Dick Grimes, Officer in Charge, Organisational Services Branch, Queensland Department of Forestry, has been awarded a Gottstein Fellowship for 1982.
Dick will study and observe significant forest management and industry education concepts used in primary and secondary schools in the USA and Canada. He leaves for the tour in May.
The study of six to eight weeks will involve talks with forestry services, industry, and educational bodies.
The trip will be preparatory to producing school resource materials for Queensland and Australian primary and secondary schools.
Dick said USA and Canada were world leaders in the area of forest education, and he hoped to draw on the best resource available. He will travel through a total of 10 states.
“Each school syllabus relies more heavily on environment-based subject areas than ever before,” Dick said.
“In fact, it was the flood of requests from teachers and students for information on forest management that first led me to examine the possibility of establishing an education program,” he said.
“The most important element in any education program is its quality.
Unless we can offer an innovative and interesting program that will fit in with existing primary and secondary school curriculums, we are wasting our time.”
Dick Grimes said a FORED (forestry education) program committee had been set up in each Australian state to liaise with Queensland and to review the production of the two-year program.
“The input of all states will enable us to gear the program for the widest possible application,” he said.
A teacher has been seconded to the Department of Forestry for two years to begin production of the resource material. The teacher’s wages are being paid jointly by the timber industry and forestry.
“With the close liaison between the Departments of Education and Forestry and the industry we will be able to produce a much more complete and balanced program,” Dick said.
