Valentine named Forest Sciences chair

Professor David Valentine (pictured at left) has been elected chair of the Forest Sciences Department.

“I am very excited about the direction we have started going,” Valentine said. Forest Sciences and Geography faculty have been collaborating to create a new geography degree option in Environmental Decision Making. “We want to equip the students with a variety of decision-making tools, both qualitative and quantitative,” Valentine said.

The new degree would be adaptable, offering a range of credit hours and scope of projects. “It will range from ambitious to very ambitious,” Valentine said. The proposal will soon go before the UAF Faculty Senate and if approved could be in place by fall of 2013.

Another task awaiting Valentine is to hire two to three new faculty members. With the retirement of John Fox and the move by Jingjing Liang to West Virginia (both this summer), Valentine said he is determined to hire the best possible people to support the new degree program and help maintain the department’s Society of America Foresters accreditation.

Valentine plans to keep the school’s annual Farthest North Forest Sports Festival going strong and to host other events, lectures and workshops that will be exciting to students.

Dr. Valentine earned his PhD at Duke University in 1990. He has been at UAF since 1996. His research focuses on ecosystem ecology, biogeochemistry and element cycling in natural and disturbed ecosystems. He currently studies how soil moisture governs ecosystem function and carbon balance in boreal forests. Classes he teaches include Nutrient Cycling, Perspectives in Natural Resource Management and Environmental Ethics.

He is in his second year of serving on the UAF Faculty Senate and is chair of the General Education Revitalization Committee that recently developed and proposed a new set of objectives and learning outcomes for undergraduate students, which was adopted by the Faculty Senate. “This is the first step toward revising the core curriculum,” Valentine said. He also serves on the Curricular Affairs committee.

In the community realm, Valentine volunteers on the board of directors for Calypso Farm and Ecology Center. He enjoys bicycling, skiing, techie stuff and spending time with his family.

“My objective is to help improve student enrollment in our school,” Valentine stated. “Environmental decision-making has a huge potential to do that and to reach new students.”