MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR www.wvfa.org Spring 24 | West Virginia Forestry Association Mountain State Forestry 5 January 23, 2024 Stakeholders, Alumni, Donors, and Friends: The recent transformation process diminished the faculty, staff, and academic programs within the Davis College. However, I was excited that the proposed merger/unification of the Davis College and Extension could provide excellent opportunities to enhance our overall capacity to facilitate our missions in teaching, research, and service/engagement. This unification (effective July 1, 2024) has great potential to increase efficiency, add value to our mission areas, breath to our focus and increase our overall output/delivery in teaching, research and service/ outreach in support of agriculture and forestry. My concern is that the administrative structure of the unified product is critical for us to realize much of this potential. To date, the WVU, College and Extension leadership has not put forth a compete plan with their specific vision for the results of the unification. The process lacks appropriate transparency, has not, at this point, taken the time to get the necessary input from faculty, staff, students, stakeholders, and industry partners to achieve the necessary database from which to make the best decisions moving forward. Instead, they have chosen to make this unification effective on July 1, 2024, and released the new name, basic administrative structure, and the administrative leader for the Unified unit. The new name was announced as the Division of Land-Grant Engagement which will be home to WVU Exrension, Davis College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and WVU Center for Community Engagement. However, the basic structure of WVU is colleges and not divisions. Division of Land-Grant Engagement is generic, applies to the entire University, and provides no identity on academic disciplines or focus. Why not a college with a name that provides identity of academic disciplines included in the mission for the new unit. WVU has announced that Dr. Jorge Atiles (current Dean of WVU Extension and Engagement) will be appointed later this summer as associate vice president and dean of the Division of Land-Grant Engagement. No other leadership positions have been announced at this time. Darrell Donahue, current dean of the Davis College will step down from that position effective July 1, 2024. Since both the Davis College and Extension and engagement currently have a strong focus on community engagement, why a separate focus for the addition of the WVU Center for Community Engagement? My greatest fear is that the focus of this merger will ultimately diminish WVU’s research and academic focus on Agriculture and Forestry. It has potential to dismantle more of our Experiment Station capacity funding to support research specific to these areas. In addition, I am concerned that moving in the current direction will enhance the existing negative image among our stakeholders, who believe that WVU has limited focus on academic or research in the broad areas of Agriculture and Forestry. I strongly encourage you to become involved in identifying the future focus of the teaching, research, and engagement missions for the WVU Davis College and Extension programs. Everyone is invited to submit your ideas and comments to: wvulandgrant@mail.wvu.edu. You can also express any concerns to the WV Legislators, WV Board of Governors (valerie.lopez@mail.wvu.edu), and to WVU President, E. Gordon Gee (presidentsoffice@mail.wvu.edu). I appreciate and thank you for your participation and support. Paul E. Lewis, Professor Emeritus Assistant Director of Outreach and Community Affairs WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design 304-216-6987 • plewis@wvu.edu Folks—I’m doing something that I’ve never done before, providing you a copy of a letter that was recently sent directly to me as the Executive Director of the West Virginia Forestry Association. The letter was penned by Dr. Paul Lewis, former director of the Animal Sciences Division in the College of Agriculture and Forestry at WVU, and currently serving as a liaison for the Dean’s Office of the Davis College. From what I can tell from Paul’s letter and from comments made by this fellow, Jorge Atiles, who seems to be heading up this merger plan and who talked to all of us at the A.B. Brooks Symposium, there’s some real issues with this new “merger” between the Davis College and the Extension Program. At face value, it seems there’s no merger, rather it’s a take-over of the Davis College by the administration in Extension. I’m not sure how this is going to turn out, but I doubt it will be a good thing for the Forestry and Wood Science Programs. I encourage you to read this letter and provide critical input about this off-the-rails “merger.” I certainly plan to provide critical input on this very unusual approach to a merger. Thank you for hearing me out and please take the time to read Dr. Lewis’ letter. –Bob
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