2025 Sustaining Our World Lecture featuring Hilary Franz – former WA State Commissioner of Public Lands

On April 10, 2025 SEFS will be welcoming the Former Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands to Kane Hall for its annual Sustaining Our World lecture series. This year’s topic is “Climate Change And Resilience: How Science And Solutions Can Bring Society Together.”
Climate change can be a great unifier, if we will let it. 

Guest Lecture: Dr. Richard Vlosky – Cross-Laminated Timber in the U.S. South: Changes in Sector Influence and Sawmill Engagement Over the Past Five Years

Who: Please join us in welcoming Dr. Richard Vlosky from Louisiana State University. Dr. Vlosky is a UW alumni and is the Crosby Land & Resource Endowed Professor of Forest Sector Business Development at LSU. 

The Impact of Giving – A SEFS Donor Spotlight Series: John C. Garcia

This is the second donor spotlight in a series. This series of stories reveals the impact that donors have on students, faculty and research here at the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and more broadly at the College of the Environment. 

A message from Dan Brown, SEFS Director: Spring 2025

We are well into 2025 and while there are moments when the future feels uncertain, the importance of our work here at SEFS and the broader scientific community is not. Our work and our commitment to our mission and values has not diminished in any way. 

Is there room for large carnivores like grizzly bears to live in California? Research suggests that the answer is yes

SEFS Assistant Professor Alex McInturff runs the People and Wildlife Lab here at the University of Washington. His most recent research published in Biological Conservation suggests that even in a state with 40 million people and the nation’s largest agricultural sector there is room for the grizzly.  

Yakama Nation Tribal Council and SEFS leadership meet to discuss the continued support of students in earth sciences, fisheries and environmental science

In the beginning of 2025, SEFS Director Dan Brown met with Polly Rigdon from the Yakama Nation Tribal Council. Rigdon teaches a class called, “Role of Culture and Place in Natural Resource Stewardship: The Yakama Nation Experience.” Rigdon leads UW students and faculty onto the closed portion of the reservation to learn about natural resource stewardship by the Yakama Nation. 

SEFS remembers one of its oldest friends Carolyn Scott

Carolyn S. R. B. Scott (1921-2025)

The School of Environmental and Forest Sciences has lost one of its oldest friends, Carolyn Scott. She died peacefully at home on Sunday, February 2, 2025, surrounded by family. 

ONRC and others awarded $4.2 million grant to advance indigenous forestry resource industrial development in Port Angeles, Washington

In January the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced that a $4.2 million grant will be awarded to the Clallam County Economic Development Council in Port Angeles, Washington. The grant will be used to advance indigenous forestry resource development in the region.  

SEFS remembers College of Forestry Professor Emeritus Reinhard F. Stettler

We are saddened to share the news that Professor Emeritus Reinhard (Reini) Stettler passed on December 9, 2024. He was 94. Professor Emeritus Stettler was hired in 1963 as an Assistant Professor in the University of Washington’s College of Forestry, now the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. 

PhD student Sam Kreling’s research looks to better understand the consequences of urbanization on the adaptive evolution of coyotes

Kreling’s newest research looks at how our rapidly urbanizing world may influence the evolution of coyotes, the most prominent urban carnivore. Her research conceptualizes a framework that she hopes others will use to better understand the various pathways by which urbanization can influence the genomes of wildlife by using the coyote as a model for understanding urbanization’s effects.