The School of Forestry

Characteristics and Positioning

The School of Forestry is the founding college of Northeast Forestry University (NEFU) and, with great advantages and distinguishing characteristics, remains the intellectual and academic center of a major research institution. The School of Forestry has a long history, offers a wide spectrum of majors, and is one of the fastest growing and most developed fundamental colleges in NEFU. With forestry as the central feature, the School of Forestry establishes majors and academic departments focusing on forest biology and bio-tech; silviculture; management, protection and utilization of forest resources; and the theory, application, and technology of the protection and construction of an ecological environment. The integration of research and teaching is a major concentration of the School of Forestry, with an emphasis on both undergraduate and graduate education. The goal is to train innovative and high-quality talents who have a sense of social responsibility, are able to take the initiative on multiple fronts, and possess practical ability in scientific research, technology applications, and management. Inspired by the pragmatic innovation and patriotic dedication of the forestry scientists who come before, the School of Forestry has greatly contributed to the construction and development of NEFU for more than 60 years. More than that, it has also contributed to the forestry education of the nation through several generations of unremitting effort. Currently, China has entered into the new phase of mass entrepreneurship and innovation, and the higher education of the nation is shifting from expansion and development in scale and quantity to promotion and enhancement in quality and excellence. In this spirit, the School of Forestry aims to continuously grow in academic development and departmental construction, with the goals of quality and morality training at the core of science and technology innovation, in order to establish a domestic first-class and internationally recognized research and teaching college in forestry.

Current leadership group

Dean: Dr. Fengri Li (Professor)

Secretary of the Party Committee: Dr. Defu Chi (Professor)

Associate Deans: Dr. Guocai Zhang (Professor); Dr. long sun(Professor);

Dr. Yan Song (Associate Professor); Dr. Guang Yang (Associate Professor)

Vice Secretary of the Party Committee: Dr. Yan Song (Associate Professor)

Chair of College Union: Mr. Chengbin Yao (Engineer)

History

The School of Forestry was founded in 1952 as the Forest Department when NEFU that was formed as Northeast Forestry College from the combination of the forestry departments of Zhejiang University and Northeast Agricultural College. It took the name of Forestry Department in 1956, the Faculty of Forest Resources and Environment in 1993, and then became finalized as the School of Forestry in 2003.

In the more than 60 years of existence, from the School of Forestry came the College of Wildlife Resources in 1980, the Key Laboratory of Forest Plant Ecology of Ministry of Education in 1993, the College of Landscape Architecture in 1998, and the College of Life Sciences in 2003. Additionally, the Mao’ershan Experimental Forest Farm and the Harbin Experimental Forest Farm (currently Urban Forestry Demonstration Base at Harbin) were developed and managed by the School of Forestry in their initial stages (1956-1968). The Key Laboratory of Forest Tree Genetic Improvement and Biotechnology and the National Field Scientific Observation Research Center of Mao’ershan Forest Ecosystem are also currently affiliated with the school.

Undergraduate Programs and Academic Departments

The School of Forestry offers 5 undergraduate degrees, including Bachelor of Agronomy in Forestry and Forest Protection, Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Geographic Information Science, and Bachelor of Engineering in Food Science and Engineering. The school possesses 1 “Chengdong experimental class” set up by the National Education System Reform Pilot Project. Forestry and Forest Protection are national characteristic majors. The school has 3 national classic courses, 1 national public video course and 2 national classic resource-sharing courses. It also has 9 academic departments offering doctoral programs, including 6 national key departments, with 12 academic departments offering Master’s programs. The School of Forestry has been a part of the key construction project of “Innovative Platform for Advanced Subjects” funded by the Ministry of Education since 2010. It possesses the first national Key Laboratory of Forest Tree Genetic Improvement and Biotechnology that cooperated with Chinese Academy of Forestry, 1 national field scientific observation research center, 1 national experimental teaching demonstration center, 3 key open laboratories of the State Forestry Administration (SFA), 3 key laboratories of Heilongjiang Province, 2 land ecosystem orientation website center of the SFA, 2 engineering technology research centers of the SFA, and 23 teaching and research bases cooperating with enterprises. The School of Forestry has two first-level discipline post-doctoral research stations which are forestry and biology.

