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NEWS ABOUT FACULTY AND STAFF

• McDill Receives Outstanding Faculty Award 2007
• McKinstry's Term as Goddard Chair Ends
• Bill Sharpe Retires
• Brian Olsen Hired as Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Science
• Paul Lupo Hired as new Research Support Technologist
• Victoria Braithwaite to Join Faculty

McDill Receives Outstanding Faculty Award 2007

Marc E. McDill, associate professor of forest management, is the recipient of the 2007 School of Forest Resources Outstanding Faculty Award. This award recognizes a faculty member who has made extraordinary contributions to the School of Forest Resources community through teaching, advising, and research. Students nominate faculty and a final selection is made by a panel of representatives from the School’s student organizations.

In a senior-level forest resources (timber) management course, McDill teaches students about financial analyses and applying these techniques to a variety of forest management decisions, such as when to harvest a stand of trees to maximize financial return. He also teaches students about techniques for developing a long-term, sustainable harvesting schedule for a large forested area, such as a state forest. In an ecosystem management course he teaches how to manage forests for environmental values such as biodiversity preservation and ecosystem integrity. Students in the class consider case studies that involve addressing conflicting public values in natural resources management. McDill also teaches a freshman seminar course, and a graduate course on using modeling techniques to address forest management problems.

“Dr. McDill always makes himself available during office hours and never makes a student feel unwelcome,” says Ben Gamble, who completed his B.S. in Forest Science this past winter and is now a graduate student here. Gamble elaborates, “Dr. McDill is willing to take as much time as necessary to help students with course material. Through interactive discussion, he is able to bring students to a desired conclusion without simply telling them ‘the way it is’.”

McDill’s research focuses on forest management planning and information systems, forest property taxes, sustainable forestry and ecosystem management, timber supplies, forest growth and yield, the carbon sequestration potential of forests, and nontraditional sources of income for forest landowners. His major research project is to develop new forest management planning modeling methods for private landowners with large forest areas and for public forests, such as Pennsylvania’s state forests. His models were used by the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry to develop their current forest management plans.

McDill is chair of the Forest Science program and also serves as faculty adviser to the School’s chapter of Xi Sigma Pi, a national honor society of natural resources disciplines.

McDill received his Ph.D. in forest economics from Virginia Tech in 1989. He was a post-doc at the University of Minnesota for four years and an assistant professor of forest management at Louisiana State University for three years before coming to Penn State in 1997. He earned an M.S. degree in forest economics at North Carolina State University and a B.S. in forest management at the University of Minnesota.

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McKinstry’s Term as Goddard Chair Ends

The Maurice K. Goddard Chair in Forestry and Environmental Resource Conservation, an endowed Penn State professorship housed in the School of Forest Resources, was established in 1983 to foster dialogue on important environmental issues among government, industry, academia, and the general public. For the past six years, Robert B. McKinstry, Jr. has done just that. He was appointed in July 2001 as the fifth Goddard Chair. Past occupants of the Goddard Chair are Arthur A. Davis, Benjamin A. Jayne, Steven G. Thorne, and Caren E. Glotfelty.

McKinstry’s work included offering six Goddard fora to define, discuss, and resolve natural resource and environmental challenges. The topics of the fora were: Climate Change, Biodiversity, Sustainability, Market-based Approaches to Environmental Conservation, Pennsylvania’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, and The Future of Pennsylvania’s Forests.

McKinstry has written and spoken extensively, in various formats and venues, on many of these topics. Just a few examples include editing and writing a significant part of The Biodiversity Conservation Handbook published by the Environmental Law Institute, publishing three articles on climate change with two more in press, presenting to the state legislature a series of recommendations for environmental priorities for the Rendell Administration, and representing a group of leading climate scientists in a Supreme Court case regarding the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks under the Clean Air Act.

McKinstry was successful in attracting several major competitive research grants, and published from those efforts as well. He co-authored a report on the Pennsylvania Payment in Lieu of Taxes Program, prepared two reports for the Pennsylvania Biodiversity Partnership, and is still involved with a project to develop a habitat conservation plan for the bog turtle and to use habitat conservation banking as a method to fund land conservation.

