He's been a forester since 1928. We've never offered forestry.
The name was an accident. In 1928, a sportswriter named Cash Keller watched the Huntington College basketball team take the floor in Lincoln green and thought of Robin Hood's band of foresters. It stuck. Almost a century later, we've got a mascot in suspenders and boots, a full beard, and a campus in the middle of one of the largest hardwood economies in the country — and not a single forestry course. Maybe it's time the name meant something.
Should Huntington University offer forestry as a major?
We're Foresters. It's on our jerseys, our logo, and 98 years of history. The question we're asking now is whether it should also be on a diploma. Tell us what you think.
"Indiana's forest products industry is a powerhouse — nearly $17 billion in annual economic impact and roughly 90,000 jobs. And the careers go far beyond the woods: foresters, technicians, logistics and finance specialists, sales and marketing, management, all the way up to CEOs of Fortune 500 furniture companies."
We're not announcing a program.
We're asking about one.
Huntington University is exploring the build out of a forestry program — with course offerings that make the most sense to attract new students and give them the employment skills they need to impact the industry. As we commit to the endeavor, including hiring faculty, launching the curriculum, and building the out-door learning labs, we want to know if you will join us. This page is how we find out.
These are not distant industries. They're in Huntington County and the counties around it — small companies in small towns, run by families, looking for people who know timber and know how to run a business.
Indiana State Department of Agriculture, Hardwoods Division. in.gov/isda
Why Huntington
A forestry program here wouldn't start from scratch. HU already has an agriculture department with working relationships across northeast Indiana, a campus surrounded by the landowners and family businesses this industry runs on, and a Christ-centered approach to work that treats stewardship of land as a calling rather than a line item. Adding forestry is less a new direction than finishing a sentence we started in 1928.
What would it look like?
The form below asks you to choose between a major and a minor. Here's the difference, roughly.
A four-year degree in forestry — silviculture, forest measurement and inventory, wildlife and habitat management, timber markets, and the business side of running a forest operation. Graduates would work as consulting foresters, land managers, procurement foresters, or in state and federal agencies.
A focused set of forestry courses that pairs with a degree you're already pursuing — agribusiness, biology, environmental science, or business. Graduates would bring forestry knowledge into a career built on something else.
What Surrounds Us
From the ground, you see a tree line. From the air, you see how far it goes.
This is four uncut minutes over the woods around Huntington — hardwood stands, fence rows, the ribbon of green that follows the water. No narration. Nothing to do but look.
It's easy to stop noticing what's always been there. Students walk past these woods on the way to class every day of the semester.
Forests like these don't stay forests on their own. They're the result of decisions made by people who were planting for a harvest they wouldn't see — what gets cut, what gets planted, what gets left alone. That work doesn't end. It gets handed off.
Tell us what you think.
Two minutes. No commitment. We're collecting interest, not applications.