Statement of Research and Teaching Interests
Patrick Asante
Research Interest
I learnt from my graduate supervisors that research is one of the highest forms of creativity in a
faculty member’s life besides teaching. The research ideas and the papers that get published are
solely faculty member’s creation. The reward of seeing one’s work in print and his/her name
referenced in other people’s works is immeasurable. Above all, there is greater joy in sharing
one’s research with the public. This is what motivates me and gets me interested in research.
In a broad outline, my research interests lie in the areas of Forest Activity Scheduling, Forest
Economics, Integrated Resource Management, Optimization and Simulation Modeling, Policy
Development, Supply Chain Management, Carbon Management, Management Science and
Operations Research. My interest in this area of research dates back to my undergraduate years
when I developed the passion for working with numbers. My first taste of actually doing research
was at the University of New Brunswick where I studied under the supervision of the late Mark
S. Jamnick, one of the respected experts in Forest Management Science and Operations
Research. For my master’s thesis (A method of Analyzing Alternative Harvest Blocking Patterns
and Road Network Designs), I built an economic optimization model to solve a spatial harvest
scheduling and road network design problem. Experienced gained from this work contributed in
a small way to the development of Woodstock and Crystal (now Stanley).
My Ph.D. dissertation, under the supervision of Glen W. Armstrong and Vic Adamowicz, was a
collection of four papers that explored the economics of forest carbon sequestration and optimal
harvest decision, considering carbon storage in three major carbon pools: biomass, dead organic
matter and wood product. The first three papers used a dynamic programming approach to
determine the optimal harvest decision for a forest stand in the boreal forest of western Canada
that provides both timber harvest volume and carbon sequestration services. The last paper used
analytical model to confirm the findings in the first three papers that showed, optimal rotation
age is dependent on the carbon stocks in the dead organic matter and wood product pools.
Why is this area of research important? It is important because global climate change has
emerged as a major scientific and public policy issue. Climate change is more than just a
warming trend. Increasing temperatures may lead to changes in many aspects of the climate,
such as wind patterns, the amount and type of precipitation, and the frequency of severe weather
events that may be expected to occur in an area. These in turn can have significant effects on
functioning ecosystems, the viability of wildlife, as well as human welfare. It is widely
recognized that Canada’s forests are expected to play an important role in the global carbon
cycle by sequestering and storing carbon. It is this role of forests in climate change that makes
this area of research important. I am particularly interested in investigating the impact of carbon
credit trading on the behaviour of a forestry firm. I am also interested in understanding how
alternative carbon incentive systems, property rights and policy mechanisms will affect forest
management decisions and other forest values. If forests are to make a meaningful contribution
to mitigating the effects of greenhouse gas induced climate change, without compromising other
values, policy and implementation options must be chosen carefully.
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Current Research
My recent studies have focused on the application of dynamic programming approach to
determine the optimal harvest decision for a forest stand that provides both timber harvest
volume and carbon sequestration services. In one of my papers titled; Carbon sequestration and
the optimal forest harvest decision: A dynamic programming approach considering biomass and
dead organic matter, I used dynamic programming as an optimization technique to show that
while optimal harvest age is relatively insensitive to carbon stocks in dead organic matter, initial
carbon stock levels significantly affect economic returns to carbon management. A landowner
with high initial carbon stock levels will likely not participate in the carbon market proposed in
the Kyoto Protocol. To some readers, this finding may be counter-intuitive as the storage of
carbon in forests is often considered to be a benefit. However, because of the decomposition of
dead organic matter, forest stands can be a net carbon source for several years after stand
initiation (Asante et al., 2011). I am also currently working on a related paper titled, carbon
sequestration and the optimal forest harvest decision under alternative carbon stock baselines.
Future Research
I would like to see my current research take on a new dimension that includes clean energy (e.g.
bio-energy power generation), and joint production of timber and carbon. This is because, as an
instructor in Clean Energy, I was fortunate to receive a lot of training and exposer to the inner
workings of the Clean Energy Industry. The exposure showed me a lot of linkages between
Clean Energy and Carbon Sequestration and I hope there will be opportunities to collaborate
with other researchers to do some work in bio-energy and biological carbon capture and storage.
It is also my hope that my focused research interests and broad technical experiences will enable
me to establish a strong research program that attracts the interest of students, and develops into
collaborative relationships with other faculty and institutions. Furthermore, both academic and
commercial interest in Carbon Management and Clean Energy is growing. Consequently, I
expect considerable opportunities to obtain outside funding. My initial objective shall be to write
grant proposals that build upon my doctoral research in order to aggressively pursue both
Provincial/Federal Government and Forest Industry sponsorship. Specifically, my goal is to
obtain funding to extend my research in three related areas, these are: (1) Economics of Climate
Change Adaptation and Forest Management; (2) Carbon Management and Clean Energy; and (3)
Developing a bio-resource information management system. Increasingly, there is considerable
interest in the sustainable utilization of BC’s rich bio-resources. A great deal of effort has been
devoted to the science supporting bio-refining, the development of biomaterials, nanotechnology,
bio-energy, etc. In order to promote investment in, and development of, the bio economy, there is
critical need to assess the extent of BC’s natural endowment. Further, as the province seeks to
balance competing land use demands, knowledge on the extent and type of bio-resources
available will better position the province for long-term sustainable growth. The results from this
study will serve as a guide to policy, business and local decision-making related to the bioeconomy.
