5 questions with Mark VanderWerp

Mark VanderWerp stands with the Rose Pest Options calendar. PHOTO: ROSE PEST SOLUTIONS

We caught up with Mark VanderWerp, supervisor of schooling and coaching at Troy, Mich.-based Rose Pest Options, to be taught extra in regards to the wall calendar the corporate is creating from customer-and employee-submitted insect images.

1. How lengthy has Rose Pest Options been providing a calendar, and the way did the concept come about?

Our first Rose calendar rolled off the press simply final 12 months, however the thought grew out of our previous affiliation with the Copesan community: For a number of years, Copesan revealed a “Critter Calendar” primarily based on images submitted by staff from its numerous member corporations. As an organization, Rose typically had a minimum of three to 4 images in these calendars, as a result of we’ve on workers quite a few achieved photographers. When Copesan was acquired in 2018 by Terminix and the non-Terminix companions parted methods, there was nonetheless lots of curiosity at our firm to maintain the calendar venture going. However as a substitute of solely utilizing images from staff, we’re additionally encouraging our purchasers to e-mail us images.

2. What does Rose do with these calendars?

We distribute them free to staff and purchasers. Many staff hold them at their desks in our workplaces. And it’s actually cool to see one hanging on the wall at an account!

3. Is it correct to say this isn’t solely a advertising device for Rose, but in addition an academic piece for its prospects?

Completely. Every month’s picture features a caption that describes the topic within the picture. By doing this, we’re utilizing pictures and the great thing about bugs to assist educate our purchasers (and staff) about what makes these numerous species do what they do. Permitting purchasers to submit images creates an excellent higher dialogue. And it makes a few of our purchasers much more enthusiastic and constant to Rose’s providers.

4. What’s the judging course of like?

First, I am going by way of all of the submissions to make sure they’re at a high-enough decision for printing, that the themes are in focus, and so on. All of the photographs that survive that spherical go in entrance of a panel of Rose staff for judging. Pictures are grouped taxonomically for judging, so as an example, the panel checked out all of the bee and wasp photographs collectively so they might simply select the standouts. We tried to pick a minimum of one picture from every of our taxonomic groupings so our calendar would have lots of variety.

5. Do you might have any recommendation for different pest management corporations that want to do one thing comparable with their prospects?

It is a venture that retains on giving. Not solely are we thrilled to have the ability to acknowledge among the implausible images our staff and prospects are taking, we’re additionally in a position to construct our in-house library of pictures that we will use for identification and coaching. Not every part in pest administration is a win-win, however this positively is.