Search

Teaching awards provide faculty members external validation of their excellence in the classroom and opens pathways for leadership and research collaboration. The objective of this study was to identify barriers and facilitators experienced by faculty members during the nomination process. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 faculty members in agriculture and natural resources to gather information about their experiences during the teaching award nomination process. Barriers experienced during the nomination process included time and effort needed to prepare the nomination package lack of administrative support, lack of awareness of award opportunities, questioning one's own competitiveness, and perceived biases in the award selection process. Factors that facilitated a faculty member submitting a nomination package included a culture of support; demonstrated efforts to improve one's teaching effectiveness; self-confidence, valued external recognition, and persistence; promotion and tenure deadlines; and familiarity with the nomination process. Removing barriers and assisting faculty members during the nomination process requires improved communication about the existence and importance of teaching awards and support from administrators or faculty peers. This support could include teaching workshops, opportunities to participate in the scholarship of teaching and learning, and assistance in editing and preparing a teaching award nomination package.

Many universities and professional associations recognize excellence in teaching with awards; however, research findings on the impact of an award on teaching identity are mixed. The objective of this study was to qualify the impact of receiving a National or Regional United States Department of Agriculture Teaching, Extension, and Research Award (TERA) on teaching identity. Secondarily, this study explored how well award-winning teachers' self-identities and behaviors corresponded with recognized characteristics of excellent teaching. A phenomenological approach utilizing semi-structured interviews and researcher reflexivity was used to gather information from 12 TERA recipients. Findings indicate that faculty members recognized for excellence in teaching demonstrate known characteristics of effective teachers, seek guidance from the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and feel that teaching continues to be less valued than research in their institutional cultures. Results suggest that departmental and college level administrators can foster subcultures that promote teaching excellence through access to professional development opportunities, support for peer mentoring and evaluation, and revised promotion and tenure policies that recognize teaching effectiveness as a productivity metric.

Two faculty mentors maintained weekly journals of their experiences supervising three consecutive cohorts of summer undergraduate research interns, with the objective of recording the faculty mentors' experiences and tracking potential transitions in their experiences across time. One common theme was the importance of creating a mentoring team of other faculty members, university administrators, and departmental staff to assist with the summer interns. One of the foundational experiences during the summer internship was the week-long field trip, which defined each person's position within the research team. One of the largest challenges for the faculty mentors was balancing the needs of interns with different levels of motivation. Overall, as the faculty mentors gained experience and benefited from working as a team, they were able to increase their satisfaction with the success of the internships and maintain their own levels of academic productivity.

Publication patterns of natural resources graduate students from nine U.S. universities were compared across seven decades in an effort to assist graduate students and faculty members in setting realistic expectations for publication. Graduate students steadily increased their level of publication in peer-reviewed journals across the study period. In the 1950s, 0% of doctoral students published their research and by the 2000s, 73% of doctoral students published their research. There was also an increasing temporal trend in the number of co-authors on graduate student publications. In the 1960s, 50% of graduate student publications had two co-authors and in the 2000s, 28% of graduate-student publications had two authors; 29% had three authors; 21% had four authors; 13% had five authors; and 10% had six or more authors. Publications authored by doctoral students received significantly more citations (average of 23.2 citations per publication) than those publications authored by master's students (average of 17.1 citations per publication). As expectations for graduate student publication and ability to work on larger research teams rise, it is important that universities and faculty advisors provide resources and training to allow graduate students to successfully reach these new expectations.

Graduate students are rewarded with better job opportunities if they can demonstrate a productive publishing record. In this article we report on a writing program that generated technical publications in a discipline-based graduate class. Seventeen student authors were interviewed about the influence of the experience on their professional development. For many students the most powerful experience was working as a member of a research team. Master's students benefited from being able to transfer research experience into their thesis programs. Doctoral students stretched the definitions of their disciplines and learned new research methods. One cost of the research project was that less discipline-specific content was covered in the course. Overall, students improved soft skills through participation in the project.

