On a clear spring morning in southern Illinois, a group of students stands at the edge of the woods near Lake Murphysboro in rural Jackson County. They wear bright yellow fire-resistant shirts, green pants, heavy boots and helmets. Each person carries a tool — a hoe, shovel or drip torch.

Everything is calm for now. But that’s about to change.

The group walks nearly a mile into the woods before reaching a burn site. Once there, they start clearing sticks and debris from the ground. They listen carefully to the directions called out by their experienced leader, Charles Ruffner, a professor with the Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Forestry and Horticulture.

Ruffner also oversees the Fire Dawgs, a campus club that provides both hands-on experience and a community service for students interested in land management careers.

Soon, students light their drip torches, tools that lay down a strip of fire along the ground.

“I’m glad I’m on a small fire today,” one forestry student quips about the 91-acre burn.

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Smoke starts to rise — slowly at first, then thicker. For the rest of the day — one aptly named a “burn day” — Ruffner and the Fire Dawgs manage the blaze. The purpose of the prescribed burn, as it is known in industry parlance, is to clear underbrush from the forest floor so that the region’s native hardwood can flourish. It also helps prevent wildfires by removing dead leaves and other debris.

Now in its 25th year, Fire Dawgs at SIU Carbondale has become an important part of both student learning and land management in the region. Just over 1,000 students have gone through the program, many going on to land jobs with the U.S. Forest Service, Illinois Department of Natural Resources and in other government agencies and nonprofit organizations focused on land management.

The program started in 2001, when Ruffner and a graduate student, Beth Davis, wanted students to get more than just classroom experience. They wanted them to actually work with fire in real situations. Over time, it has grown into one of the few programs like it in the Midwest.

Ruffner said the program is a testament to the power of “experiential learning,” moving students beyond the classroom to practice what they’ve read about or heard in a lecture hall. Those lessons, he said, tend to stick.

Some of the most meaningful notes Ruffner has received over the years have come from parents who weren’t sure how their son or daughter would fare in college, or even whether they would make it through. Then, they joined the Fire Dawgs and thrived.

“I’ve received notes saying you literally lit a fire under this kid and gave him a reason for living,” Ruffner said. “Thank you so much for opening up my child’s life.”

For SIU alum and former Fire Dawg Ray Bieri, the experience made a huge difference in landing him a job upon graduation.

“You get actual hands-on training. It’s a really great way to get experience with wildland fire,” Bieri said.

Bieri graduated from SIU in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in forestry and in 2024, a master’s in forestry, and now works as the executive director of the Shawnee Resource Conservation and Development, a nonprofit that works with landowners on conservation practices. He said the Fire Dawgs helped prepare him for the kind of work he does today.

“There’s really no replacement for the Fire Dawgs,” he said. “Otherwise, you’re trying to get a seasonal job to get that experience.”

Zach Stawicki, who earned his bachelor’s in forestry in 2023, echoed Bieri’s sentiments. Stawicki said he participated in all kinds of hands-on activities with Ruffner at SIU, including invasive species removal days and several seasons with Fire Dawgs — experiences he found invaluable in landing him the job he holds today as burn coordinator for the Southern Illinois Prescribed Burn Association, a nonprofit that assists private landowners in prescribed burning on their properties.

“His mentorship definitely helped me get that position,” Stawicki said. “That hands-on experience and professional development really put me a step ahead of people in my grade. It really played a huge part in creating my career path.”

Before each burn, students gather for instructions. They stand with professionals, including people from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and go over safety rules and job roles. At the end, the message is simple: stay safe.

Even though it’s serious, the mood isn’t tense. Some students talk quietly or joke a little. There are different experience levels. Some are new, others have done this before, but either way, once the fire starts, everyone focuses. Fire, after all, isn’t something to mess around with — even an intentional one.

Flames spread across the ground, and smoke moves through the trees.

For students who are new, the experience is memorable, sometimes even overwhelming. But Ruffer’s command of the situation keeps them calm.

