Contact: Bob Ratliff
One of Ian Munn's Mississippi State classrooms is as big as the outdoors. That's because it is outdoors.
An associate professor of forestry, Munn teaches a professional practices course in the university's College of Forest Resources. Required of all senior forestry majors, the class has students develop forestland management plans such as they may be called on to do in their post-graduate professional careers.
"They must demonstrate their ability to integrate and apply their education and professional training to a 'real-world situation,'" Munn said.
In the course, three-person teams each develop a detailed plan for a specified property. While past students utilized tracts of university forestland, an MSU Ottilie Schillig Teaching Grant and supporting funds from the Bradley/Murphy Forestry and Natural Resources Extension Trust of Birmingham, Ala., are enabling current and future classes to do their coursework on private land in the area.
During the just-completed spring semester, 17 owners of 500 acres or more of forestlands in Choctaw, Clay, Lowndes, Noxubee, Oktibbeha, Webster, and Winston counties participated in the learning exercise. Student team members interviewed owners about objectives for the property, then "cruised" or inventoried the timber on the land tracts.
After analyzing the gathered information, the students prepared a management plan for Munn to evaluate and grade.
"One of the primary objectives of the course is to prepare a plan that meets an individual landowner's objectives," Munn said. "Those objectives could be as short as 10 years or as long as 30 years."
Landowner goals usually include hunting and fishing, improved timber production to maximize investment return, production of specific timber products, or enhancement and protection of the forest for future generations, he added.
At the end of the course, landowners receive a copy of the management plan, which includes a description of their property, a timber inventory, estimate of the current value, and management recommendations.
"While these plans are intended to illustrate the benefits of forest management and planning, they are never to be considered a substitute for an action plan developed and prepared by a professional forestry consultant," Munn said.
As with the spring semester class members, the response of participating landowners to this first off-campus training exercise has been positive.
One participant, Davis Fair of Macon, said he was "very pleased" with the students' efforts. He described the future forestry professionals as being attentive to his goals of "sustaining timber production and providing long-term management for my children."
For more information on the course, contact Munn by telephone at (662) 325-4546 or e-mail at imunn@cfr.msstate.edu.