Our Students
We're excited to share with you a few examples of how our students suceed both in the classroom and out in the world.
Mara Menahan was appointed a 2014 Truman Scholar and Hope Radford won a Udall scholarship this year. Both are in the climate change studies program and Radford is also a resource conservation major.
In seven years of participating in the Prescribed Fire Practicum, UM students have restored nearly 6,000 acres of longleaf pine forest in Georgia. Our newest minor in Wildland Fire Sciences & Management draws students to UM from all over the U.S. who want to study fire in both applied and academic settings.
The student chapter of The Wildlife Society had a busy semester this fall. Club members conducted mountain goat surveys, wrote grants for the Be Bear Aware Program, practiced telemetry and gave presentations to local schoolkids about bear awareness. They also spent a weekend removing barbed wire fence from the Blackfoot-Clearwater Game Range — 42 club members took down 3.25 miles of hazardous fencing. Students partnered with Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and Backcountry Horsemen of Montana on this project.
95% of CFC graduates are employed or in graduate school
85% of those are employed in the field they studied in
The U.S. Forest Service employs 29% of our grads; other federal agencies employ an additional 22% and 9% of grads work at state agencies.
Our recent survey found that ten years post-graduation, 82% of alumni work full-time in their field. Most alums live in Montana, California, Idaho or Oregon, but there are CFC alumni in every other U.S. state plus countries like Bhutan, Canada, Botswana and Afghanistan.
Thanks to all of you who completed the survey!
Charlie Hopkins and Mike Wentz supported forest management operations at Lubrecht Forest and Bryan Rameriz helped with marketing of recreational facilities. Mike, from New Jersey, and Charlie, from Georgia, are both forestry majors. They worked closely with professor Alex Metcalf and forest planner Tom Perry to support the CFC’s forest management goals for Lubrecht.
During last year’s centennial celebration, alumni of the College of Forestry and Conservation donated to the Centennial Fund to support student field work and classes - like the Lubrecht internships.
Through our new International Sustainability Fellows program we're building leaders through international experiences that connect students to local natural resource issues in India, Chile, Vietnam and Zambia.
Ecological restoration students raised $22,500 in competitive grants this year to support their research projects.
75 incoming freshmen spent three nights in the wilderness before school started in a new program run by the Wilderness Institute.
Professor Libby Metcalf and the UM Outdoor Program started the university's first Outdoor Recreation Living Learning Community. Students took over a floor of Aber Hall and took an introductory Parks, Tourism & Recreation Management course together, learning about recreation benefits and impacts.
