•Instructor in horticulture, New Mexico Agriculture Experiment Station, 1947-49;
•Fulbright professor in Greece, 1952-53;
•Chief research advisor of Wyoming University Team, in Kabul, Afghanistan, 1957-59;
•Panamerican Agricultural School, El Zamorano, Honduras, head of department of horticulture, 1960-61;
•U.S. Department of Agriculture, assistant officer in charge and research botanist in Virgin Islands, 1961-66,
•U.S. Forest Service, principal economic botanist and project leader for timber-related crops in Berea, Ky., 1961-66
•Principal economic botanist in Asheville, N.C., 1971-82;
•Affiliated with Institute of Tropical Forestry, Rio Piedras, P.R., 1982-83.
•Economic geographer, College of the Virgin Islands, 1964-66;
•Summer visiting professor at Wisconsin State University, 1966;
•Fall visiting professor at Berea College, 1967;
•Guest of Jardin Botanico Uribe, Medellin, Columbia, 1974;
•Senior research fellow at Agricultural University of Wageningen, Holland, 1976-77;
•Guest lecturer, Academy of the U.S.S.R. Main Botanical Garden, 1980;
•Chairperson of Structure of Tropical Rain Forests Working Party, International •Union of Forest Research Organizations, 1980--1992;
•Chairman of Division of Natural Sciences, World University, Hato Rey, P.R., 1982-83;
•Adjunct professor at North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina, and Atlanta University. Consultant to Agency for International Development, •Volunteers for International Technical Assistance, International Executive Corps, and the governments of Surinam, Jamaica, Montserrat, Thailand, Dominican Republic, and Virgin Islands.

Sidelights
Arnold Krochmal had a motto: "Words as a bridge, not a wall." Much of the work done by Krochmal and his wife, Connie, was inspired by that motto and has been "devoted to translating scientific botanical information for the lay person, using understandable words, not scientific jargon," which Krochmal "tried passionately to escape during a 34-year career as a professor and government scientist."

The Krochmals come from dissimilar backgrounds--he is the son of immigrant parents and was raised in the Bronx, while she grew up on a mountain farm in Appalachian Kentucky -- but the two writers "share the deep concern that science and research do more than serve as a source of esoteric papers in rarely-read scholarly journals. We feel that citizen and taxpayer has a right to know what is going on in the world of science, and we have and will continue to try to close the gap. We like to think of ourselves as the Saint Jeromes of the botanical and horticultural community, translating the current dogmas into understandable English. And sometimes the results have been as Saint Jerome knew them -- harassment by the `priesthood' whose monopoly of knowledge is threatened!

"We have been influenced by the writings of two great Cornell professors, Liberty Hyde Bailey and Walter Conrad Muenscher. They mastered the skill and talent of communicating with a broad audience without losing their knowledge or diluting it. For young writers in this area of popularized science writing, we urge a period of apprenticeship. We have worked with a number of young people who were assigned to us in the U.S. Forest Service, helping them learn how to produce readable and correct items.

"We work as a team," Krochmal said of himself and his wife. "We discuss the outline of what we are doing, then move the work back and forth between us. We do an outline first, then fill it in. We use lots of photos and drawings, and knowing where these can be borrowed or commissioned is [a basic skill].

"One of the things we have learned is that we must write what publishers will publish. Great ideas, wonderful concepts, are of little value if no one will publish them. We have also learned to try to work with the editors as best we can. Some are easy to deal with. Others, in the federal government, can be tyrannical and arbitrary. . . . We have the completed manuscripts of three plant books done while working for the U.S. Forest Service as part of job requirements. Not one will be published by them, for one reason or another.