Let me begin by saying my perspective about Purdue University and its Department of Forestry and Natural Resources is not neutral. For I hold both in high esteem, as I do the School of Agriculture, especially for their respective very real and very strong commitments to science and technology.

I took my position as head of the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources on June 1, 1988, arriving the day before in my Toyota pickup with a U-Haul trailer loaded with books and a variety of things either necessary or useful in academic administration. My wife and dog came several weeks later.

Of course, before I took the job, the dean and directors of the School of Agriculture had identified areas of concern with the department such as the graduate program, outside financial support, and relationships with State agencies, clientele groups (industry), and the administration. More detail was needed, however. So, during a faculty retreat in August 1988, a pairwise-comparison technique was used in ranking identified departmental issues in terms of which provided the best growth opportunities.

The highest seven opportunities were ranked in the order below:

1. Faculty staffing

2. Extramural research support

3. Laboratory facilities

4. Graduate and undergraduate enrollment

5. Technician support

6. Relations with appropriate state agencies and client groups

7. Relations with the administration of the School of Agriculture

Strategies were developed to seize these opportunities. Goals and objectives were developed as were metrics to assess progress. In turn, these measures were incorporated into the reward system. Sounds simple, but it is not; it takes a lot of time, patience, and effort. It is also a continuing process.

Sixteen (16) years later, the following accomplishments can be listed. Unequivocally, this was a collective effort. No one could have done it by him- or herself alone.

• Expansion and enhancement of departmental facilities by renovation and expansion of Pfendler Hall ($16.0 million), construction of the Wright Forestry Center ($4.0 million), construction and expansion of the Aquaculture Facility, and remodeling of all laboratories in the Forestry and the Forest Products Buildings;

• Application and integration of strategic approach to planning in departmental decision making, including preparation and use of a departmental mission and goals statement, a departmental short- and long-term plan, a departmental staffing plan, with strategic planning integrated with annual performance evaluations;

• Emphasis on the basic sciences, notably ecology and genetics, and greater application and use of spatial data analysis technologies;

• Many fold increase in external funding for departmental research (from $179,603 in FY 1988/89 to $4.1 million in FY 2003/04);

• Hiring of nineteen (19) new faculty members in tenure-track positions and over a five-fold increase in the size of the professional staff;

• Increase in the size of the departmental budget by 2.6 times (from $3.0 million in FY 1988/89 to $7.7 million in FY 2004/05);

• Revision of departmental undergraduate curricula;

• Significant growth in student credit hours generated by departmental courses;

• Increase in the number and size of departmental endowments and holdings of forest property;

• Expansion of outreach programs in wildlife management, nursery management, forest regeneration, land-use planning, and leadership development, while maintaining a strong program in forest management; • Establishment and use of a departmental External Advisory Council;

• Greater participation in international education programs facilitated by signing of long-term agreements with Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) among others;

• Increased diversity of faculty, staff, and graduate students; and

• College status for the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant program Faculty, staff, and students have received many university-wide and national recognitions. For example:

• Jamie Thompton in 1996 and Ben Hasse in 2001 received the G.A. Ross for Outstanding Graduating Male Student;

• Dr. W. R. Chaney received the Charles B. Murphy Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching;

• Dr. W. L. Mills, Jr. received the Richard MacDowell Outstanding Academic Counselor Award (2003);

• Dr. Robert K. Swihart was recognized as a Faculty Scholar in 2003, one of ten such scholars in the School of Agriculture;

• Jane Alexander received the Outstanding Service to Students Award (2004);

• Martha “Marty” Brown received the Rose Award for Distinguished Service to Purdue University (2001);

• John R. “Jack” Seifert received the Public Service Award from the Association of Consulting Foresters in 2000 and the Conservationist of- the-Year Award from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources in 2003;

• Six (6) alumni, namely, L. David Mech (1995), Michael B. Strunk (1996), Thomas W. Hoekstra (1997), John S. Castrale (2000), Burnell C. Fisher (2001), and Scott A. Jamieson (2004) received the Distinguished Agricultural Alumni Award in the years shown in parentheses.

These accomplishments and recognitions are all good. Several of the accomplishments have become departmental strengths, indicated by their being written in italics.

If asked to conduct a SWOT analysis — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats — of the department today, I would assess it as follows.

• Quality and extent of facilities and equipment

• Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center

• Institutionalized application of strategic planning

• Size of the graduate program and the quality of its students

• Funding, including the number, size, and annual earnings from departmental endowments and forest properties (Note: I would estimate that the market value of these endowments and properties is about $90 million.)

