researchers and users together in 

 joint efforts with resulting rapid 

 interpretation, application, and 

 adoption of findings. 



With the exception of the famous 

 Biltmore Forest School in western 

 North Carolina, which operated 

 from 1898 to 1913, professional 

 education programs got underway 

 later in the South than in the North 

 and Midwest. Consequently, many 

 of the early southern foresters 

 were educated elsewhere. Only 470 

 had received degrees from 

 Biltmore and three other southern 

 schools up to 1935. But in the next 

 50 years the southern schools came 

 into their own — especially 

 following World War II. Since 

 1935, they have graduated an 

 estimated 18,600 professionals, of 

 whom an estimated 60 percent 

 have gone to work initially in the 

 South. As of 1985, an estimated 

 two-thirds of the southern 

 membership of the Society of 

 American Foresters with 

 professional degrees were educated 

 in the South. Graduate-level 

 programs also expanded rapidly in 

 the post-World War II period. The 

 first Ph.D. in the south was 

 granted in 1938, and 577 more have 

 been awarded since then. 



With the exception of the Lake 

 City, FL, Forest Ranger School, 

 which started as a private 

 endeavor in 1947, technician- 

 training programs were initated just 

 in the past 20 years. Their 

 development was stimulated in part 



by the Manpower Development 

 Training Act of 1962, which made 

 Federal funds available on a 

 matching basis to help support 

 vocational-technical training 

 programs. To date, the 14 colleges 

 with such programs have graduated 

 nearly 3,900 technicians (primarily 

 forest technicians). More than two- 

 thirds are estimated to have 

 entered a related job in the South. 



Up to the early 1950's, teaching 

 demands severely preempted the 

 time of university forestry and 

 forest-products faculty in the 

 South. Yet extensive empirical 

 research was carried out — first at 

 Biltmore and then, in the 1930 , s, 

 on university agricultural and 

 forest lands at Auburn, Duke, 

 North Carolina State, Clemson, 

 and elsewhere. These were large- 

 scale combination field research 

 and demonstration programs on 

 which long-term records are now 

 available. The programs have been 

 exceedingly valuable in 

 establishing reforestation, 

 silvicultural, and management 

 guidelines and serving as result 

 demonstrations of forest practice in 

 extension-type education of 

 landowners. 



University forestry and forest- 

 products research in southern 

 universities and elsewhere received 

 its greatest shot in the arm from 

 passage of the Mclntire-Stennis 

 Cooperative Forestry Research Act 

 in 1962. This act made Federal 

 funds available on a matching basis 



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