Undergraduate Forestry Program Re-accredited

The Department of Natural Resource Conservation's undergraduate program in Forest Ecology and Conservation was recently re-accredited by the national Society of American Foresters (SAF) , following a three-day visit by a review team in April and review of the Self-evaluation report prepared by the forestry faculty. The undergraduate forestry program has been accredited by SAF since 1950, and is reviewed for re-accreditation on a ten-year basis. The UMass undergraduate program is one of only three accredited by the SAF in New England (along with UNH and the University of Maine), and leads to a professional forestry degree required for professional forestry licensure in many states. Since Massachusetts is the third most densely populated state in the nation, it is important for foresters to have good "people skills". The SAF reported: " the degree to which human dimensions and communication are incorporated into the professional courses is commendable. Student interviews indicated they understood and appreciated the value and need for these...
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Urban Forestry students competed sucessfully at Student Career Days

On November 13th 2009, five Urban Forestry students competed in the Student Career Days skills competition at TCI Expo in Baltimore. Eliot Beals, Lynda Clifford, Dave Golon, Kyle McCabe, and Vicki Pavao competed in six events against students from colleges across the country. Kyle McCabe won the footlock, belayed speed climb, and chain saw events (winning a new chain saw for his efforts!), and Eliot Beals won the throwline and came in second place in the footlock events. Dave, Lynda, and Vicki all scored well in their events, as well. This is the third year in a row in which the UMass team has successfully competed at Student Career Days, and they were supported by a generous donation from an alumnus of the Urban Forestry program, Andy Felix ('83), who owns a tree care company in Foxboro. ...
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Professor Guy Lanza invited to serve as a Fulbright Senior Specialist

Professor Guy Lanza, Director of the Environmental Science Program in the Department of Natural Resource Conservation has been invited to serve as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Russia next fall. He will travel in the City of Tyumen in South West Siberia to assist faculty and administrators at Tyumen State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences in the development of new interdisciplinary curriculum and research initiatives. Tyumen State University is planning to achieve the status of the Russian National Ecological Research University and is collaborating with several research institutes including several branches of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the areas of ecosystems and community ecology, environmental remediation, and sustainable development. Lanza said that the Tyumen region is both vast in size and environmentally diverse consisting of four natural zones including tundra, forest-tundra, forest, and forest-steppe. Tyumen has been experiencing rapid development, cultural change, and environmental degradation in recent years, largely driven by petroleum and gas development in the...
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Student Chapter of the SAF Field Trip to Wood-fired Electric Power Plant

The UMass student chapter of the Society of American Foresters organized a field trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Friday, 23 October, to tour the Schiller Wood-fired electric power plant, part of the Northern Wood Power Project of Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH). Previously, PSNH's Schiller Station in Portsmouth ran three 50MW coal-fired steam boilers that were built in the 1950s. PSNH has now replaced one of these coal boilers with a new fluidised-bed boiler burning whole-tree wood chips and other clean low-grade wood materials. The project was one of the largest renewable energy projects in the US, and one of the first to replace fossil fuel generation with an equivalent amount of cleaner electric power. Every year, PSNH used to buy about 400,000t of low-sulphur coal to fuel Schiller Station's three boilers. The wood fired plant powers around 50,000 New Hampshire homes while reducing coal use by over one third, or 130,000t annually. That will reduce emissions by thousands of tons...
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Beth Noveck, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the United States to Present Seminar

Beth Noveck, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the United States to give presentation on "Open Government: Transparency, Participation, and Colloboration"    Friday, October 30, 2009 • 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm    Isenberg School of Management • 108 More information is at http://www.umass.edu/umhome/events/articles/93285.php...
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