Forestry & Environmental Management

As the 2018-19 academic year is well underway, I thought it would be timely to send you another update on happenings in the faculty.

Our marketing and recruitment programs are continuing to move full steam ahead, and we now have several students contributing to our social media and recruitment activities. As a result of these efforts:

• Our enrolment numbers have grown for the fourth consecutive year.
• Our total number of students has increased by 14% over last year.
• We now have 322 undergraduate students (170 in Forestry and 152 in Environment and Natural Resources) and 114 graduate students.

Our strong partnerships and transfer agreements with several colleges continue to be the main source of new students in our faculty. While transfer agreements have already helped us achieve our total student enrolment target of 340 students by 2019, we currently have an imbalance of transfer vs high school students. As such, we are striving to increase enrolment of high school students. This, as many of you know, is a significant challenge - especially for our forestry program, since many high school students do not know what forestry is or what exciting career opportunities exist.

As alumni, you serve as the faculty’s (and the university’s!) best ambassadors and our most loyal supporters. By sharing your personal experiences with a student, you can help inform and inspire them to pursue a degree in forestry or environment and natural resources at UNB. We have developed an alumni info sheet to provide you with up-to-date information regarding our faculty, which may prove useful when discussing our programs.

Faculty updates

Regarding changes to our faculty membership, it is with a heavy heart that I let those of you who do not yet know that Dr. Marek Krasowski passed away in August 2018. Marek was our faculty’s tree biologist. He was a very effective teacher and researcher, and was actively involved in the faculty’s administrative duties, serving as the director of graduate studies and on numerous committees. He will be missed dearly by all.

With regard to other faculty members, Dr. Rick Cunjak has retired as of August of 2018 and Dr. Erdle will be retiring in June of 2019. We have hired an assistant professor of tree biology (Dr. Loïc D’Orangeville), and we are currently searching for an assistant professor in forest management.

Professional development

We continue to deliver a variety of professional development courses in water quality, GIS and remote sensing (LiDAR) technologies. Over the past year, we have had more than 200 participants in these courses.

Research

With regard to research, our faculty is piloting a new initiative called the Atlantic Forestry Research Collective (AFRC). The AFRC is focused on generating, enhancing and scaling up forestry research in Atlantic Canada. It has been created to answer forest managers’ and stewards’ research questions, help fulfill their forest science public awareness needs and enhance the professional development needs of practitioners across the region. It is guided by a nine-member advisory board with representatives from the entire forestry sector.

To date, we have been awarded a research grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (led by Dr. Ted Needham) to build respectful relationships with 9 First Nations communities, and to enhance the inclusion of traditional knowledge in forest research. We are also working on a large-scale climate change adaptation proposal (led by Dr. Loïc D’Orangeville) that includes multiple faculty members.

This initiative will complement the existing climate change impacts and adaptation project led by myself, Dr. Bourque, Dr. Beckley and Dr. Hennigar that investigates the impacts and adaptation options from climate-induced changes in drought and wind regimes on New Brunswick’s forests.

Additional activities for the AFRC include: meeting with organizations that provide professional development courses in the region to help identify needs and opportunities; and hiring a science writer to summarize and promote research findings in the Atlantic region to the general public. We are currently working on a website and social media plan to be launched in the new year.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our alumni, faculty, staff, students, partners and friends for their continued efforts in making our faculty a wonderful place to teach, research and study.

Sincerely,

Dr. Van Lantz
Dean, Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, NB. E3B 5A3
Tel: (506) 458-7775