forestry school in the United States. - ScholarsArchive at Oregon ...

Walter Mulford 35
Early career
Few jobs were open, and these were entirely in the public service. Mulford
worked for a short period with James W. Tourney of the Bureau of
Forestry conducting root studies. In April, 1901, he began his first job involving
individual responsibility, as forester of the Connecticut Agricultural
Experiment Station; in July, 1901, he became state forester of Connecticut,
the first such position legislatively created in the United States. Mulford
taught courses in the 1902 summer session of the Yale Forestry School at
Milford, Pennsylvania.
The Yale Forestry School, established in 1900, and the influence of Gifford
Pinchot, chief forester of the Bureau of Forestry and a Yale graduate,
undoubtedly gave impetus to forestry in Connecticut. By 1903, Mulford
began a detailed forest survey of a typical forest region of the state. Experi.
mental tracts were established to study forest conditions, nursery practice,
seed care, species-testing, planting methods and costs, seed sowing methods,
woodlot treatment, thinning and improvement cuttings, and reforestation of
burned.over and barren areas. The results of these studies were disseminated
as an extension service to the forest owners of the state.
In 1904, Mull ord joined the United States Bureau of Forestry to take
charge of commercial tree studies in the southern Appalachian Mountains.
In 1905, he spent several months in Europe in preparation for his appoint.
ment with the University of Michigan as Filibert Roth's assistant. Roth had
known Mulford at Cornell. Mulford's studious attributes, his devotion to forestry,
his courteous and gentlemanly deportment undoubtedly were noted by
Roth. It was logical that Mulford was invited to join Roth at the new Depart.
ment of Forestry at the University of Michigan in 1905. Thus, Mulford began
in earnest his teaching career in forestry which had begun at Yale and was
to include work in three institutions: the University of Michigan, Cornell
University, and the University of California. Other faculty members who
were with Roth and Mulford were Gary L. Hill, Olenus L. Sponslor and Professor
Burns of the Botany Department.
The Forestry School at the University of Michigan in its early history
was administered as a graduate school in the College of Letters and Science.
Most of the forestry students had already received their Bachelor degrees at
other institutions and in a variety of disciplines. In this middle western environment,
with a student body comprised of individuals of highly varied basic
training and regional cultural patterns, Walter Mulford started his career as
a teacher in forestry. The task of the forestry faculty was to weave this diversity
of material into a uniform fabric. Walter Mulford adj usted readily to this
need, both in and out of the classroom. His teaching had philosophical content.
His out-of-class counseling, to which he devoted much time, helped
create a desire in the students to enter into this new, adventurous profession
almost as new to Mulford as to his students.
A natural teacher
That Mulford was a born teacher is illustrated by a specific example at
the University of Michigan. E. I. Kotok, who later had a long and distin-