The Foresters' Calling

Above: A farm forester instructs a 4-H group in ways to plant and handle seedlings.

EDUCATION IN FORESTRY

SAMUEL T. DANA.

FORESTRY in the United States attained the dignity of a profession about 50 years ago, largely because of the inauguration and the rapid spread of technical training.

Two schools of forestry opened their doors in 1898, the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell University and the Biltmore Forestry School on the Vanderbilt estate near Asheville, N. C. Both were headed by men who had been trained in forestry in Germany, B. E. Fernow at Cornell, and C. A. Schenck at Biltmore. Their establishment, at a time when the opportunities for the practice of forestry were few and too far between, required vision and courage and was an essential step toward providing trained men, without whom progress would have continued to be slow and uncertain.

In 1900 were established the Yale School of Forestry and the Division of Forestry in the University of Minnesota, which are today our oldest schools in continuous existence. The school at Cornell was discontinued in 1905 as a result of legislative disapproval of the management of a tract of Adirondack forest land which had been placed at its disposal. The one at Biltmore was discontinued shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. Several other institutions, however, introduced forestry into their curricula, and by 1914 schools of forestry were in operation in all parts of the country.

Today 22 schools are recognized by the Society of American Foresters as providing professional training of a caliber to justify the admission of graduates to the Society without further proof of their competence.

The first three schools of forestry had different approaches to the methods of professional training. The school at Cornell was established as a State institution and comprised a 4-year undergraduate program leading to the bachelor's degree. That at Biltmore, a private enterprise, also conferred a bachelor's degree, although the course in forestry covered only a year and was devoted largely to practical work in the field. The one at Yale, a privately endowed institution, was open only to men with a bachelor's degree and offered 2 years of study leading to the degree of master of forestry.

The pattern established at Cornell has been pretty generally followed at other institutions. There are today no "master" schools similar to that at Biltmore, and only three Yale, Duke, and Harvard require a bachelor's degree for admission. All the others admit undergraduates and are parts of State-supported institutions. The latter fact undoubtedly reflects the belief that the importance of proper management of the forests to the permanent prosperity of the entire community is such as to warrant public support of professional training.

Several features of that training deserve special mention. Without exception, the schools require that students obtain a foundation in such subjects as biology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, and economics in their first 2 years. Courses in those subjects are followed by professional instruction in the protection and harvesting, reproduction, management, and utilization of the forest and its products. Since thorough coverage of those subjects is obviously impossible in 2 years, many of the schools now offer an additional year, leading to the master's degree, in which the student's training can be broadened and intensified. Some encourage superior students to take still more intensive training for the doctor's degree. It is significant of the increasing demands being made upon foresters that more and more students are going forward to the higher degrees. The master's degree is, in fact, now commonly regarded as essential for full professional training, and the doctor's degree is becoming an increasingly valuable asset for men in teaching and research.

Forestry in the broad sense is the science, art, and business of managing forest lands for the continuous production of forest goods and services. The average practitioner must be qualified to handle most of the problems encountered in the everyday management of a forest property, whether its size is 10 acres or 100,000 acres and whether it serves primarily to produce wood, wildlife, or scenery or to prevent erosion and control stream flow, just as the ordinary doctor must be prepared to handle any disease that he is normally likely to run across. But there is also need for highly trained specialists to develop the underlying principles that the practitioner uses in his daily work and to advise on particularly difficult or unusual problems, just as there is need for specialists in the medical field.

Consequently, the schools are now graduating doctors of philosophy who are intensively trained to handle problems that deal with such matters as the determination of the contents and growth of a forest; methods of cutting to obtain satisfactory current revenues and at the same time assure the reproduction of the forest; organization of logging operations to minimize waste and maximize profits; control of the environment to provide an abundance of food and other necessary conditions for the support of the deer, muskrats, pheasants, or ducks; provision of ample forage for the production of livestock; and maintenance of a forest cover that will control the runoff of water in the interest of water users of all classes.