UBC Reports | Vol. 47 | No. 09 | May 10, 2001

UBC 'adoption' fosters forester

Meeting Forestry alumni pivotal moment, says graduate

Jeff Arsenault's decision to enrol in the Faculty of Forestry was strangely rooted in the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary.

That was the year 200 forestry students and a handful of faculty from Hungary's Sopron University fled the country. Adopted by UBC, they made an indelible imprint on both the Faculty of Forestry and the provincial forest industry.

Some 35 years later, Arsenault was hired by two of the Hungarian-born UBC graduates to work on a reforestation project in the Chilcotin region.

"We all seem to have these pivotal moments in our lives, and for me this was it," says the native of Truro, N.S. "I was amazed by their knowledge of forestry and I was almost instantly drawn to the profession."

After five years working as a silviculture surveyor, Arsenault began to contemplate how he could take his career to a new level.

The answer turned out to be a new program at UBC, one that emphasizes engineering concepts, business, communication and problem-solving skills to produce graduates capable of managing a wood products manufacturing facility.

This month, he graduates with a Bachelor of Science in Wood Products Processing, a program which includes comprehensive co-operative education.

With numerous job offers from companies in B.C.'s emerging wood products manufacturing industry, he has accepted a position with Halco Software. He is applying computer modeling and simulation techniques to optimize utilization of resources in product development.

"You need to have a problem-solving attitude," he says. "Advanced wood processing has a scientific component, a business component and an engineering component, so there isn't just one solution, but many."

Unlike Europe, he explains, Canada's forest industry has been limited almost exclusively to harvesting and exporting raw lumber.

"Our history is intimately connected with wood, but in order to have a sustainable forest industry, we have to move our products up the value chain."