In fulfilling the Goddard Chair obligation to educate future decision-makers, McKinstry guided the creation of the formal joint-degree program between the College of Agricultural Sciences and the Dickinson School of Law, and advised the first student to receive a joint degree. He served as faculty adviser to four other graduate students as well, and created and taught three graduate-level courses—Climate Change Law and Policy, Biodiversity and Land Conservation, and Environmental Disputes and their Resolution. He plans to continue teaching two of these courses as an adjunct professor in the Law School. He has returned to Ballard Spahr Andrews and Ingersoll, LLP in Philadelphia.

Our College and School will initiate a search for the next Goddard Chair during this upcoming academic year.

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Bill Sharpe Retires

Dr. William E. “Bill” Sharpe retired from the School of Forest Resources on June 30, 2007, after more than 37 years of service.

Sharpe started working at Penn State in the College of Agriculture at the old Poultry Plant in 1961 and lived and worked there during his undergraduate years. He attended the Mont Alto campus in 1962-63 with the last class of freshman foresters required to spend the first year at that location. He cruised timber on the Rio Grande National Forest in summer 1963. He earned a B.S. in Forest Technology in 1966 and an M.S. in Forestry in 1968, both from Penn State.
As an undergraduate, Sharpe was president of the forestry society and selected as the outstanding graduating senior in 1967. He spent two summers as a member of the Lolo Hotshots, an interregional fire crew based in Missoula, Montana. He was also named a Distinguished Military Graduate of the Army ROTC program, was selected for flight training, and left Penn State with a private pilot’s license.

After completing three years of military service, including a tour of duty in Vietnam where he was a Huey helicopter pilot for the 1st Aviation Brigade, Sharpe began a doctoral program at West Virginia University (WVU). He returned to Penn State in 1972 as an instructor in Forest Resources Extension, and after completing his Ph.D. at WVU in 1979 he was promoted to assistant professor. In 1989 he achieved the rank of professor of forest hydrology. Sharpe taught a graduate course on the influences of acid deposition on forest ecosystems and the undergraduate Forest Soils course.

Sharpe’s early research and outreach work emphasized residential water conservation. He helped write water use standards for plumbing fixtures and testified before the U.S. Congress on the efficacy of water-saving plumbing fixtures. This testimony contributed  to the passage of legislation requiring the use of water-saving plumbing fixtures in the United States. He also worked with Extension colleagues from other departments to establish the safe drinking water clinic program.

For nine years, he secured grant funds and supervised summer student employees in the creation of grouse and woodcock habitat on the Stone Valley Forest and established the Woodcock Trail, an interpretive look at woodcock habitat requirements. More recently, Sharpe has collaborated on the creation of the Master Well Owner Network that uses volunteers to educate well owners.

For the past 30 years, much of Sharpe’s research has been devoted to studying the effects of acid rain on forests, headwater streams, and drinking water. Sharpe, his many students, and colleagues have investigated the influences of acid deposition on red oak and sugar maple decline, forest regeneration, water quality, fish populations, soils, soil animals, wildflowers, and forest birds. He has also studied remediation techniques including limestone sand application and forest liming. Sharpe secured the necessary funds, and helped design and field-test the Penn State Regenerator, the first practical forest-liming machine to be used in Pennsylvania. 

In retirement, Sharpe plans to do more fly-fishing and hunting, spend some more time in the field with his bird dogs, and continue his efforts to improve trout habitat at his Sinking Creek farm and woodcock habitat at Stone Valley. He intends to continue to be active on  the forest regeneration issue through consulting and possibly additional writing on this important subject.

Dr. Brian Olsen joined the School on August 1 as a senior lecturer in Wildlife Science. He fills the position vacated by Dr. Chris Goguen who is now an assistant professor at Penn State Hazleton. Olsen completed his doctoral degree in biological sciences in 2006 at Virginia Tech, where he now serves as a postdoctoral fellow, and earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology at Juniata College in 2001.