Bieri said that kind of environment is intentional.

“He made sure that we were all comfortable,” he said. “You have to respect fire, but he created an environment where you could enjoy the experience rather than be fearful.”

Students take on different roles during the burns. Some watch the fire line, some use tools to control flames, and others help light the fire. Bieri said rotating through these roles is an important part of learning.

“He would cycle all of us through the different roles,” he said. “Whether that’s suppression, being a lookout, or actually being an igniter.”

When it came time to apply for jobs, the diverse skill set he obtained here gave him a boost.

“I can’t imagine that being in Fire Dawgs didn’t have an impact on hiring decisions,” Bieri said. “You’re gaining real, hands-on experience.”

Now, Bieri helps organize prescribed burns across southern Illinois. His work includes partnering with groups like the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“It is a lot,” he said. “But it’s great work. I really like doing it.”

The burns also serve an environmental purpose. Controlled fire helps remove invasive species, return nutrients to the soil and reduce the risk of larger wildfires.

Taryn Bieri, Ray Bieri’s wife, is a district forester with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources who earned her bachelor’s in forestry from SIUC in 2020, and a master’s in 2024. Her job encompasses forest management in the southern Illinois counties of Williamson, Johnson, Alexander, Pulaski and Perry counties.

“I took several classes with him that were focused on fire and learned a lot of the background on why we burn,” Taryn Bieri said of Ruffner. She and her husband, now of Vienna, are both from Prairie du Rocher and attended SIU undergraduate and graduate school together, both spending time in Fire Dawgs.

“You can learn a lot in the classroom,” she said, “but it wasn’t really until I got in the field with the Fire Dawgs that things really clicked.”

Looking back, Ray Bieri said Ruffner’s impact goes well beyond just one class or program. Bieri said that Ruffner has been an invaluable part of training a significant part of the state, federal and nonprofit land management sector in the region.

“He has impacted probably thousands of students in a meaningful way,” Bieri said.

Ruffner has recently begun transitioning out of the SIU Forestry Department and, eventually, out of Fire Dawgs. In July 2025, he became director of the SIU Honors Program, which gives undergraduates the chance to take specialized courses, engage in volunteer and leadership opportunities, and earn an honors certificate alongside their degrees.

His replacement in forestry recently arrived at SIU, but Ruffner said he plans to stay involved with Fire Dawgs until that person is ready to fully take over.

Still, there are already moments when the significance of stepping away hits him.

In early September, Ruffner helped put on the Illinois Prescribed Fire Symposium, a biennial gathering that brought nearly 90 land managers from across the state to Giant City Lodge in Makanda. During the event, Scott Crist, fire management officer for the Shawnee National Forest, told Ruffner how much he had shaped the fire community in Illinois and across the Midwest.

Crist told him to look around the room. Many of the people there were Ruffner’s former students, people who had first picked up a drip torch because of him and who had gone on to build careers in fire and land management.

For Ruffner, it was a chance to see the reach of Fire Dawgs gathered in one room.

“He just said the nicest things,” Ruffner said. “I went home and just cried in my wife’s arms. It’s so nice to go out on a high note. It’s been wonderful. I’ve watched so many kids come out of their shells.”

Then, many of them go on to work together in the field. Ruffner described the local fire community as tight-knit, joking that Midwestern fire people aren’t as uptight as their counterparts in the East or as convinced they know better than everyone else as those out West.

The Midwest fire community, he said, hits a sweet spot.

“We help each other out,” Ruffner said. “We work on each other’s fires.”

“Maybe it’s because half of them are my former students and know each other,” he added with a laugh. “That could be part of it.”

Molly Parker for Capitol News Illinois and Carly Gist for the Saluki Local Reporting Lab contributed reporting to this story.

Photos by Lylee Gibbs, Cooper Wackerlin & Carly Gist.

The Saluki Local Reporting Lab is a special project of the SIU School of Journalism and Advertising and is designed to give students from diverse backgrounds practical reporting experience while providing news coverage to underserved communities.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.