Following a period in which Michigan’s logging industry cleared acres upon acres of densely packed forests, the University of Michigan became the first university in the nation to offer courses in forestry in 1881.
The Department of Forestry was formed within LSA in 1903, and the following year, the first Master of Science degrees in forestry were conferred.
A student-run forestry club hosted events around campus, and in 1926 the department’s chair position was offered to Samuel Trask Dana, an experienced forestry specialist in the U.S. Forest Service. Dana accepted on the condition that the Department of Forestry become the School of Forestry. The Board of Regents approved the change with the caveat that the word “conservation” be added to the school’s name.
Dana supported this addition, stating, “In addition to the training of professional foresters, one of (the school’s) important functions is to teach the philosophy of conservation as the fundamental basis of permanent national prosperity.”
The school officially opened in 1927 with 10 faculty members with 25 enrolled students. It used nearby Saginaw Forest and Eberwhite Woods as outdoor laboratories.
The school’s first forestry camp, Camp Filibert Roth, opened two years later in an abandoned logging cabin southwest of Munising in the Upper Peninsula, giving students the opportunity to conduct summer field work. In the mid-1930s, the camp moved to Golden Lake in the Ottawa National Forest and remained in use through the 1980s.
Students and graduates of the school were called upon during the Great Depression to aid with the Civilian Conservation Corps, created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create jobs related to conservation and development of natural resources.
Two of the school’s most notable alumni included Frank and John Craighead, twin brothers who became well-known American conservationists. The brothers received master’s and Ph.D. degrees in wildlife conservation in 1940 and 1949, respectively, and were prominent figures in the media for their conservation efforts and research of falconry and grizzly bear biology.
In 1950, the School of Forestry and Conservation changed its name to the School of Natural Resources, which underwent several evolutions before becoming today’s School for Environment and Sustainability.
— Katie Kelton, The University Record
