The Faculty of Forestry must merge with the arts and science faculty or move to Scarborough campus, says VP and provost Cheryl Misak. The decision comes in the wake of the Towards 2030 report, which shows the faculty as 87 per cent dependent on university funds.
“We’ve desperately wanted to change this situation so that we are no longer a ‘charity case,’ and the way to do that is to grow our undergraduate program,” said forestry dean Tat Smith.
Smith said promoting forestry to undergrads requires a serious re-branding. Last year, six out of 65,000 graduating high school students said they would choose forestry as a program. In a survey commissioned by the forestry faculty in September, grade 11 students ranked forestry as the least attractive faculty name.
The forestry faculty’s undergrad program was shut down 15 years ago. The faculty no longer award the Registered Professional Forester certification. The undergraduate Forest Conservation program, a part of the arts and science faculty, has around 60 students enrolled. The majority of its courses are taught by professors from the forestry faculty.
“The classes are really small, which is awesome,” said Seb Dalgarno, a fourth-year specialist in forest conservation. “If you look at the anti-calendar, forestry profs usually have a 100 per cent re-take rate.” After planting trees for a summer, Dalgarno became interested in forestry and switched into the program with two years in general sciences under his belt. “You have science-based ecological stuff, like tree ID-ing, and then classes about displacement of groups and indigenous communities, other classes which focus on economics, actually figuring out how to manage a forest,” he said.
The interdisciplinary aspect spoke to grade 11 students as well—a high percentage in the study said the description of the subject matter really appealed to them—and Smith hopes to emphasize this when reshaping the faculty’s image.
Smith said that “academic turf” is the primary reason forestry has not been allowed to rebrand itself as a broader, more interdisciplinary area. “There is a turf war between the environmental departments,” he said. “[As a result] we can’t occupy the space that survey says we could.”
“There’s no turf war,” said Misak. “That’s completely wrong.” Misak agreed that the faculty needed to change and attract a much bigger undergraduate base, but said that these goals would be more easily achieved within another faculty.
“Students aren’t entering into faculties of forestry. They are going into more diverse faculties like arts and science or engineering,” Misak said. “So my view is that they would do much, much better if they were in one of those diverse faculties with thousands of students on hand who could look at those great courses.”
Smith questioned Misak’s logic. “Why can’t we do that as a standalone faculty? That point has not been argued to my satisfaction.” He added that merging would result in a loss of status and visibility, as well as “that ability to nurture and develop culture as a faculty.”
For now the future of the faculty is unclear. An external review is underway and Misak anticipates a more comprehensive plan by July 1.
