Forest Industry Lecture Series
Chris Ward, 91st FILS speaker, March 2024
Brad Pinno, 91st FILS Academic Committee, March 2024
Poster presentation, March 2024
Poster presentation, March 2024
Poster judges, working hard to consider all the posters, March 2024
Attendees at the FILS reception, March 2024
View more photos from March 2024 in the gallery
Most recent FILS:
Linda Nagel leads the Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change Network (ASCC) aimed at bringing together forest practitioners and scientists to co-develop adaptive forest management practices in the face of climate change. This high-impact research and outreach project is translating climate adaptation theory into practice, with 14 research sites across North America, and includes over 100 partners. Linda is currently Professor and Dean of the S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State University, USA. She previously served on the faculty at Michigan Technological University, the University of Minnesota where she was also Director of the Cloquet Forestry Center and the Hubachek Wilderness Research Center, and Colorado State University where she was Department Head. She has received awards for teaching excellence, efforts toward diversity and inclusion in natural resources, outreach and service to forestry professionals including the National Advanced Silviculture Program for the United States Forest Service, and leadership of the ASCC Network for its contributions and broad impact to forest science and management.
Please click the photo above OR this link to watch Linda's seminar.
Questions? Contact Stacy Bergheim, FILS Coordinator, Department of Renewable Resources at (780) 492-0447 or email: fils@ualberta.ca
FILS History
The Forest Industry Lecture Series (FILS) began and developed as a collaborative event by members of the forestry community in Alberta to enrich the forestry program at the University of Alberta. The first forestry class enrolled in Fall of 1970, initiated as a faculty program through the vision of Fenton MacHardy, then Dean of Agriculture. In 1975, Allan A. Warrack, then Minister of Lands and Forests in the new Peter Lougheed government, made an offer to Dean MacHardy, saying that he had done well in developing the forestry program, but students needed enrichment through speakers from outside who could bring in fresh insights. The offer was that his department would match any outside funds the faculty could raise to support a position or lecture series.
Several of the larger forest products companies in western Canada immediately responded and for two years, 1975 and 1976, this new outside funding supported two visiting lecturers: Maxwell MacLaggan and Desmond I. Crossley, whose expertise were respectively: forest industry, logging and forest products; silviculture and forest management.
In the meantime, Arden A. Rytz encouraged the sawmilling and plywood industries to add their support through the Alberta Forest Products Association (AFPA), of which he was executive director. Rytz was a forester, graduating from UBC after wartime service in southeast Asia. This collaborative approach to shared funding enables this lecture series to achieve the success it enjoys today.
The first designated Forest Industry Lecture was in 1977 by the Canadian, internationally respected forester Ross Silversides, who spoke on industrial forestry in a changing Canada. The university and the Department of Renewable Resources, in particular, deeply appreciate the support of its many sponsors.
The above information was written
by the late Peter Murphy.