A Lifetime in Forestry: Reflections from Professor Charlie Blinn
While growing up in Connecticut, I was exposed to forests at a young age when my parents purchased a forested parcel. That interest kindled my career in forestry that led to schooling and work experience in the US South before migrating to Minnesota in 1984.
I recently retired from a position with the University of Minnesota, where I taught classes to undergraduate and graduate students, conducted applied research, and provided outreach education to loggers and natural resource managers. The mix of responsibilities and people with whom I interacted helped me in many ways. Looking back, I have noted below some reflections from my career.
Tuition costs have increased, which has delayed graduation for some students.
The tuition cost to attend a state school, such as the University of Minnesota, increased a lot during my career. For the 1983-1984 academic year, it cost a resident student $1,455 to attend school for the full academic year. For the 2024-2025 academic year, the cost is $15,148. Why has tuition increased so rapidly? One big reason is that the state appropriation of the total cost of tuition was 70% in 1996 and 43% in 2018. Another is that technology, student needs, and housing requirements have changed a lot over time. Buildings are wired for high-speed internet and Wi-Fi. Computer labs are available, providing the most current software. Online learning management systems are available for instructional purposes and for storing class curricula. Professionals have been hired to build, maintain, and provide technical assistance to facilitate users’ access to that technology.
In addition to the changes in technology, student needs have changed over time. It isn’t uncommon to have one or more students in a classroom who have a documented disability that impacts their performance. Professionals in a disability resource center evaluate students and work with instructional staff to create a more inclusive teaching environment accommodating all students. In addition, several centers are available to provide services to students undergoing a crisis.
When I went to college, I stayed in a dormitory in a double room with a bathroom down the hall that was shared with about 60 other students. Today, many students want to live in an apartment or a dormitory quad that includes two bedrooms, a common room and a bathroom.
The decline in state revenue and changing needs have resulted in a higher cost of tuition. To be able to afford to attend college, many students now work somewhere to help pay for their schooling and living expenses. Those jobs can cause the student to take fewer course credits in a semester, delaying their graduation and thus having to pay more for tuition as that cost always seems to increase.
Instructors are more aware of and have adapted to student learning needs today.
College, for me, meant listening to lectures and regurgitating my knowledge through assignments and exams. Every student was assumed to learn and be successful in that environment, and there weren’t special accommodations made for different learning styles or needs. Today, classroom instruction has become a lot more engaging. Students are encouraged to respond to questions posed by the instructor and to participate in small group discussions with their peers. I have seen the same shift in my outreach work, where the diversity of experiences and opinions in the room enriches the discussion.
Academic institutions now have centers where professionals design individualized learning plans for students who have sought that assistance. Those plans may include additional time for assignments or exams, quiet rooms for a student to take an exam, permission to record lectures, access to materials before each class period so the student can review them early, assistance from a peer note taker, access to their blood sugar monitoring device during class, etc. Mental health issues are more common among students today. Today, instructors need to accommodate the more diverse set of student learning needs while also being aware of the mental health issues that their students face.
Technology has had both positive and negative impacts on education.
Changes in technology are constant. Today’s calculators are more capable and cost a small fraction of the one I took to college. I work on a laptop computer today that provides a word processor, a spreadsheet, and so much more while being connected to the internet. As an instructor, I went from using overheads and posting class materials in a box outside of my office that was accessible when the building was unlocked to PowerPoint slides with course materials that are available to students 24/7 on Canvas, a learning management system.
I experienced a constant change in technology with the speed of change ever increasing. For example, University corporate software changed every few years and reporting requirements increased a lot with every change. Those changes required me to learn new systems all the time, some painfully.
For me, these changes brought both positive and negative aspects. It was easy to update PowerPoint slides with current information and to insert relevant photos. Also, I no longer had to struggle to read student’s penmanship as I required all materials submitted for grading to be typed. I also moved all of my exams to be administered online with a large bank of questions that were drawn randomly for each student. That reduced concerns about cheating.
Most students today have a laptop that they bring to class and they always have their cell phone with them. While their laptop was open in class, I would not know if they were taking notes, playing games, surfing the internet or doing something else. While cell phones are generally silenced during class, they serve as another distraction.
