Columns:: Porterfield, former business executive, is named new dean of forest resources

since 12/15/98

Columns::November 17, 2003

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Campus News

Porterfield, former business executive, is named new dean of forest resources

By Larry B. Dendy
ldendy@uga.edu

Richard L. Porterfield, a former forestry professor who for 21 years held executive positions with Champion International paper company, has been chosen dean of the Warnell School of Forest Resources.
Porterfield was chosen from among four finalists identified in a national search led by Keith Prasse, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine. His appointment is effective Jan. 1, 2004, pending approval by the University System Board of Regents. He will succeed James Sweeney, who has been interim dean since October of 2002.
While working for Champion from 1979 until 2000, Porterfield headed two of the company’s major divisions that each had annual sales near or above $1 billion. He also oversaw the firm’s human resources operation and was responsible for management of the company’s five million acres of timberlands.
With some $5.5 billion in annual sales, Champion was one of the nation’s leading forest products companies, and one of the largest landowners in the country, until it was acquired by International Paper. Prior to joining Champion, Porterfield was a professor of forest resources at Mississippi State University and taught forestry at the University of Arkansas. For the past year he has taught at the College of William and Mary, where he created a new course in natural-resource economics.
He is board chairman of the Forest History Society, a non-profit organization that is in the quiet phase of an $8 million capital campaign to support improved natural-resource management. He also chaired the executive committee for the American Forest and Paper Association’s Sustain-able Forestry Initiative.
Provost Arnett Mace, dean of the Warnell School before becoming provost, says Porterfield is “one of the brightest, most effective, committed and personable professionals I have had the pleasure of working with over many years. His depth of expertise, diverse management and leadership experiences, communication skills and organizational abilities will serve him well as dean of the Warnell School.”
Porterfield has a doctorate in forestry and economics from Yale, where he taught a graduate-level course in forest economics in 2001. He has a master’s in forest economics from North Carolina State University and a bachelor’s in forest business from Ohio State.
In a letter outlining his vision for the Warnell School, Porterfield said he will work to further improve student quality and preparation, work with faculty to improve already high productivity, especially in research, and expand the school’s outreach on campus, in the community and to the state, nation and world.

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