Forest Industry Lecture Series
Pam Jagger, FILS speaker, March 6, 2025
Robert Froese, Stacy Bergheim, Bruno Wichmann, FILS commitee
Barb Thomas, Nadir Erbilgin, and Ellen Macdonald
Peter meets Peter - Student Volunteers meet the AMAZING Dr. Peter Blenis
Marty Luckert, Pam Jagger, and Vic Adamowicz
Next FILS:
Please attend in person OR via our ZOOM webinar.
Speaker Biography
Kevin Boston, PhD, JD, PE, RPF, has a BS in forestry from Humboldt State University, a Master of Forestry, and a Ph.D. in forest engineering from Oregon State University. His JD is from Lewis & Clark College, with an emphasis on environmental and corporate law. He is currently enrolled in the Graduate Diploma in Strategy and Innovation at the Said Business School, Oxford University.
He has significant professional experience as a practicing forester and forest engineer, including registration as a California Registered Professional Forester and a Professional Engineer in Oregon. He has authored over 100 papers and nine books in forest management and engineering. He has held a variety of commercial and academic appointments in forestry throughout the United States, New Zealand, and Europe. He is currently an associate professor at the Center for Forest Business, University of Arkansas, Monticello.
His talk, titled "The Development and Future Use of Heuristics in Forest Planning," will describe his work on heuristic techniques for solving a variety of forest planning and supply chain problems. It describes why heuristics are used, what areas can be developed to enhance their performance, and the future of heuristics.
Questions? Contact Stacy Bergheim, FILS Coordinator, Department of Renewable Resources at (780) 492-0447 or email: fils@ualberta.ca
FILS History
The Forest Industry Lecture Series (FILS) began and developed as a collaborative event by members of the forestry community in Alberta to enrich the forestry program at the 海角社区. The first forestry class enrolled in Fall of 1970, initiated as a faculty program through the vision of Fenton MacHardy, then Dean of Agriculture. In 1975, Allan A. Warrack, then Minister of Lands and Forests in the new Peter Lougheed government, made an offer to Dean MacHardy, saying that he had done well in developing the forestry program, but students needed enrichment through speakers from outside who could bring in fresh insights. The offer was that his department would match any outside funds the faculty could raise to support a position or lecture series.
Several of the larger forest products companies in western Canada immediately responded and for two years, 1975 and 1976, this new outside funding supported two visiting lecturers: Maxwell MacLaggan and Desmond I. Crossley, whose expertise were respectively: forest industry, logging and forest products; silviculture and forest management.
In the meantime, Arden A. Rytz encouraged the sawmilling and plywood industries to add their support through the Alberta Forest Products Association (AFPA), of which he was executive director. Rytz was a forester, graduating from UBC after wartime service in southeast Asia. This collaborative approach to shared funding enables this lecture series to achieve the success it enjoys today.
The first designated Forest Industry Lecture was in 1977 by the Canadian, internationally respected forester Ross Silversides, who spoke on industrial forestry in a changing Canada. The university and the Department of Renewable Resources, in particular, deeply appreciate the support of its many sponsors.
The above information was written
by the late Peter Murphy.