New Building Befits Storied Program

Charles Strauss, director of the School of Forest Resources, believes the $30.5 million new building will help Penn State attract the best and brightest faculty and students to the forestry, wildlife and fisheries science, and wood products curriculums.

Just shy of a century old, Penn State’s School
of Forest Resources moved into a $30.5 million new building this year, befitting its storied heritage as a highly regarded leader in educating professionals in forest management, wood products development, and wildlife and fisheries science.

The school was established in 1907 as the Department of Forestry at The Pennsylvania State College. In 1929, the program absorbed the State Forest Academy that had been established in 1903 at Mont Alto by Joseph Rothrock—considered the father of Pennsylvania Forestry—specifically to train professional foresters for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The objectives of the school at
Penn State were broader—to prepare foresters for professional careers regardless of where they might find employment.

“The School of Forest Resources at Penn State has a rich history and has developed a well-deserved reputation for graduating professionals who rise to the top of their fields—so it only seems right that we will start our second 100 years in this beautiful new facility,” says Charles Strauss, director of the school. “This building will meet the needs of the forestry, wildlife, and fisheries professions and the wood products industry for well-educated students and state-of-the-art facilities for research and training.

“We have strong undergraduate and graduate programs with more than 400 students who will benefit from this new structure,” Strauss adds. “The new building will help us to recruit and retain the highest-caliber faculty and students, educate students with quality teaching facilities and contemporary programs, and provide dynamic research and specialized technology transfer to forest-based industries and resource-management interests.”

The new structure on the corner of Bigler Road and Park Avenue has four stories, plus a lower floor, and encompasses nearly 95,000 square feet, which is 50 percent larger than the space the school formerly occupied in Ferguson Building and the Forest Resources Laboratory. Almost half the building will be used for research and teaching, and outreach facilities account for nearly a third. Offices for faculty, staff, and graduate students make up the remainder.

There are four teaching laboratories devoted to forest soils and water, wildlife and forestry, fisheries, and wood products; two technology classrooms with 52- and 73-seat capacities; the 150-seat Steimer Auditorium; and three computer labs—two for undergraduates and a geographic information systems lab for graduate students.

Research facilities include the Schatz Tree Genetics Center and other forestry labs devoted to silviculture, ecology, soils, economics, and forest management; fisheries labs assigned to systematics, physiology/toxicology, ecology, and image analysis; water resources labs devoted to hydrology, water quality, and snow/ice studies; wildlife labs involving ecology, management, biometrics, and habitat studies; and wood products labs tied to wood chemistry, wood physics, business, marketing, operations research, and wood products evaluations.

The building also features outreach facilities, such as a video teleconference room with a 20-seat capacity, five meeting rooms with state-of-the-art communication systems, and a publication production room.

The School of Forest Resources’ offerings grew increasingly diverse during its first century, according to Strauss. The wood products undergraduate curriculum was added in 1941, and a wildlife and fisheries science curriculum was started in 1981. “Today, the school continues its three missions of resident education, research, and outreach in forest science, wildlife and fisheries science, and wood products with 45 faculty members, 21 staff members, 90 graduate students, and 315 undergraduate students,” he says. “For the first time in the school’s history, all three professional programs are under one roof.”

The school has come a long way since the early 1900s when it was housed in a two-story frame building named Hemlock Hall. Sometimes called “the Shack,” it became better known as “ Fergie’s Woodshed”—in honor of professor John Ferguson, the forestry department’s first director—due to its construction of hemlock timber rather than brick. It was situated in a field between Curtin and Pollock roads, near the walk to Recreation Hall. In 1940, the forestry department moved into the familiar Ferguson Building, a three-story brick edifice still in use.

The School of Forest Resources will celebrate its centennial the weekend of April 27–29, 2007.

— Jeff Mulhollem