Shuifa Ke studies forests – how to manage forests, how they function, how they grow.

The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry is hosting Ke, a forestry economics professor from the Beijing Forestry University, until September 2010. He arrived to campus on Sept. 10 to study and conduct research at ESF as a visiting scholar.

Ke will compare the forest-management systems in China and the United States. He hopes his research will change China’s forestry policies. Unlike the United States, the Chinese government controls and maintains all forests in the country.

‘The general social system is different in China,’ Ke said. ‘The study of forestry is still focused on the marketing system because we are developing. We are looking to reform the past and build a marketing system within the forestry system.’

Ke said he hopes to analyze U.S. forestry policies to see what works well and bring those policies back to China.

ESF and BFU are very similar in agendas and research focuses, Ke said. Yet, there are differences in the institutions themselves.

‘What impressed me most about the differences at ESF was the advanced lab equipment and the many overseas students from different countries,’ Ke said.

Ke’s research will contribute to the push to change Chinese law and allow people to use forest resources without strict government control. The proposed reform has been received well by the Chinese public because it permits them have a larger role in deciding how to use and manage the forests, Ke said.

ESF is in the early stages of creating a dual-degree program with other forestry-related institutions in China, which will allow for even more interaction between the universities, David Newman, chair of the forest resource economics department, said.

Newman, along with John Wagner, a forest resource economics professor at ESF, will be involved in Ke’s research.

To get a scholar visa, Ke had to find a faculty member to sponsor him, which Wagner agreed to do.

As his sponsor, Wagner is in charge of handling administrative paperwork, acting as Ke’s primary contact and securing adequate office space for the visiting professor.

‘We hope that he can take his experiences and what he learned as an educator here and apply that to his role as an educator in China,’ Wagner said.

To become a visiting scholar, Ke wrote a grant proposal to the Chinese government, which gave details about his research project. Once the China Scholarship Council awarded the grant, Ke contacted ESF and asked if they would be the institution to sponsor him.

Wagner said the ESF community wants to learn from Ke and study how China’s forest development rights change over time.

‘What we’re trying to do is get those formal descriptions down on paper so we can say, ‘Okay, given that understanding, what are the implications in terms of natural resource management?” he said.

In addition to his research project, Ke is enrolled in two classes. Ke will give at least one seminar about his research project to the ESF community later in the academic year. He also hopes to publish the findings of his research, Wagner said.

Ke’s visit is not the first interaction between ESF and BFU. A professor from the university was a visiting scholar in the environmental studies department in 2007.

Newman has participated in seminars at BFU, and he has plans to give a series of lectures there with Wagner on U.S. forest policy.

‘It’s mutually beneficial,’ he said. ‘Dr. Shuifa gets to learn from us, and we get to interact with him and learn from him as well.’

jlsiart@syr.edu

Published on October 7, 2009 at 12:00 pm