School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
Faculty Meeting Minutes
November 13, 2012, 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Anderson Hall Room 22
CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order by Director Tom DeLuca at 10:35 a.m. Bruce Bare moved David Ford
seconded the motion that the faculty approve the minutes of the October 23, 2012 Faculty Meeting. The faculty
voted to approve these minutes by a vote of 32 Approve, 0 Oppose, 5 Abstain of 45 eligible to vote faculty.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
• The Institute of Forest Resources has announced a call for pre-proposals. The proposals must address
certain criteria and have a budgetary limit. The pre-proposal must be no more than 3 pages and is due on
November 15, 2012.
• If you are interested in teaching Summer Quarter, please contact Nevada.
• Scheduling for annual Work Planning sessions has begun. Please update your teaching profiles through
Spring Quarter 2014 as soon as possible. You may access the database here:
https://www.cfr.washington.edu/pmt/planTeaching.aspx. Please answer the email(s) you have received
from Nevada to schedule your meeting.
• The Winter Quarter Grad Seminar to be led by Dr. DeLuca that was announced at a previous faculty
meeting has been scheduled. It will be Wednesday afternoons from 4:00-5:00 p.m. in Anderson 223.
Several faculty and others have agreed to provide presentations. Graduate credit is available. First two
questions predominantly our own faculty. Primary objective will be to get us together. Refreshment
reception afterwards in student lounge on other side of building.
• Another co-sponsored symposium between the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and the
University of British Columbia will take place on December 7, 2012. See attached poster for details and
encourage your graduate students to participate.
• A call for nominations for four endowed faculty professorships has been sent. If you haven’t responded and
wanted to nominate yourself or someone else you have until the November 15, 2012 to do this.
• Please review the attached Winter and Spring teaching schedule matrix which has been updated since the
Strategic Planning Retreat. Notify Student Services and the Director’s office of any changes.
• Winter Quarter Research Assistant hiring deadline is November 15, 2012. Please provide Student Services
with the necessary paperwork to hire or continue to employ your students.
• Sabbatical applications for next year are now being accepted.
• Susan Bolton was selected as an alternate at large member of the College Council. Terry Klinger was
elected as the at large member.
• Tom is now forwarding student and post doc opportunities to Student Services who are posting on their blog
and the College of the Environment employment list. Go to the web to find these opportunities.
FACULTY ACTIONS
• Proposed Emeritus Professor Faculty Appointment
Jim Fridley moved and Ernesto Alvarado seconded the motion that the faculty approve the appointment of
Peter Schiess as Emeritus Professor. Dr. Schiess started out at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
receiving a degree in Forest Engineering in 1968. He spent some time at the Swiss Federal Forest Research
Station in Soil Physics and then came to the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. from the
University of Washington College of Forest Resources in Microclimatology in 1975. His career at the
University of Washington as a faculty started in 1977. He was brought in with two other faculty to
revitalize the then “Logging Engineering Program.” He has been involved in numerous research projects
and wrote a book for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations entitled “Road Design
and Construction in Sensitive Watersheds.” This book was subsequently translated into French and Spanish
and remains in use. He has been actively involved with the Precision Forestry Cooperative and would like
to maintain his contacts after his retirement on December 31, 2012. He will continue to chair a student’s
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PhD committee until their degree is completed. The faculty voted to approve this appointment. The results
of the vote are in file in the Director’s office.
PRESENTATION
• No presentations are scheduled.
DISCUSSION
• Faculty were encouraged to attend the graduate student symposium. A faculty member wondered if faculty
should be assigned to give feedback to presenters. It seems that faculty could do an hour or two of that to
support the students. Another faculty member wondered if it could be a part of the Merit process to record
attendance at student events such as this symposium or the undergraduate capstone presentations. There is
nothing more important that our students. We are all busy but this seems like something that is one day out
of the year and extremely important. Dr. DeLuca would like to support this as a culture and suggests we
keep working with both positive reinforcement and perhaps some shaming.
