College of Forestry says goodbye to dean

After 12 years of service as Dean of the College of Forestry, Hal Salwasser is stepping down this June.   
“It’s time somebody else has the opportunity to shape the future,” Salwasser said.  
Salwasser accepted the job 12 years ago in 2000 after working for the United States Forest Service for 20 years, bringing his professional experience to the university.  
“This college has a reputation for being the premier College of Forestry in the country,” Salwasser said. He said it was a “privilege” to serve as dean.  
Since he took the job, Salwasser has restructured the undergraduate and graduate programs and seen undergraduate enrollment double since 2006.

The college used to be composed of four departments, but Salwasser narrowed it down to three: forest ecosystems and society; forest engineering, resources, and management; and wood science and engineering.  
Salwasser worked both on behalf of the college and the university. He helped raise $42 million a year for the Oregon State University capital campaign, part of which goes to fund scholarships and fellowships, and also helped create an institute for natural resources at the university system level. He was involved in guiding the university’s investments as well.  
According to Salwasser, these achievements were collaborative and involved other groups of people.

Salwasser will miss being a part of university leadership as well as working with the other deans, who he says are “an outstanding group of leaders.”  
“I will not miss,” Salwasser said, “having to cut budgets and people virtually every biennium during my tenure.”

After leaving the university, Salwasser plans on doing some consulting jobs.

“Right now I’m helping a landowner in Colorado and Texas establish a privately endowed institute located at High Lonesome Ranch in Grand Junction [Colo.],” Salwasser said.  
He also hopes to continue in a pedagogical vein by teaching classes and interacting with graduate students.   
There are three candidates for the position in an ongoing interviewing process:  Steve Kelley and Barry Goldfarb of North Carolina State University and Thomas Maness, head of the department of forest engineering, resources and management at Oregon State University. Steve Tesch, executive associate dean of the College of Forestry, hopes that the new dean will be chosen from among the three candidates by July 4, in time for fall term.  
Salwasser hopes that the college will “maintain its cutting edge in research” as well as “remain the premier College of Forestry and Natural Resources in the world [with] the best graduates in forestry and natural resources.”     

McKinley Smith, reporter
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