We hypothesized that tree form, recorded in historical public land surveys, would provide a valuable proxy record of regeneration patterns during early-European settlement of North America's eastern deciduous forest. To test this hypothesis, we tallied stem form from witness trees used in land survey records in the southern Appalachian Mountains from 13 counties spanning four physiographic provinces: Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Ridge and Valley, and Cumberland Plateau. A total of 3% of witness trees used in the land surveys were of sprout origin. American basswood (Tilia americana L.) exhibited the highest proportion of sprout-origin trees at 12%. Other overstory species with a high proportion of sprout-origin trees were hickory (Carya sp.), red maple (Acer rubrum L.), and sycamore (Platanus occidentalis L.), all with 6% of stems being from sprout origin. Blue Ridge had significantly more sprout-origin trees compared with the other three physiographic provinces. Forests in the southern Appalachian Mountains during the pre- European settlement period had a suite of disturbances that controlled their growth and regeneration; however, most of these disturbances did not result in large-scale tree mortality, and therefore, sprouts were not an important source of regeneration. Key words: forest disturbance, oak regeneration, eastern deciduous forest, forest structure. Nous avons pose l'hypothese que la forme des arbres notee dans les releves historiques des terres publiques constitue une source indirecte precieuse de donnees sur les patrons de regeneration presents au debut de la colonisation europeenne des forets decidues de l'est de l'Amerique du Nord. Pour tester cette hypothese, nous avons recense la forme de la tige d'arbres temoins dans les releves d'inventaire des terres dans la partie sud des Appalaches, qui couvrent 13 comtes repartis dans quatre provinces physiographiques : Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Ridge and Valley, et Cumberland Plateau. Au total, 3 % des arbres temoins utilises dans l'inventaire des terres provenaient d'un rejet de souche. Le tilleul d'Amerique (Tilia americana L.) etait l'espece ayant la plus forte proportion d'arbres provenant de rejets, soit 12 %. Les autres especes du couvert dominant ayant une forte proportion d'arbres provenant de rejets etaient le caryer (Carya sp.), l'erable rouge (Acer rubrum L.) et le platane (Platanus occidentalis L.), dont 6 % des tiges provenaient de rejets. Il y avait significativement plus d'arbres provenant de rejets dans la region du Blue Ridge comparativement aux autres provinces physiographiques. Les forets dans la partie sud des Appalaches ont subi une sequence de perturbations qui ont influence leur croissance et leur regeneration pendant la periode d'etablissement des premiers colons europeens. Cependant, la plupart de ces perturbations n'ont pas engendre de mortalite des arbres a grande echelle de telle sorte que les rejets de souche n'ont pas ete une source importante de regeneration. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles: perturbation forestiere, regeneration du chene, foret decidue de l'est, structure forestiere., Introduction European settlement of North America provided a unique opportunity to quantify how substantial shifts in human land use impacted terrestrial ecosystems. The environmental conditions prior to European settlement serve [...]

Constructing academic genealogies involves the practice of creating family trees based on doctoral advisors, that is, the advisor-graduate student relationship replaces the father-son relationship. Forestry academic genealogies document the historical development of forestry and quantify the contributions of other disciplines. In this study, the authors researched the academic genealogies of all the tenured faculty members in the Forestry Department at Virginia Tech. The resulting academic genealogies included 122 individuals and individual family trees varied in length from 19 generations spanning 360 years to two generations spanning 8 years. The interdisciplinary history of forestry was demonstrated by the high number of non-forestry doctorates earned and the genealogies included individuals trained in agricultural economics, agronomy, botany, civil engineering, ecology, environmental engineering, environmental science, chemistry, economics, horticulture, medicine, plant physiology, political science, recreation, and soils. In contrast to academic genealogies from other disciplines, most early American forestry programs hired faculty members who lacked doctorates, instead of hiring European-trained foresters, and these gentlemen went on to train doctoral students and develop forestry research programs, even though they lacked doctorates themselves. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.)