Student math skills have generally declined over time because they no longer work through problems by hand. As a result, many struggle with assignments requiring computations because they commonly don’t enter college knowing how to design and use spreadsheets.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is evolving rapidly and is being used in many areas of society. While educators know that AI will shape their students’ future opportunities, they aren’t yet sure how to do that in a way that advances rather than undermines learning. AI can provide reasonable-seeming responses. However, if you haven’t thoroughly understood what it is saying, the response may be incorrect, or the references cited may not exist. AI in a course also raises concerns about ethics (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) and the development of students’ ability to think critically and creatively. I saw those downsides as its use began creeping into student assignments, and I know that its use will only grow over time.
Limited research funding is available to address the needs of forest operations in the Lake States.
Having done much of my schooling in the US South, I was accustomed to research cooperatives where member organizations provided ideas and funding to address critical needs in a variety of areas (e.g., forest modeling, forest productivity, forest health, tree improvement, nursery management, plantation management). Funding for each cooperative helped support research laboratories, technicians, graduate student research, etc. For the student, it was a great opportunity to work on “real-world” problems, to work with individuals outside of academia, and to learn how to translate and transfer their results to cooperative members. The Wood Supply Research Institute (WSRI) and the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement (NCASI) also provided competitive funding for forest operations studies, primarily in the US South. While SFI State Implementation Committees support research, the funding is generally limited and insufficient to support graduate students. The US Forest Service also funded research projects housed in Auburn, AL, and Houghton, MI, that focused on forest operations within each of those regions. While I initially worked with scientists at the Houghton, MI, lab, it closed around 1999 before reopening in 2001 with a much different focus.
There is a general lack of funding to support forest operations research in the Lake States, making it difficult to address relevant research issues within the region. Over time, I experienced a sharp decline in state funding for academic programs, forcing those programs to become increasingly dependent on supporting their mission through a) student tuition and/or b) indirect cost recovery (ICR) support provided through research grants. ICR supports many University functions such as grant administration professionals, custodial and sanitation services, building repair and maintenance, and utilities. A portion of student tuition and ICR funds are returned to academic departments. While some research areas have grown in importance over time, thus bringing in more ICR and elevating that work, that is not true for forest operations research in the Lake States. Because of the difficulty in supporting a forest operations research program in the Lake States, it is less likely that those faculty members will be replaced when they leave the university.
Practicing professionals are very willing to share their knowledge and ideas.
Loggers and natural resource managers were very willing to share their knowledge, concerns, and ideas with students and me. I learned a lot from those professionals. Field trips led by those individuals provided excellent information and exposure to real-world issues. My frequent interactions with practicing professionals enriched my instruction by providing examples through the content I presented, discussions, and assignments.
Through those interactions, I also learned applied research needs, some of which I could help address. Professionals often provided in-kind assistance with study design and data collection. As the studies were based on relevant field-based issues with input from practicing professionals in the design of each study, the subsequent outreach of the results was easy.
I found that when I designed and delivered outreach education programs to loggers and natural resource professionals, I preferred to be paired with a field-based person as that brought out the best in both of us. While my colleague brought a wealth of relevant field experience to the discussion, my thoughts about how to structure that into a well-designed class helped create the best instruction.
Most students don’t get everything possible from their undergraduate education.
Undergraduate education in forestry provides an excellent foundation through coursework, experiential learning opportunities, and assignments. But there is so much more that most students don’t take advantage of, which doesn’t occur in the classroom. I always liked it when students would come to my office to ask questions about the course, dig deeper into course content that went beyond what I might cover in class, or seek advice. Today, students more commonly email their teachers and don’t visit with them outside of the classroom.
Every semester, I was assigned to serve as a mentor to some students. In that role, I would learn about the student’s interests within the major, suggest elective courses that might allow them to pursue their interest in greater detail, suggest career opportunities that align with their interests, propose relatively easy ways to learn more about those opportunities (e.g., doing a ride along to spend a day in the woods with a practicing professional), provide contact names and offer to make contacts for them, etc. While I contacted all of my mentees multiple times every semester, few took the time to meet with me because they were so focused on today’s courses and assignments.
A net result of fewer interactions with instructors is that many students are likely less prepared to enter the workforce in their area(s) of interest and may have a difficult time soliciting references from their instructors.