Faculty and Staff

Currently, the School of Forestry has 187 faculty and staff, of which 167 are faculty (including 15 faculty of administration, teaching and research positions and 8 experimental faculty), 8 faculty with positions of experimental teaching-assistants, 12 faculty with the position of administration and 14 external full-time faculty. For teaching and research positions, there are 62 professors, 58 associate professors and 47 lecturers. There are 137 faculty with doctorate degrees, 28 with master degrees (12 are currently PhD students) and 2 with bachelor degrees. There are 51 doctoral and 101 master major professors in the School of Forestry. The faulty have high level teaching and research skills: 1 faculty is the distinguished academician of China Academy of Sciences, 1 professor is the Changjiang Scholar, 1 faculty won the National Outstanding Youth Funding, 1 faculty won the National Excellent Youth Funding, 1 faculty is the National Famous Instructor and 2 are the National Excellent Instructors. There are many national outstanding contribution young and middle-age experts, the first- and second-level talents from the national key talent project, personnel who are funded by government subsidy from the State Council, disciplinary review team members of the State Council, and model teachers of Heilongjiang Province in the School of Forestry. The school is undertaking teaching tasks of classic and key courses at the university, provincial, ministerial, and national levels. It is also responsible for major and key projects and won many achievement awards in provincial, ministerial and national levels.

Teaching and Research Achievements

During the 12th Five-Year period, the School of Forestry obtained the “Program for Innovation Research Team” supported by Ministry of Education and an “Innovative Talents Invitation for University Disciplines” project funded by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs. The faculty has published 77 textbooks and monographs as Editor-in-Chief or members of the editorial board, more than 2660 research papers in which 520 and 160 papers are published in SCI and EI journals, respectively. The faculty of the School of Forestry is responsible for or has participated in 312 research projects and 90 applied projects. The total foundation is 220 million RMB, of which 180 million RMB have been received. The faculty has received 2 second prize of national science and technology progress awards, 36 provincial and ministerial science and technology awards, and 94 bureau level science and technology awards, also publishing 55 national patents of invention and 60 patents of utility models. The faculty has also been awarded 6 national and provincial teaching research achievement awards and published more than 50 teaching papers. In 2014, the school was awarded as a provincial advanced group of education system.

Major scientific research and teaching achievements:

?Construction technology of forestry ecological engineering in Heilongjiang Province, The First Prize of Science and Technology Progress Award of Heilongjiang Province, 2013, Yusen Zhao, etc.

?Reform and practice of diversified personnel training mode of forestry major, The Second Prize of National Teaching Achievement Award, 2014, Chuanping Yang, etc.

?Applied academic innovation personnel training mode of forestry major, The First Prize of Teaching Achievements in Higher Education of Heilongjiang Province, 2011, Chuanping Yang, etc.

Personnel Training

Over the past 60 years, the School of Forestry had fostered more than 10,200 scientific and technical personnel for China, of which more than 8,300 with their Bachelor’s degree, 1500 with their Master’s degree and more than 400 with Doctoral degrees. During the 12th Five-Year period, the school had 1340 undergraduate and 1396 graduate students including 1216 master students, 180 PhD students and 10 international students. The proportion of undergraduates to graduates reached 1:1, which stabilizes the scale of undergraduates, speeds up the development of graduate education and achieves the talents transfer to a higher level. For example, Academician Jianzhang Ma graduated with a forestry major from the School of Forestry in 1960; Liyu Bai who also graduated with a forestry major in 1960 was appointed an academician of North Korean Academy of Sciences in 2005. Graduates of the school, either rooted in northeast forestry region or dedicated to scientific research, engineering and managements, are distributed throughout the country in forestry related positions and play a vital role in the building of China.

International Cooperation

the 12th Five-Year period, the School of Forestry held 2 international academic conferences, 9 domestic academic conferences, and 1 academic conference of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Additionally, 49 faculty of the school participated in international conferences, 39 foreign experts were invited for academic communication, 32 faculty participated in advanced studies or cooperated research aboard, and 18 graduates studied aboard including 7 masters and 11 PhDs.

The School of Forestry has established friendly relationships of academic communication, experts exchange visits and cooperative research with related universities, colleges and research institutes all over the world, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Russia, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina, Poland, and Israel.