The University of Florida’s School of Forest Resources and Conservation is now the School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences (SFFGS). The new name was announced Monday at a brief outdoor ceremony.
SFFGS started as a forestry department at UF in 1935, and officially became a school in 1937. In 2004, the school merged with the geomatics program, which was once housed in the College of Engineering’s civil engineering department. The school merged with fisheries and aquatic sciences, another UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences department, in 2008.
Terrell “Red” Baker, SFFGS director, spoke at the ceremony about how the new name represents the three broad program areas under the school: forest resources and conservation, fisheries and aquatic sciences, and geomatics.
“We are thrilled to have our geomatics and fisheries colleagues more appropriately recognized in our name,” Baker said. “We are here today to celebrate not just our program’s individual accomplishments, but what we have done and will continue to do together as a school.”
The name was chosen after close engagement with faculty, staff, students, alumni and stakeholders, including in-person brainstorming sessions, phone calls and surveys. The new name will increase visibility for the school, including hundreds of students and faculty in the fisheries and aquatic sciences graduate major, geomatics graduate and undergraduate majors, and marine sciences undergraduate major.
“One thing we’ve learned over the last decade or more is that we are simply much stronger than the sum of our parts,” Baker said. “As science scholarship and education becomes increasingly interdisciplinary our school is uniquely situated to help provide solutions for our lives.”
Scott Angle, UF vice president for agriculture and natural resources and the leader of UF/IFAS, also spoke at the event, highlighting how the renaming represents a positive step forward for UF/IFAS as the university strives for a top-5 public university ranking.
Learn more about SFFGS at its new website: ffgs.ifas.ufl.edu.
Watch the ceremony recording: https://youtu.be/2KzGsL1CLfk
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