• General discussion extending from the action item and the teaching matrix. We are losing the capacity to
teach things that are required in our curriculum. An area that we are really lacking is forest operations
which is slightly different than forest engineering, but covers aspects of it. Does Civil and Environmental
Engineering do anything like this? Road engineering and soil mechanics will certainly covered there, but
they don’t cover the engineering associated with cable logging or things like that. Area that we really lack
is the whole area of forest operations which is slightly different than forest engineering broader but
necessarily in-depth. Also not covered are planting or any other form of silviculture. Dr. Schiess taught our
operations course. We have a SAF accredited Masters and we prepare students for SAF certification—
these courses are needed, whether it’s from civil engineering or a part time lecturer or whatever. As far as
hiring a faculty, one could broaden a job description to include natural resources engineering. Water shed
and forest restoration is going on and much of these two areas is forest engineering. In fact, creating a wet
land is practical engineering. If we are producing professional people and we do have a professional
masters, we do need to think about how we are going to cover the courses necessary. REEH is proposing a
course in engineering to help students solve problems. A sustainability science cluster hire to incorporate
somebody who could handle forest operations and road restoration and roll up roads and forest restoration
was going to be proposed, but the polar ice and freshwater cluster hires are being moved forward. Is there
any opportunity to get someone to come n and teach a course for us who might be employed by the Forest
Service or someone from Oregon state? These are short term fixes. In talking with people from Oregon
State; we might be able to share certain expertise that we lack or that they lack. Oregon State is sharing
with University of British Columbia. We also need to think about distant learning courses. All forestry
schools are going to be forced with the same kind of problems—the need for the specialties but not having
the capacity to maintain the positions full time. Peter’s position will be parked for 7.5 years in College of
the Environment. Because we didn’t park previous positions, Peter’s position will be parked longer. Idea of
natural resource engineering sounds more “21st Century. We should be exploring joint appointment with
fisheries. This discussion begs the question of our having a discussion about faculty positions and to revisit
the portfolios. Hiring an entomologist or forest protection or disturbance ecologist has been discussed. Can
we link Advancement with faculty positions? Are there people we can go to get creative to have the cash to
fill the positions? Commissioner of Lands is interested in bugs right now. Is it possible to push the
legislature. Can we use the insects problem to get more support from the legislature?
• A discussion of the “forest protection” faculty hire took place. Franklin’s feeling is what we really need this
era is a course on disturbance ecology in both managed and natural forest. The organisms do good things
and bad things. He’ll be talking with Gara next week. He will also talk to Edmonds as well. One way or
another we should put something on the table for students spring quarter. Not a forest protection course in
the classic sense but about disturbance ecology. Dealing with insects, disease, and wind. Don’t need fire as
much because we have a course on fire ecology and management. Tree mortality might need to be in the
title. Talking about a course--“Disturbance ecology and tree mortality in forest ecosystems.” He wants
feedback if there is broad approach. He envisions the target student as a grad student without much
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background. He didn’t think there should be any prerequisites because if the course is accessible might
draw a broader set of students doing resource management. Something like this could be attractive. Would
not need significant background to take it. What Ford feels that the students need is detail about the
organisms themselves. We have a broad number of broad courses. When they go into the field do we meet
the requirements for the MFR? At some point need the students need to understand how organisms function
and more than one species. Landscape architecture teaches disturbance. Any new faculty member that we
bring in has to have organismal expertise. Strengthen the understanding of organisms in the environment.
We are teaching ecology in many different courses. The students don’t have the detailed understanding on
the organismal level.
• A discussion of the “Fresh Water Sciences” cluster hire proposal took place. Soil physics is needed, could
one of these persons have this expertise? This hire is part of the Dean’s initiative. Polar ice was the other.
Freshwater encompasses four faculty hires. One will be in Tacoma, one will be in engineering, and one in
CoEnv. The fourth is supported by provost. Innovation networks work on pilot projects then put together
big grants. The job description will be a broad call in areas of interest, and the search committee will see
who applies and in what areas of expertise. A giant search committee has been formed which would break
up once they had applications. Faculty wondered if social science was included? Dr. Lawler reported that
he took this question to the committee and there was no interest among the committee members in including
social sciences as one of the broad areas of interest. What about urban water? What would these people
teach—we won’t know until we know what disciplines the applicants work. The hires could end up in any
of the CoEnv departments. The hires could be joint. This is what the dean is pushing for. Dr. Lawler wants
feedback, e.g. Is this process and approach serving us well? He wants to take discussion and dialogue to the
Dean. We are supportive partly because of the provost support. It appears that this initiative fosters
interdisciplinary research. But is this the process we want? Has the dean approved the level of appointment
at the assistant professor level unless there is an outstanding applicant at the associate level. The focus is
having the initiative sponsors and new hires to pull together as a team. See the initiative as a giant team or
set of teams. Want close senior faculty mentorship. Supposed to collaborate with themselves and the 20 or
so across campus team of more senior faculty. Junior faculty are at risk in tenure process with joint hires.
There needs to be some assurance for them that the tenure process will be carefully laid out for them. Need
to pay attention because it is an incredible risky proposition for tenure track position with total
interdisciplinary activity. We don’t yet have the structure to do this. Post docs or established tenured
faculty are the most suited for interdisciplinary work. The new hires will need to be given a great deal of
latitude for PMT standards.
UPCOMING MEETING
The next School of Environmental and Forest Sciences Faculty Meeting will be on Tuesday, November 27,
2012 from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. in Anderson Hall Room 22.
ADJOURNMENT
The meeting adjourned at 11:35 a.m.
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