[Iesaf_selkirk] Reorganization of U of Idaho college of NaturalResources

[Ara Andrea]

This correspondence between John Bruna, Jo Ellen Force and I was passed
on to the Idaho Forest Owners Association Executive Board in the
interest of answering their specific questions (addressed to me)
regarding changes at the UI College of Natural Resources.

These messages and attached documents were not to be distributed beyond
this board; no permission for further distribution/sharing was granted.

Please do NOT share these documents/correspondences with others unless
you have asked for permission to do so from John Bruna, Jo Ellen Force
and me.

Thank you,

Ara Andrea
Service and Regulatory Program Manager
Bureau of Forestry Assistance
Idaho Department of Lands
3284 W Industrial Loop
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho  83815
(W) 208-666-8636
(F)  208-769-1524


-----Original Message-----
From: iesaf_selkirk-bounces at lists.fsr.com
[mailto:iesaf_selkirk-bounces at lists.fsr.com] On Behalf Of John Ferris
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 2:22 AM
To: aharper at rileycreek.com; almerkel at yahoo.com; ATTERBURY TOBY;
billoconn at earthlink.net; bosworth at dmi.net; Boothe Norris; Callihan Bob;
Carole Harwood(charwood at stmaries.com); advancedforests at nidlink.com;
Charles McKetta; CORNWALL, RALPH; Costich-Thompson Jennifer; Damon
Keith; keathley at msu.edu; baumgtnr at wsu.edu; dandgisp at aol.com; Deveny
Bill; Diahne Gill; EBEL, FRED W; spforester at msn.com;
akerslogging at gateway.net; gld3447 at stmaries.com; guy at wolfenet.com;
HAMMES, DAN; HARVEY GEOFF; dog1 at wsu.edu; kennon at dmi.net; DAVID, KIRK;
lkaney at povn.com; MERKEL, ALBERT; mike.fish at weyerhaeuser.com; NOSKOWIAK,
ARTHUR; PARENT, DENNIS R.; PARENT, DENNIS R.; rtgraham at fs.fed.us;
Selkirk Chapter; skip at cybrquest.com; fmsp at worldshare.net;
bloedes at aol.com; steve.decook at wadnr.gov; Dennis Tanikuni; Terri Jain;
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MIKE; WRIGHT LARRY; ZACK, ART; Bob Smathers; 'Carol Rust'; Duncan Cheri;
Duncan Rose; 'Ferris John'; 'Fleener Craig'; 'Frei Ron'; 'HARWOOD, DICK
RJ'; idfbsp at micron.net; 'lemorris at nidlink.com'; 'Lowry Russell'; 'Mark
Ferris'; 'Phil Sergent'; 'Rust Delbert'; wbutler at idaho.tds.net
Subject: [Iesaf_selkirk] Reorganization of U of Idaho college of
NaturalResources

Dear Forestry Community;

We are being given a tour (sponsored by the Idaho Farm Bureau- Staff
member Robert Smarthers, Northern Region) of the Idaho DNR, U of I,
starting at room 200, on March 24th at 8:30 AM by Dean McLaughlin,
Jo-Ellen Force and others. You are all invited. Contact me to RSVP and
for parking permits.
Enclosed are some recent communications concerning our land grant
college.
You may make your own conclusions and perhaps respond in some way later.
Certainly Idaho has always been a leader in this area for 100 years and
is one of last East Side professional accredited degree programs in an
area
spanning: Colorado, NM, AZ, east OR, east WA, Idaho, west  Montana, UT,
and west Wyo. The list of skills Mr. Bacon describes is in my estimation
limited to those required by a State Agency. I am sure there are other
skills sets and specialties required for other forest land owning
entities and their consultants.

 

Sincerely,

John J Ferris, CF, EA- B.S. Michigan State 64'- 49 years of Mgt. and
taxation experience in Idaho-Oregon-Jamaica

 

Please feel free to forward this to those concerned.

p.s. There will be a Palouse Chapter SAF meeting on this subject March
25th at 5Pm, Best Western, Moscow ID 

 

  _____  

 

Here is Ara's info

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Ara Andrea <mailto:AAndrea at idl.idaho.gov>  

Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 4:29 PM

 

I wanted to send you some documents/memos that we received that pertain
to the recent changes made at the UI College of Natural Resources.

