Student Engagement

College of Forestry and Conservation students are engaged in learning, community service, their future profession, and social activities.

There is a student chapter of both the Wildlife Society and the Society of American Foresters. The Recreation Management students have formed the Student Recreation Association and all students in the CFC are members of the Forestry Student Association Forestry Club). Among its many activities the Forestry Club sponsors the Forester’s Ball, a weekend dance in a recreated logging camp. 2008 will mark the 91st Forester’s Ball. The Forestry Club also has a section that manages Section 13 on the Lubrecht Experimental Forest. A service organization, Montana Druids, helps the CFC with many functions, and the Woodsman Team represents the CFC at events throughout the western US. Our graduate students have formed a graduate student association to represent their interests and to provide social functions. Many of our students, both undergraduate and graduate students, attend either national or state professional society meetings each year.

In addition to these organizations, CFC students are involved in many organizations on campus including the student chapter of the American Fisheries Society, AISES (American Indians in Science and Engineering Society, and religious and service groups. Off campus one can find CFC students mentoring at risk youth, working with interest groups such as Wilderness Watch, serving as teacher’s aids in the co-teach program in Missoula’s elementary schools, smoke jumping for the Forest Service, engaging in undergraduate research on wildlife, wilderness and other areas, traveling overseas to work with the Peace Corps, and serving with Volunteer Action Services.

CFC students are engaged in field oriented activities in their courses too. Ecology field trips to western Montana and northern Idaho, recreation and wildlife trips to Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, forest measurement trips to our own 28,000 acre Lubrecht Forest, and many other field experiences are just part of an education at the CFC. In the field education is provided at CFC’s Natural Resources Measurements Camp which occurs for most students between the first and second years and for transfers before their first regular semester at UM.

If you are looking for engagement, the College of Forestry and Conservation can provide it. Our student body is active and engaged.