Hi I'm
Ross Dowens

I’m an instructor in the Forestry and Arboriculture programme here at Barony Campus teaching full time on the Certificate and Advanced Certificate courses.

My background is mainly in estate maintenance and access – since I left college in 2012, I've worked in garden and estate maintenance and access provision and spent a brief time in a retail environment in a garden centre, but my primary background is in upland mountain path construction. If you’re a keen hiker and have walked up any of the dozen or so more popular hills in Scotland, and one or two in Ireland in the past ten years, give or take, then you’ve walked over something I’ve built. That was a very rewarding, if equally challenging role with some of the best “offices” in the country, but as is often joked in path work, the view out the office window might be the best in the country, it’s just a shame about the leaky roof!

I went back to college in 2014 studying full time at first and fitting path work into every spare week I could, until my third year where I went part time, working full-time up the hills at the same time (that was a very busy year!), and graduated in 2019. Now, since 2023, I have returned to SRUC in a teaching role, instructing on the same course I did myself at Barony – Forestry and Arboriculture – which started me off in 2012 on the path to where I am now.

Away from work, I’m just beginning to dip my toes back into hiking again, but I’m also a keen amateur photographer, and most recently I’ve been learning about how to grow bonsai trees (it takes a lot of patience, I’m discovering!).