Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, has both a Department of Botany and a Department of Forestry where students may select courses from a broad curriculum to study various aspects of plant life. Many forest-oriented courses are available, and most of them include actual work in the field. The University has an arboretum on campus where ornamental species are emphasized. Guided tours of these arboreta, as well as of the display greenhouse, can be arranged by contacting the Chairman of the Department of Botany, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois 62901.
DEPARTMENT OF FORESTRY
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The department has programs in instruction, research and public service. The instructional program offers professional undergraduate training in forest science and wood science and these are accredited by the Society of American Foresters. Graduate training is provided only at the Master’s level within the department. Doctoral work can be pursued through interdisciplinary programs in genetics, ecology, and plant physiology under the general direction of forestry staff who are members of these respective faculties.
Research is conducted at the main campus, the Dixon Springs Agricultural Center in southern Illinois (Pope County), Sinnissippi Forest in northern Illinois (Ogle County), and at other smaller outlying areas. Support is provided by the Agricultural Experiment Station and grants from industry and governmental agencies. Projects cover a wide range of subjects related to the production and utilization of wood as well as the use of forests for non-timber values. The latter includes recreation and watershed management, with special emphasis on the role of forests and forestry in water quality.
At Dixon Springs the emphasis has been on the ecology and management of pine plantations. These plantings represent plant communities that have been interjected by man into the natural succession of abandoned agricultural land to forest. Factors affecting the growth of pine, and the effects of pine on soil conditions, stand composition, and the regeneration of native hardwood species are being investigated. Watershed management studies are also concentrated at Dixon Springs.
The 2,500-acre Sinnissippi Forest, a private estate provides the department with research opportunities. A nature tail is maintained as an outdoor laboratory that is widely used by both adult and youth groups. Sinnissippi Forest emphasizes the fact that a managed forest can be aesthetically pleasing.
Public service activities are carried on through the Cooperative Extension Service and provide advice and information to landowners, youth groups, and other citizens of the State. This is accomplished largely through group meetings and demonstrations and direct replies to individual requests for information. Major emphasis has been on establishment of windbreaks on farms in the prairie region; promotion of sound management practices for farm woodlands; and the care of trees in plantations and on farmsteads. Extension education emphasizes the development of an appreciation by Illinois youth for conservation of the forest resource; the promotion among adults of sound management of rural and urban woodlands; and program for primary and secondary industries that concerns the conversion of wood into useful products.