the catalogue was this chestnut blight. It was a very destructive disease in North America before I was born. So I don’t remember it, but my parents did, and they would talk about it sometimes. And as it turned out, the combination of genetics and something more practical really suited me, says Patrick.

Enjoys Skåne weather

After his studies in America, Patrick Sherwood earned his doctorate in plant pathology. After that, he worked in the private sector for a while, for a coffee company. He when relocated to Europe, first to Scotland and then to southern Sweden. He prefers the latter, at least in terms of weather:

- People warned me that Skåne has terrible weather. But I thought it was a major improvement over Scotland, which was very windy and rough. It’s really nice her in general too. The campus beautiful, with the castle and the arboretum. When I studied in Ohio, the campus was in the city, so that was a totally different type of environment, too.

Finding the right mix

As great at the Alnarp campus is, what Patrick Sherwood is most happy about is the Forest & Landscape programme over which he presides. It has a somewhat unusual mix of skills and disciplines – and that’s also the biggest challenge about it, he says.

- The programme is unique in that it combines forest and landscape architecture. It sounds obvious but what we’re trying to do is to merge the two disciplines and give a holistic understanding of forest and landscape. The hardest thing about that, to me, is making it interdisciplinary. It shouldn’t be just a chunk of knowledge here, and another there. It needs to be a mix, a blend that makes it something else.

As far as life after graduation, there isn’t a whole lot to of data so far. The programme hasn’t been around long enough. But out of the students that have graduated so far, many work in areas like city planning, urban forests, landscape architecture and various public and advisory roles. Many also take the forestry route, working for forestry companies and other types of stakeholders.

Patrick Sherwood’s own plans for the future involve practicing his Swedish.

- I have two young daughters, so family takes up a lot of my time. I also play floorball with my colleagues every Wednesday. But going forward, I would like to improve my Swedish. It’s good enough for shopping and ordering and that sort of thing. But many job meetings are in Swedish, and academic terms can be pretty tricky in Swedish. So I’m definitely going to practice.

Text: Henrik Persson

Photo: Hans Dahlgren

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