The SFWP has 21 a tenure-track faculty including the Dean and Director of IWR, with 11 Professors, 4 Associate Professors, and 6 a Assistant Professors. All SFWP faculty participate in the undergraduate program by teaching classes and advising undergraduate students, and all have strong research programs (see Goal 4). Because of tenure denial, staff terminations, resignations, and retirements, we have had the opportunity to recruit nine current faculty members into the program since 1988. One position is shared with Social Sciences, with a of her time allocated to the SFWP. We have been able to recruit excellent replacement faculty with doctoral degrees from strong programs, such as the Universities of Michigan, Washington, and Wisconsin, and Ohio State University. Several unique strengths of the SFWP have assisted faculty recruitment, including excellent undergraduate and graduate teaching and research programs; start-up funds; a consistent annual professional-development allocation to each faculty member sufficient to support travel to one professional meeting; the relatively low student/faculty ratio (less than 10-to-1); and a general atmosphere of shared goals, cooperation, and collegiality among the faculty.

Our faculty also benefits from a higher degree of diversity than most forestry and wood products academic units, with four women and five minorities in tenured or tenure-track positions. Furthermore, two of the women have received tenure and have taken active leadership roles within the School, the University, and professional organizations at the national level.

The Cooperative States Research Services (CSRS), which periodically reviews our research and graduate programs, cited our "[v]igorous, highly competent, [and] productive faculty" as a strength. Although MTU is often viewed as a regional institution, the graduate programs and faculty research in the SFWP are highly visible nationally and internationally. Six faculty have taken sabbaticals since 1988, five in the last three years. We have extensive international programs in which faculty are engaged in substantial research in China, Poland, Slovakia, Indonesia, Japan, Portugal, the Miombo Woodlands of central and southern Africa, Sahelian Africa, and Canada. External funding generated by these programs totals over $1,000,000. Smaller efforts are underway in other countries.

Merit salary adjustments are determined by contributions to teaching (including advising), research, and service activities to the University and the profession. The SFWP Charter contains a complete enumeration of the factors considered. The criteria for research staff merit adjustments are also included in the Charter. All academic units at MTU have received the same average salary adjustment in recent years, which means a uniformly strong unit has received the same percentage merit adjustment as units with less strength.

Our most critical weakness is a severe shortage of suitable space. This issue is addressed under Goal 7. Other weaknesses include the library, which ranges from clearly inadequate to marginally adequate across the range of disciplines represented in the SFWP faculty, and lower salaries than peer institutions, especially for the senior faculty.

Another weakness is 1% annual realignment mechanism for resource reallocation. To date, we have been unsuccessful in the competition for the reallocated resources. One effect was the replacement of two retirees in 1995–96 with only 1 1/3 new faculty. Continuing this policy will generate pressure to cut additional positions, just as the School is beginning to implement our new Applied Ecology and Environmental Sciences program.

University Goal 3: Strengthen and Develop Graduate Programs.

The graduate program of the SFWP has grown rapidly since the last NCA accreditation, and is one of our greatest strengths (see Table 2, below).

TABLE 2. SFWP Graduate Enrollment (Fall Count)

In their 1993 external review of our research and graduate programs (see Goal 4), the Cooperative State Research Service (CSRS) cited as a strength that "[t]he graduate education program has moved forward rapidly in view of its brief history in SFWP." The CSRS conducts periodic reviews of research and graduate programs in forestry and wood science as part of its efforts to maintain and improve scientific quality through merit reviews.

The SFWP Ph.D. program was approved in 1987, and has grown very rapidly to 38 students in 1996. This is one of the largest Forestry and Wood Products Ph.D. programs in the nation, and is more than twice the long-term enrollment goal of 16 set when the program was implemented. The SFWP awarded the third most Ph.D. degrees of the 17 Forestry degree-granting programs in the Northeastern and North Central regions in 1994–5. We have successfully placed recent Ph.D. recipients in major universities, including Washington State University and the Universities of Idaho, Arkansas, and Maine.

Our MS graduate program enrollment had decreased, from 22 in 1988 to 13 in 1995, primarily because of the high emphasis on the Ph.D. program. However, MS enrollment increased to 27 in Fall 1996. One reason for this increase is that we initiated a new program for MS students in cooperation with the Peace Corps. The program allows students without a forestry background to pursue a masters degree while gaining the skills required to serve in the Peace Corps as a forester. The students are enrolled in classes for one year, enter the Peace Corps for two years, then return to MTU to finish their degree. This is the only cooperative forestry-Peace Corps program in the nation which targets students without a forestry baccalaureate, and attracted 6 students in the first year (1996/7) and six more are scheduled to start in Fall 1997. A similar program is being developed by Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Nearly all of the graduate students in the SFWP are supported by research assistantships, a strength resulting from the high level of research funds secured by the faculty. Many foreign students have been fully funded by their home countries. However, an associated weakness is the fact that the SFWP receives no teaching assistantships.