Biomass equations are essential for evaluating the climate change mitigation potential of forests through biomass accumulation and carbon sequestration. In northern Iran's Hyrcanian forests, topographic relief is so extreme that developing biomass equations from destructive sampling of trees is physically challenging. In this paper, allometric biomass and leaf area equations were developed for three common Hyrcanian tree species: Oriental beech (Fagus orientalis Lipsky), chestnut-leaved oak (Quercus castaneifolia C.A.Mey.), and common hornbeam (Carpinus betulus L.). A total of 30 trees, ranging in diameter at breast height (DBH) from 21 to 90 cm, were felled and stems, branches, twigs, and leaves from each tree were measured and weighed. Allometric equations for estimating biomass from DBH and height and their combinations were derived. Model comparison and selection were based on [R.sup.2], Akaike's information criterion (AIC), prediction error sums of squares, model standard error estimate (SEE), ΔAIC, and correction factor. The best-fit equations had adjusted [R.sup.2] values between 0.81 to 0.98 and SEE values between 0.351 and 0.681. The allometric equations provide improved methods for predicting forest biomass and carbon storage in Hyrcanian forests from standard forestry measurements, which means these equations may be applied to historical and new forest data. Keywords: allometric equations, biomass, Fagus orientalis, Quercus castaneifolia, Carpinus betulus. Les equations de la biomasse sont essentielles a l'evaluation du potentiel d'attenuation des forets envers les changements climatiques par l'accumulation de la biomasse et la sequestration du carbone. Dans les forets hyrcaniennes du nord de l'Iran, le relief topographique est tellement extreme que de developper des equations de biomasse a partir d'un echantillonnage destructeur des arbres est physiquement difficile. Dans cet article, des equations de biomasse allometrique et de surface foliaire ont ete developpees pour trois especes communes d'arbres de la foret hyrcanienne : l'hetre d'orient (Fagus orientalis Lipsky), le chene a feuille de chataignier (Quercus castaneifolia C.A.Mey.) et le charme commun (Carpinus betulus L.). Trente arbres au total, dont le diametre a hauteur de poitrine (DHP) allait de 21 a 90 cm ont ete abattus et les tiges, les branches, les rameaux et les feuilles ont ete mesures et peses. Les equations allometriques permettant d'estimer la biomasse a partir du DHP et de la hauteur ainsi que de leur combinaison ont ete derivees. La comparaison et la selection du modele etaient basees sur [R.sup.2], le critere d'information d'Akaike (AIC), la prediction de la somme des carres residuelle, le modele d'erreur type d'estimation (ETE), le ΔAIC et le facteur de correction. Les equations de meilleur ajustement presentaient de valeurs de [R.sup.2] ajustees de 0,81 a 0,98 et de ETE de 0,351 a 0,681. Les equations allometriques fournissent des methodes ameliorees permettant de predire la biomasse forestiere et le stockage de carbone de la foret hyrcanienne a partir de mesures forestieres, ce qui signifie que ces equations peuvent etre appliquees a des donnees forestieres historiques ou nouvelles. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles : equations allometriques, biomasse, Fagus orientalis, Quercus castaneifolia, Carpinus betulus., Introduction Forests have become an important sink for atmospheric carbon in regional and global carbon cycles as more land area is converted to forest through natural succession on abandoned agricultural [...]

Forestry and agricultural education programs need to increase their public communication and cross-disciplinary activities. In this article we present a technique, Cross-Disciplinary Peer Education (CDPE), which allowed forestry students to teach student peers from other disciplines about basic forestry principles. Cross-Disciplinary Peer Education is an innovative way to give natural resource and agriculture students (peer educators) the opportunity to educate students from other disciplines (peer learners). In our exploration of CDPE we found (i) peer learners gained exposure to different disciplines and perspectives of the world, and (ii) peer educators improved their communication skills. The primary challenge of CDPE is the additional time required by faculty instructors to prepare for the CDPE experience. (Contains 1 table.)

Copyright of Ecoscience (Ecoscience) is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)