MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR
The change from the College of Forest Resources to the School of Forest Resources is a major event for the University of Washington — painful for some and exciting for others. A College with a 102-year history is now a founding unit within the new College of the Environment.
We bring many formative legacies to the new College, including Pack Forest (since 1926); the Washington Park Arboretum, a 75-year connection with the City of Seattle’s Department of Parks and Recreation and the Arboretum Foundation; a 41-year collaboration on the Center for Quantitative Studies with the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences; a 40-year tradition of industry cooperatives beginning with the Regional Forest Nutrition Research Project in 1969 under the leadership of Professor Stan Gessel (since 1991 the Stand Management Cooperative); faculty legacies, including those of Frank Brockman, Stan Gessel, Dave Scott, Grant Sharpe, Reini Stettler, and many others; an extraordinarily supportive and active alumni association and many decades of graduates who now fill leadership positions across the globe; and generous donors, friends, and volunteers.
More recent initiatives such as the Center for Urban Horticulture (1979), CINTRAFOR (1985), Olympic Natural Resources Center (1995), Wind River Canopy Crane (1995), Precision Forestry Initiative (1999), Rural Technology Initiative (2000), the Center for Sustainable Forestry (2004), and the UW Botanic Gardens (2005) are all indicative of our ability to meet the challenges of resource and environmental sustainability in a responsible and creative way.
We are unique on campus in our legacy of close cooperation with Washington State University — collaboration with WSU-King County Extension, the joint UW-WSU Poplar Initiative (1978-2002), the Rural Technology Initiative, and joint appointments with faculty like Don Hanley and Dean Glawe are examples of this productive relationship.
Faculty initiatives including the Coniferous Forest Biome project (1970-1978), the Restoration Ecology Network (1998 - present), the management or co-management of three National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Grants (Urban Ecology, Multinational Collaborations, and Bioresources), a decade-long focus on phytoremediation, new applications for remote sensing and geospatial analysis, and programs and research in biological conservation of plant and wildlife species are all reflective of the energy and skills that faculty from the past to the present bring to this new partnership.
While I bring my own perspectives and emphases to the School of Forest Resources, I affirm this history and acknowledge the importance of the directions developed over the last decade.
It is in our hands to make the School and the College successful; we have the tools and the friends to do so. Let’s begin!
Interim Director Tom Hinckley
Professor of Forest Ecology
July 1, 2009