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Teaching Statements
As a lay minister in a local church, I acquired a unique sense of my ability to guide others to a
common understanding of my point-of-view, and to re-experience my own process of learning
through others. Thus, I bring to my teaching a natural empathy and enthusiasm that has nearly
always earned me the respect, as well as captured the attention of my students. I enjoy teaching
and have a great respect and appreciation for the effort that it takes to be an excellent teacher.
My teaching philosophy is to use techniques that challenge students to develop a strong personal
motivation to learn, to recognize the importance of learning from each other in addition to
learning from the instructor, and to leave my course with knowledge that will help them in their
future endeavors. I see my role as providing students with a window into the real world that
exists outside the classroom as well as developing problem-solving and quantitative skills that
they can take back into the world. However, this is a very difficult task that requires enthusiasm
and knowledge of the topics, coupled with an interest and ability to develop personal
relationships with students. This is particularly important at the undergraduate level. I believe
that teaching involves guiding students through the learning and growing processes. Hence, one
of my goals is to be vigilant to the broader needs of my students, while retaining realistic
expectations regarding my own time, and the varying commitment levels and abilities of
individual students.
As an instructor in forest management science, my goal is to challenge and support my students,
in pursuit of three learning goals: motivate students to learn to think in new ways using new parts
of their brain that are not yet fully developed; develop an understanding of techniques used for
comparison and selection of alternative natural resource management activities; and develop
competence in the application of these techniques. For the majority of my students, the semester
spent in my classroom will be their first and last experience doing management science. Yet,
these students will have to learn techniques used by renewable resource managers for
management of wildland areas for single or multiple outputs and problems of defining optimality
when confronted with competing uses and multiple outputs. I want my students to leave my
classroom with basic operation research skills as well as motivate them to develop competence in
the application of these techniques. How do I motivate my students? I integrate motivation into
the course design. For example, I use video games in testing their understanding of techniques
used for comparison and selection of alternative natural resource management activities. To me
video games are really just a series of tests, but unlike most university tests they are designed to
be intrinsically motivating. I make sure these games follow a narrative: in other words, I make
sure they are more fun by giving them a story line or having them relate to a problem that will
motivate them. Wise and DeMars (2005) determined that, on average, motivated students
outperformed unmotivated students by one-half a standard deviation. There are so many ways to
increase motivation with encouragement, rewards, or recognition that do not raise anxiety. For
example, financial rewards can motivate some students to excel. At the University of Alberta,
there is a financial reward for the student who gets the highest grade in Forest Management
Science.
I believe that the traditional passive method of lecturing students is less effective than active
learning in developing higher-order cognitive skills. Delivering content alone has virtually no
effect on students’ beliefs about the world. Students can memorize data that conflict with their
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beliefs, but without active engagement with the new material, in the form of discussions, debates,
projects, and hands-on application, they do not really confront the implications of the new
content. In 2005, when I had the privilege of teaching Forest Management Science for the first
time, I discovered that some of my students were very good at memorizing but not at learning to
understand. Those students did well on my quizzes, as they were able to recite formulas but left
my courses with little ability to solve problems, virtually no conceptual knowledge, and certainly
no love of Forest Management Science. This experience made me change the way students are
examined in my class (students are allowed to use notes on one sheet of letter-seized paper as a
reference). Also, I discovered that improving the quality of my lectures alone did not improve
student learning, so I created a new method of peer instruction that begins with giving students a
reading before class. In class I asked students to think about a question, then to answer, and then
to convince their classmates of the right answers. I then asked students to answer the question
again and provide an explanation before starting the process over with a new question. I found
that even when I never worked a problem in class, I could improve students’ ability to solve
problems by allowing them to practice on each other.
Traditionally, there has been a major discrepancy between how we do management science and
how we teach management science. In most forest science labs, students carry out lab activities
by following step by step directions printed in the lab manual. Students do not experience the joy
of discovery since every step of the experiment, including expected results, is explicitly stated,
requiring little creative thought. In my labs I take a different approach. I use an inquiry-based lab
curriculum, centering on the principle that students should actually do management science
themselves. Doing management science entails defining a management problem, and addressing
the problem through operation research techniques, and interpreting the findings. An inquirybased curriculum offers many opportunities for active learning, creating an atmosphere in which
students must take responsibility for their learning.
I have two benchmarks for determining that my objectives for students learning are met: that
students are able to convey operation research concepts in everyday language; and that students
are able to use basic knowledge and skills as building blocks to tackle more complex problems.
Often this requires that I use more unusual means of evaluation to determine whether these
learning objectives are met. For example, one of the labs, students are given a piece of
management area, and they are encouraged to come up with innovative ideas of managing the
land. Students are immediately immersed in all aspects of management science; working in
small groups, through intensive discussions, they collaboratively design a management plan, and
come up the optimal ways to meet management goals. In the end, students write articles in the
style of popular magazines in which they interpret their results and translate these ideas into
everyday language. My students leave the lab classroom with the ability to discuss and develop
ideas to address management problems in collaboration with their peers, which is the underlying
structure of the process of scientific inquiry.
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Reference
Asante, P., Armstrong, G.W., Adamowicz, W.L., 2011. Carbon sequestration and the optimal
forest harvest decision: a dynamic programming approach considering biomass and dead organic
matter. J. Forest Econ. 17, 3–17.
Wise, S. L., and DeMars, C. E., 2005. Low examinee effort in low-stakes assessment: Problems
and potential solutions. Educational Assessment, 10, 1-17.
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