SAF Learning
About Us
The Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation is one of four departments within the College of Natural Resources and Environment at Virginia Tech, and is one of the top programs in forestry in the United States. We seek to discover/develop and pass along the science and practice of forestry and environmental resources management: providing the highest quality education, conducting world-class research, and serving those who rely on those resources. Our desire is to be the “go-to” place for those looking for answers to these pressing and complex forest and environmental questions and challenges at the local, regional, national, and global levels, and to be the “go-to” place for those looking to hire the next generation of practitioners, researchers, and leaders.
Serving an enrollment of approximately 350 undergraduate students, we have five majors with a hands-on, experiential learning focus: Environmental Conservation and Society, Environmental Informatics, Environmental Resource Management, Forestry (Forest Resource Management, Forest Operations and Business, Urban Forestry), and Water: Resources, Policy, and Management. We also have about 50 Ph.D., M.S., and M.F. (Master’s of Forestry) students who work closely with faculty on cutting-edge research while also building their knowledge base through intensive course work. Our top-flight research focuses on uncovering the science needed to manage forests, and protect water other environmental resources. We approach critical forest and environmental resource issues from diverse disciplinary perspectives, from forest management and economic policy to forest soil productivity, biological and ecological sciences, environmental data acquisition and analysis, water resources, human dimensions and recreation resources, urban forest resources and ecology, forest genomics and biotechnology, and agroforestry. Our students and their research are funded through external grants with the National Science Foundation, the USDA, NASA, the US Forest Service, and the Virginia Department of Forestry among other granting agencies and NGOs. We also have strong ties to industry thorough the Forest Productivity Cooperative (FPC), the Forest Modeling Research Cooperative (FMRC), and the Center for Environmental Applications in Remote Sensing (CEARS). Finally, we reach out to the Commonwealth through award-winning Extension/Outreach programs in: Forest Landowner Education, Master Naturalists, Geospatial Education, SHARP loggers, and agroforestry/forest farming.
Staff
Dr. Carolyn Copenheaver
Jennifer Gagnon