 

Attached is a FAQ document put out by the college, and below is a letter
sent by Jo Ellen Force (Forest Resources Department Chair) in response
to letters that John Bruna and I had sent to Dean McLaughlin, expressing
our specific concerns with the (then proposed) program consolidations.
(John's memo is below; my letter is attached.)

 

I hope these documents will assist all of you in understanding these
changes better.

 

 

 

Ara

 

 

 

 

 

From: Force, Jo Ellen [mailto:JOELLEN at uidaho.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 3:15 PM
To: John Bruna; McLaughlin, William; Ara Andrea; David Groeschl; Craig
Foss; Roger Jansson
Cc: O'Laughlin, Jay; Loehring, Mike; Gorman, Tom; DAVID ADAMS; Ulliman,
Joseph
Subject: RE: Notice of Intent & Forester Criteria

 

 

Hello John,

 

First, I have copied everyone that was included in your letter to Dean
McLaughlin as well as others copied in Ara Andrea's letter and UI folks
who have been involved in recent discussions about the Notice of Intent
in CNR.
I hope this is OK with you, as I am drowning in e-mails after being out
of the country for a couple of weeks.

 

Thank you for sending the "Minimum Criteria:  Land Resource Manager, Sr.
- Forest" to me.  It will be helpful to the faculty when we are advising
our students.  I plan to share it with the students in FOR 102
Introduction to Forest Management next spring.  

 

I have carefully reviewed it and have attached it with my comments
listing the courses in the SAF-accredited BS Forest Resources degree
program that address each of the minimum criteria.  Students take
courses covering all the IDL criteria, except the first two on contract
preparation and administration.  I hope that the list of courses will
help you and others in IDL who may be hiring our graduates as you
evaluate their transcripts and relate their university education with
your criteria.  

 

I have also added a comment related to #23 with respect to requiring an
SAF-accredited degree for the Forester level positions.  This is a
particularly sensitive issue with me and the faculty because we have had
several students in recent years who cannot achieve a "C" average or
better in a number of the forestry courses required to graduate in our
program.
This is especially true of courses that require quantitative skills.
These students usually switch to "General Studies" and graduate from UI,
but often do not tell employers that they did not graduate with an
accredited forestry degree.  Unfortunately, many employers do not
request the official university transcript verifying the degree.  These
students usually have several forestry courses and have had summer work
experience with the employer.  Many employers do not call faculty for
references.  When one of these students is not performing well or is
lacking some skills the employer expected them have, we hear that "your
program is not preparing forestry students for the job market any more".
When the employer is willing to tell us the name of the person, it is
often not a graduate of the SAF-accredited (or SWST for Forest
Operations majors) degree program - yet they are graduates of the
University of Idaho and their employers assumed it was from the
accredited forestry degree program.  This has also happened with
students who are actually in the Ecology and Conservation Biology or the
Wildlife or other CNR degree programs - none of which are accredited
forestry degrees.

 

The Notice of Intent that CNR is putting forward, does not change the
name of the BS Forest Resources program.  This program has been
significantly strengthened this fall in several ways: (1) the number of
credits the students will earn in forest measurements and inventory,
dendrology, ecosystem processes, forest regeneration, and forest
dynamics and management have increased by 50% -- from 12 credits to 18
credits.  These increases are due to the expanded material that has been
added to these courses as we've hired new faculty, the knowledge and
skills we believe are needed by the foresters of the future, and the
amount of time students are spending in the field and in labs; and (2)
the BS Forest Products--Forest Operations Option degree has been merged
with the BS Forest Resources degree.  Courses in wood anatomy and
primary wood products manufacturing along with two more harvesting
courses are now included in the Restricted Electives of the
SAF-accredited Forest Resources degree.  This allows students to follow
a forest operations career track and with a couple other courses, they
can get a Forest Operations Minor.  The students who are already at the
UI in the BS Forest Products-Operations Option will still receive that
degree unless they choose to switch to the merged degree in next year's
catalog.  The increase in credits for the courses I listed above will
take place immediately and the Forest Operations Minor is available now.
Not all of the BS Forest Resources students will take the "forest
operations" career track.  Some will chose a "fire" track; some plan on
graduate school and will take courses from the Restricted Electives that
will better prepare them for graduate school; some may emphasize a more
"multiple use" career track and take some wildlife, fisheries or
recreation-oriented courses.  That is why it is important to review
transcripts when hiring as the Forest Resources degree allows
considerable flexibility in a determining a career track.

