The Academic Roots of Forestry Programs: A Case Study from Virginia Tech

Abstract

Constructing academic genealogies involves the practice of creating family trees based on doctoral advisors, that is, the advisor-graduate student relationship replaces the father-son relationship. Forestry academic genealogies document the historical development of forestry and quantify the contributions of other disciplines. In this study, the authors researched the academic genealogies of all the tenured faculty members in the Forestry Department at Virginia Tech. The resulting academic genealogies included 122 individuals and individual family trees varied in length from 19 generations spanning 360 years to two generations spanning 8 years. The interdisciplinary history of forestry was demonstrated by the high number of non-forestry doctorates earned and the genealogies included individuals trained in agricultural economics, agronomy, botany, civil engineering, ecology, environmental engineering, environmental science, chemistry, economics, horticulture, medicine, plant physiology, political science, recreation, and soils. In contrast to academic genealogies from other disciplines, most early American forestry programs hired faculty members who lacked doctorates, instead of hiring European-trained foresters, and these gentlemen went on to train doctoral students and develop forestry research programs, even though they lacked doctorates themselves.