Chien Tan with dog

My favorite experience is taking forestry field classes at Duke. The outdoor learning experiences that I’ve received through my forestry classes have been very insightful as they help bring numerous concepts to life and make my understanding so much richer."

–CHIEN TAN, MEM/MF'21

Our Vision

Forests are managed for a broad variety of goods and services, in an increasingly complicated context of changing climate, land-use pressures, global markets and conflicting cultural values. Our aim is to train foresters to work effectively on the emerging frontiers in forest management, conservation and policy, with a skillset grounded in practical field skills and augmented by cutting-edge tools in fields such as geospatial analysis, multi-resource assessment, and finance. 

We strive to provide students:

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  • A knowledge base with breadth in the ecology and management of forest resources and depth in biology and physical sciences, silviculture, forest measurement, and resource policy, economics and administration
  • Quantitative and analytical skills in statistics and forest measurement, and a choice among geospatial tools, applied mathematics and quantitative modeling, and decision analysis
  • Management skills for effective stewardship and planning of forest resources, and successful collaborations in cross-disciplinary settings in the government, nonprofit and business sectors
  • Oral and written skills to communicate management prescriptions and plans to a wide audience and critically evaluate opposing viewpoints

The educational program leading to the Master of Forestry degree is accredited by the Society of American Foresters (SAF)