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Don’t make them come to you! .…forest research steps out of the Ivory Tower

Southern Research Station steps out of the Ivory Tower to deliver timely and accessible forest research findings to a diverse set of customers, including land managers, policymakers, scientists, and the general public.

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Don’t make them come to you! .…forest research steps out of the Ivory Tower

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  1. Southern Research Station Don’t make them come to you! .…forest research steps out of the Ivory Tower

  2. Southern Research Station • Forest Service--major programs • National Forest System: land & resource management of national forests • State & Private Forestry: fire & aviation, cooperative forestry, landowner advice, forest health protection • Research & Development: science policy & planning; resource valuation & use; vegetation management & protection; wildlife, fish, watershed

  3. Southern Research Station

  4. Southern Research Station

  5. Southern Research Station • Station Profile • $43 million appropriated budget, with an additional $2.7 million in “soft” funding • $13 million to fund cooperative research • 127 paneled scientists (Ph.D.), additional 300 technical and administrative employees • 26 research units at 18 laboratory, experimental-forest, and university locations • 275 refereed-journal articles, 366 other publications

  6. Southern Research Station Breadth of active research Wood Quality “Sustain Forests and the Values they Provide People.”

  7. Southern Research Station Aquatic

  8. Southern Research Station Natural Regeneration

  9. Southern Research Station Biobased Products

  10. Southern Research Station Threatened & Endangered Species

  11. Southern Research Station Biological Productivity

  12. Southern Research Station Insects and Diseases

  13. Southern Research Station Conservation Education

  14. Southern Research Station • 1995 Budget Cuts • Lost > 100 employees • Closed 5 research units • Little support from “friends” • 2002 Budget Cuts • Outcry from partners • Media pressure on Congress

  15. Southern Research Station • Lessons learned from the mid 90’s • Become so tightly enmeshed that you’d leave a big hole in the fabric of the community (science, policy, and local neighborhood) • Target customers and find out what they want • Concentrate on timely delivery of quality products and services • Make science findings accessible to public; value communications as a key administrative function

  16. Southern Research Station Landownership in Southern United States

  17. Southern Research Station • Become enmeshed with community (science, policy, local neighborhood) • Established 6 cross-cutting themes to unify 26 research units • Collaborated with land managers on region-level assessments • Required principle investigators to participate in legislative visits

  18. Southern Research Station • Identify, target customer segments • Hired a marketing specialist • Invited non-traditional customers to participate in 5-year planning sessions for research units • Designed products to meet specific needs of market segments

  19. Southern Research Station • Market segments • Those who need results to manage their land • Those who may or may not use results to influence public land-management policy • Those who use results to further science • Congress

  20. Southern Research Station • Specific products and services • COMPASS quarterly catalog with featured publications • ANNUAL REPORT of research accomplishments • State-by-State UPDATES for Senators and Representatives • Web-based BRIEFINGS available for Congressional staffers

  21. Southern Research Station • State-of-art Internet presence • Between 20,000 and 40,000 “hits” a day • Half million publications downloaded a year • Reduction of hard-copy mailings from 75,000 to 21,000 a year

  22. Southern Research Station

  23. Southern Research Station

  24. Southern Research Station

  25. Southern Research Station • Concentrating on timely delivery of quality products and services • Developed a publications evaluation card for feed back on accessibility/quality of science products • Offered online delivery of publications, data bases, presentations • Collaborating on One-Stop Shopping to give seamless nationwide access to all online publications

  26. Southern Research Station • Making research accessible to the general public • Used Web site to publish scientist profiles and contact information • Hired a science writer to concentrate on research “stories” • Met monthly to review article galleys and select the best for news releases • Helped scientists to incorporate the “so what” into manuscripts, proposals, and briefings

  27. Southern Research Station • Conservation Education • Connection to local communities • Appreciation among youth for forests and forest management • Interest in careers in forest science

  28. Southern Research Station

  29. Southern Research Station • Hypertext encyclopedia--the future • Synthesizing 75 years of forest research • Six modules, one complete

  30. Southern Research Station

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