The School of Environment and Natural Resources (SENR), on behalf of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES), signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Northeast Forestry University (NEFU), located in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province of China.
The agreement, which remains in effect through October 2023, allows both institutions to explore collaborative activities such as conducting cooperative research, holding joint workshops and conferences, exchanging of scholars, and possibly establishing an Ohio State University Education Abroad program.
CFAES currently has 33 active international agreements.
As the largest forestry university in China and located in a region where the country’s largest state-owned forests exist, NEFU is seeking to raise its research standards in experimental forestry and cultivate strategies for socio-economic development. This new partnership with The Ohio State University will assist NEFU in this effort, while also affording teaching and research opportunities to CFAES and SENR.
“Through this new relationship, CFAES and SENR faculty and students will work with NEFU to learn within and experience a different culture, a different environment, thus creating better global citizens, particularly in the fields of natural resource management and environmental sustainability,” says Roger Williams, associate professor in forest management and wildland fire science and SENR faculty sponsor of the MOU.
In particular, Dr. Williams says that this partnership’s activities will help prepare SENR students for their professional future by enabling them to acquire a global perspective of the environmental challenges and issues they will encounter in their career.