Olsen has eight years of teaching experience including serving as primary instructor for sophomore- and senior-level courses in ornithology, evolutionary ecology, and evolution at Virginia Tech.  He was certified in higher education in Virginia Tech’s Future Professoriate Program, has mentored undergraduate seniors in independent research, and has trained more than a dozen undergraduate field technicians. He has two years of museum experience and an established research program in ornithology that includes work with scientists from numerous state, federal, and academic institutions.

Olsen’s honors and awards include Biological Sciences Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year, Virginia Tech Graduate School Teaching Excellence Commendation, and Virginia Wildlife Society Student Presentation Award, all received in 2006. He has many professional affiliations including membership in the Society for Conservation Biology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Olsen’s responsibilities at Penn State will include teaching four undergraduate courses—Wildlife and Fisheries Measurements, Mammalogy, Mammalogy Lab, and Conservation Biology. He will also curate the School’s vertebrate collection, advise undergraduates, assist with undergraduate curriculum and development, and continue his research efforts.

“My primary aim as an educator is to train students how to learn and how to apply,” says Olsen. “ I look forward to the opportunity to engage Penn State students in active field- and laboratory-based learning.”

Paul Lupo Hired as New Research Support Technologist

Mr. Paul L. Lupo joined the School on July 2 as a research support technologist. He fills the position vacated by Tim Phelps who left Penn State in December 2006 to accept employment with the Tennessee Division of Forestry in Nashville, Tennessee.

Lupo’s responsibilities include operating and maintaining the forestry greenhouses, maintaining experimental field sites, developing and maintaining research databases, assisting with teaching various forestry classes such as forest dendrology and forest measurements, and providing GIS and GPS support for various courses.

Lupo comes to us from Bingaman & Son Lumber, Inc., where he was employed since February 2005 as forester for the Pine Creek Lumber Sawmill in Mill Hall, Pennsylvania.  Prior to that he served as director of institutional research for Lock Haven University for six months and as a research analyst in the Institutional Research Office at Harford Community College in Maryland for a year and a half. In 2003 he completed a six-month, 2200-mile hike on the Appalachian Trail.

Lupo is one of our Forest Science alumni (‘97) and he completed a master’s in Forest Resources at the University of Idaho (‘04).  While at the University of Idaho he served as a graduate teaching assistant and then as a technician with the USDA Forest Service unit housed there. He has excellent skill sets in forestry, management planning, communications, and coordination of personnel. 

Victoria Braithwaite to Join Faculty

Dr. Victoria Braithwaite, reader at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, has accepted our college’s offer to join our faculty as professor of fisheries and biology during the 2007-08 academic year.  Braithwaite will be a member of The Huck Institutes of Life Sciences and will hold joint appointments in the College of Agricultural Sciences and the Eberly College of Science. The School of Forest Resources will serve as her academic home. 

Braithwaite will teach in our Wildlife and Fisheries Science program and continue to pursue research in fish behavior, cognition, and welfare. In the last three years, one piece of her research in particular has caught the media’s attention—Do Fish Feel Pain? She is currently writing a book on this topic for a broad audience.

At the University of Edinburgh, Braithwaite taught courses in animal orientation and migration, brain and behavior, marine biology, and zoology, and supervised a number of graduate students. She is an elected fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and received the 2006 Fisheries Society of the British Isles Medal.

Braithwaite’s husband, Dr. Andrew Read, will also be at Penn State, serving as a faculty member of The Huck Institutes, Eberly College of Science, and College of Agricultural Sciences.  His fields of research are evolution of virulence, malaria, and allied vaccines. Their family includes two sons, James and Matthew, ages 12 and 10. 

The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences involves 500 Penn State faculty from eight of the university’s academic colleges. The institute brings people from various disciplines together to address specific concerns that are important to society.

Penn State | College of Agricultural Sciences | School of Forest Resources