Our graduate students in terms of discipline and geographic region. This diversity is a distinct strength, and results from several factors. There are many different disciplines represented on the faculty, which are also evident in the graduate student body. A large proportion of the graduate students have degrees from other universities, and a significant portion are foreign students. This reflects especially well upon the SFWP because home countries have a wide range of international institutions to choose from when they select a school.

As part of the process of evaluating the Dean, a comprehensive survey of graduate students was conducted to to evaluate their perception of our performance. A graduate student served on the Committee to Evaluate the Dean, which made a recommendation regarding reappointment of the Dean.

The primary weakness associated with the graduate program is the critical lack of appropriate space (see Goal 7), which affects both graduate teaching and research. Office space is particularly poor for graduate students. The proposed addition to the Forestry building will remedy this defecit. The primary threat to graduate programs is reduced federal spending for sponsored research. Another threat is the possible difficulty in attracting potential graduate students because MTU is only beginning to build its reputation as a graduate institution and SFWP has only had a Ph.D. program for a short period. Nonetheless, we believe the high-quality and state-of-the-art research programs of the SFWP faculty and the are a strength which has largely mitigated this threat.

University Goal 4: Enhance and Expand Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity within the University.

In the last external review by CSRS in 1993, the SFWP research programs received generally high praise. Our strong faculty and staff are strengths which support our research programs. We have individuals from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, which allows extensive collaboration and interdisciplinary research both within the SFWP and with other units at MTU as well as with PIs at other institutions and agencies both nationally and internationally. Our faculty have all been cited in the Scientific Citation Index. Four have received the MTU Outstanding Research Award, and several have received external research awards, including the USDA Forest Service Chief's Award for Research Technology Transfer and the 1996 Hardwood Research National Award from the National Hardwood Lumber Association. One faculty member was the youngest person ever elected a Fellow by the International Academy of Wood Science.

The faculty of the SFWP all have active and productive research programs. Several measures include the SFWP's per-faculty averages for

• graduate students—3.2, with two thirds of those being Ph.D. students;
• peer-reviewed publications—about 2 a annually; and
• external research support, sustained at about $125,000 annually, which supports our graduate programs, and much of which has come from prestigious external sources such as NSF and the USDA Competitive Grants Program—see Table 3.

TABLE 3. Research Expenditures in Thousands of Dollars.

At the time of the last NCA review, the faculty exhibited uneven research participation, primarily because of the historical emphasis on undergraduate programs. Retirements, combined with strong motivation by the Dean to become involved in research, are responsible for the transition to uniformly strong research involvement.

Forestry

Other strengths that help promote and support the Forestry research programs are our location in a prime area for ecological research, the current environmental initiative at MTU, faculty development funds for travel and sabbaticals (see Goal 2), and a modest fund to support visits and lectures by outside scholars.

Weaknesses of MTU that limit the achievement of our research mission involve the limited diversity of educational programs at MTU and the critical space problems addressed under Goal 7. Most educational programs in Forestry that contain a strong research emphasis are at either research-oriented universities (e.g., Yale and Duke) or land-grant universities, which routinely have strong graduate programs in the agriculture college, a range of diverse and well-funded supporting programs in organismal biology, and a business school with strong graduate programs; MTU has none of these. This weakness was also identified in the CSRS review. Although there are many good people to work with in other units at MTU, the lack of strong programs in other critical disciplines limits forestry research due to its interdisciplinary nature.

A major threat is the recent reduction in available research funding, especially at the federal level. An additional threat specific to forestry education is the rapid change in public expectations for resource management; we believe we have positioned ourselves well by our increased emphasis on ecological approaches, but there is always risk when situations change rapidly.

Wood Science

External funding has increased from $317,000 in 1988 to over $1,000,000 in 1996 (Table 3). This does not include the large amount of biotechnology funding which arrived in late 1996. Industrial funding has also increased in the last five years. In the future, the School expects industrial funding to continue to increase and replace some of the anticipated decrease in federal funding. State support in real dollars has decreased.

In order to enhance and expand the IWR research program, we have developed the following broad objectives:

• enlarge our core of basic research in all research areas,
• use the major growth from internal funds to assist new faculty,
• emphasize research in molecular biology and the genetic engineering of lignification in tree species, and
• maintain wood protection as a lead program within IWR.

A more detailed description of the long-term goals to expand and enhance the research program can be found in the IWR Strategic Plan.

Weaknesses within the University, which limit growth and the achievement of our research mission, include lack of space and up-to-date equipment to conduct quality research and the continually decreasing State funding.

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