 

The Department of Forest Resources has always been a diverse,
interdisciplinary group of faculty - most of whom conduct research, have
graduate students, and do outreach in a wide variety of disciplines, but
usually associated with forest ecosystems.  With the proposed merger due
to budget realities, the faculty will become more diverse and expand to
include work on grasslands, steppe and other ecosystems.  The faculty
tried to find a name for the new department (sometimes called the
"mega-department") that would serve as an "umbrella" name for the three
undergraduate degree programs (forestry, fire and range) as well as the
broad span of research programs we are involved with, including work
that involves many disciplines (and external funding) outside of
traditional "forestry."  Because many faculty and students in recent
years have been attending the American Geophysical Union Biogeosciences
section and presenting their research at these meetings, this seems like
a good name to represent the 21st century directions that research
related to forests seems to be heading.  Although Jim Moore never used
the word Biogeosciences, much of his work on "good rocks/bad rocks" and
forest nutrition is very consistent with the orientation of this new
field.  

 

We have also tried to find a name that wasn't a paragraph long and was
inclusive of all the different types of work we do - so we left any
modifiers off of "Ecology".  This is also very controversial - and
painful for many of us.  "Forestry" was lost in the College name in 2000
and in the Master of Science name last year - and there were no
objections last year and few in 1999-2000.  We expect to have an
accredited BS Forest Resources
(or Forestry) degree program far into the future.   I have also attached
an
information piece that many of the faculty have worked on regarding the
name that was selected after a voting process that included three rounds
(and started with ~30 possible names) and the name "Ecology and
Biogeosciences"
was eventually selected by a vote of 14 to 9.  I hope you will read this
attachment and ask questions and/or provide comments.  

 

I am sure there will be more discussion of the NOI - re-organization,
names, programs, etc.  in the weeks ahead.  I will encourage the Dean to
set up a meeting with you and other IDL folks - hopefully, before the
Holidays.

 

Jo Ellen

 

Jo Ellen Force

Department Head and Professor

Department of Forest Resources

University of Idaho

P.O. Box 441133

Moscow, ID 83844-1133

Phone:  208-885-7311

 

From: John Bruna [mailto:jbruna at idl.idaho.gov]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 8:58 AM
To: McLaughlin, William, dean CNR
Cc: O'Laughlin, Jay; Force, Jo Ellen
Subject: Notice of Intent

 

Dear Dean McLaughlin,

 

The Idaho Department of Lands (IDL), Bureau of Forest Management has
been notified of the College of Natural Resources proposal to change the
existing organizational structure of the college by combining five
academic departments into three, and a name change for the Department.
While we can understand the need for consolidating and realigning
departments based on current budget realities and student enrollments,
we are very concerned about the proposed name change.  The proposed new
department's name of "Department of Ecology and Biogeosciences" does not
adequately or appropriately describe the programs represented by that
department. 

 

Idaho Department of Lands has a long history of hiring U of I forestry
graduates.  Given our active forest management program on endowment
lands, we expect the need to hire well trained four-year forestry
graduates to continue.  We need students who have the basic skills,
knowledge and experience in the following areas: forest silviculture,
forest plant ecology, forest statistics and mensuration, forest
engineering and harvesting, forest economics, and forest management and
finance, geology and forest soils, cadastral land surveying and strong
communication skills.
Attached is the Minimum Criteria: Lands Resource Manager, Sr. - Forest
for new foresters working for the Idaho Department of Lands to achieve
the Senior Resource Manger - Forester level.  These individuals are
expected to reach this goal in two years.

 

Before consolidating these programs and changing the name, please
consider meeting with representatives from the Department of Lands to
discuss potential impacts and alternatives.  

 

 

Sincerely,

 

John A. Bruna

Program Manager, Forest Planning  & Silviculture

Idaho Department of Lands

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho  83815