Guries to receive forestry education award

Raymond Guries, professor of forestry, will receive the Carl Alwin Schenk Award from the Society of American Foresters at its 1999 National Convention in Portland, Ore. on Sept 11. The award, recognizing excellence in forestry education, comes from an organization that represents nearly 18,000 professional foresters and natural resource managers in the United States.

In announcing the award, the Society identified Guries as “a pioneer in contemporary forestry education whose creative style has a widespread and permanent influence on students.” In fact, several former UW–Madison forestry students felt so strongly about Guries’ commitment to their education that they initiated the effort to promote him for the award.

Guries has been a member of the Department of Forest Ecology and Management in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences for 22 years. His teaching ranges from forest genetics and breeding to silviculture, agroforestry, renewable resource policy, dendrology and forest resource management.

He continues to expand his own areas of interest and energizes the forestry curriculum by introducing new concepts and issues in sustainable forestry, agroforestry, forest resources and land tenure, and renewable resource policy. In lectures and seminars across campus, Guries introduces non-majors in related fields to the science and art of forest management and conservation.

Dedicated to helping students learn outside the classroom, Guries leads a 10-day trip through the southern United States every other year. The trip provides students with a first-hand introduction to how foresters, park managers and wildlife ecologists in the southern United States manage forests. Students learn that public and industrial forest management strategies are shaped not only by soils and ecology, but also by history, culture, ownership and markets.

Guries has been the faculty advisor to the undergraduate Forestry Club for more than 20 years, organizing and working at the club’s annual Christmas tree sale each December.

Guries has received awards for his teaching and advising from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.