• External relations

• Visibility of the department within the School of Agriculture and the Purdue University community

• The reputation and strength of Purdue University in science, technology, engineering, and agriculture • Involvement in international programs and activities

• Collegial behavior of the departmental faculty

• General quality of the faculty and support staff

• Seeming reluctance or perhaps inability of a few components of the department — a very few — to work together in a common direction

• Name of the department, which conflicts with another, sizable educational program in the School of Agriculture and which does not indicate accurately what either they are or aspire to be

• Collaborative opportunities with other academic units on campus because of administration support for collaborative and interdisciplinary work

• Addressing the research and technology needs of the wood products industries

• Spousal hiring in the University

• Interest in hardwood tree improvement and conservation genetics

• Improved coordination of discovery (research) with engagement (outreach) activities

• Decline in interest by the general public in the natural resource sciences, specifically, and science, generally

• Decline in undergraduate enrollment

• Decline in graduate enrollment

• Loss of disciplinary core faculty

• Cost of operating some facilities

• Losing good staff

• Stagnation of external funding support

Viable academic units want to grow and become better. They pursue excellence, and a strategy for the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources continuing on its path or trajectory to pre-eminence is:

• Achieve and maintain undergraduate enrollment within a range of 300 to 330 students by — Fully participating in and facilitating the School of Agriculture student recruitment program, increasing high school student awareness in the state of opportunities in the natural resource sciences and professions, making more imaginative, timely use of scholarships, and

• developing and offering an interdisciplinary curriculum in natural resource planning;

• increase graduate enrollment with high quality students to about 85 students by — more active, focused recruiting, timely offering of assistantships, and aggressive pursuit by faculty of funding for graduate stipend support.

• Increase outside funding support by encouraging and providing incentives to faculty for participation in collaborative grant writing across departments and schools;

• Augment the visibility and scientific credentials of the Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center by its scientists being successful in receiving competitive grants in genetics research and publishing in high quality, peer-reviewed journals;

• Intensify engagement in the state by — focusing on the wood products industries, wildlife interests, natural resource professionals, and woodland owners, concentrating on delivering educational programs in —

– forest ecology and management,

– wildlife ecology and management,

– leadership development,

– rights-of-way vegetation management,

– urban forestry,

– timber processing and utilization, and

– wood furniture and cabinet manufacturing; and featuring the departmental properties as places to convene and to learn and demonstrate knowledge in natural resource sciences, technologies, and management.

• Change the name of the department to one that unambiguously indicates who it is, what it does, and what it aspires to be.

PROGRAM INTEGRATION

Implied in the above strategy are five programs: undergraduate education, graduate education, research, outreach, and service (to the university, state government, and scientific and professional societies). How should they stand relative to one another?

My answer has been and will continue to be: “They are all important, and while at any given moment one or two may be more important than the others, they must be integrated and balanced with one another. Programmatic balance is essential, and very realistically, that balance may have to be adjusted from time to time.

A great academic department cannot be solely a teaching program or a research program, or an outreach (extension) program. It takes all three and clear recognition of the importance of graduate education, which may be the best single measure of scholarly excellence in higher education because it is the effective interface between research and teaching.

So what about service? A viable service program is essential to an academic department because it is part of the academic community, in which it must play an active part. An example to illustrate this point happened several years ago, as I chaired an external evaluation team of a forestry program of a very prestigious university. After examining the evaluation documents and interviewing the faculty, staff, and students, the team and I gave our report to the provost, the chief academic officer of the university. I said to the provost: “You have a good program with a great history with several faculty nationally and internationally recognized.” I paused and the provost looked at me and, after several moments of reflection, said: “That may be so, but the forestry faculty has not articulated itself to the University community here at _________.” What he meant was the faculty had not communicated to the university community what it was doing, what it had accomplished, and why it was important. They did not have “standing” in the community and, hence, were of marginal value and expendable.

The same applies to service to State government. If an academic department has the capability to assist State agencies or the legislative branch and does not provide it if it has the opportunity to do so, there is a problem. Effectively, public research universities are part of State government.

There “mission” is to provide educational and research services, which is funded, in part, from state and federal tax dollars. If they are to have standing, value, public research universities, including all their components, must be an active part of the community that comprises “State government.”

Similarly, academic departments of higher education institutions are parts of various scientific and professional communities, and they must play an active role in them to have credibility in those communities. Yes, service is important! And it must be part of the balance of programs the academic department delivers.

What applies to an academic department applies to individual faculty. Each has an undergraduate teaching, graduate education, research, outreach, and service responsibility. Although some disagree, balance is necessary not only in departmental programming, but in individual faculty effort as well.

VISION FOR THE DEPARTMENT

The foregoing strategy is consistent with and would serve to implement a departmental vision statement prepared and circulated for comment in March 2004. It is printed below in italics.

The Department of Forestry and Natural Resources will be internationally recognized and respected as a center of learning, discovery, and engagement in forestry, wildlife, fisheries, wood products manufacturing, and natural resources planning.

Necessary requirements for success in achievement of this vision are:

• Discovery, learning, and engagement programs that command international attention for their quality, relevance, depth, and scope;

• Undergraduate curricula deeply rooted in science;

• A Ph.D. graduate education, which, when completed, provides employment opportunities among the first rank of universities and public and private research institutions;

• Human and intellectual diversity;

• Active participation in interdisciplinary and collaborative efforts;

• Frequent and regular exchanges of faculty and students from universities of the first rank inside and outside the U.S.