Contact: Bob Ratliff
A regional United States Forest Service official is the new dean of the College of Forest Resources and director of the Forest and Wildlife Research Center at Mississippi State University.
Sam Foster assumes his new duties Feb. 1, pending formal approval by the Board of Trustees, State Institutions of Higher Learning. He has served for the past eight years as assistant director of the service's Southern Research Station in Asheville, N.C.
Interim dean Bob L. Karr will resume his previous position as associate dean of the college, which includes the departments of forestry, forest products, and wildlife and fisheries.
At the Forest Service--a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture--Foster had administrative responsibility for 11 research units located from Auburn, Ala., to Nacogdoches, Texas. Previously, he was a Forest Service program manager and supervisory research geneticist, as well as an adjunct professor of plant and soil science at Alabama A&M University.
He also has held positions in industry, including vice president of the International Forest Seed Co. and manager of forest research at Crown Zellerbach Corp.
He holds bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Tennessee and a doctorate from Oregon State University.
Foster, whose research in forest genetics has gained international attention, "will lead the departments of forestry, forest products, and wildlife and fisheries toward national prominence in teaching, research and service," said Charles Lee, vice president for MSU's Division of Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine.
"Dr. Foster also will strengthen the contributions of natural resources to the economic and environmental welfare of the people of Mississippi," Lee added.