Archives West Finding Aid

The School of Forestry Senior Forestry Papers consist of about 700 undergraduate theses and term papers completed by forestry students at Oregon State College from 1910 to 1956.  To graduate with a degree in Forestry, students were required the take a seminar class, in which they were expected to complete a thesis. The topics of their papers were randomly assigned by the instructor.

The theses represent a variety of forestry and forest products topics including logging and the lumber industry; labor unions and issues the inducstry; forest law and taxation; forest management and policy; forest reserves, especially National Forests in Oregon; forest insects, pests, and diseases; forest fire prevention and control; reforestation; wood preservation; and growing Christmas trees.   The collection also includes theses addressing soil erosion, watersheds, grazing and range management, recreation on public lands, and wildlife and game management.   Several papers pertaining to McDonald Forest and Peavy Arboretum are part of the collection.

Notably, many of the Forestry graduation requirements are still present today, such as needing to complete six months of hands-on field work. An equivalent course to the original seminar class is still taught at Oregon State, though it is no longer required.

Many of the theses include original photographic prints and the collection includes more than 1200 photographs; maps and oversize charts and drawings have been separated to storage appropriate for their size.

The accompanying container list provides an item-level list of the papers that includes the title, date, author, a link to the theses in ScholarsArchive@OSU, the number of photographs in the paper, and the location of the oversize materials that are stored separately.

The papers are available online in ScholarsArchive@OSU.