College of Natural Resources appoints dean
Chris Luecke was named dean of USU’s Quinney College of Natural Resources on Nov. 14. He has been serving as the interim dean since Nat Frazer stepped down at the end of 2011.
“The idea was to be interim dean until next June,” Luecke said. “At some point they decided maybe they should just offer the position to me.”
Before being made the interim dean of the college, Luecke was the department of watershed sciences head. He said switching positions in the college has brought him new challenges.
“Department head jobs are more focused on the details of running the academic programs, making sure all the courses are taught, making sure that the requirements for the various degrees make sense.” Luecke said. “As a dean, one of the main responsibilities is to work on fundraising, and that’s sort of a new area for me. My biggest challenge right now is to get a handle on how best to do this.”
Luecke said fundraising for the college includes meeting with alumni and large corporations to try and raise money for facilities, research projects and scholarships, which about 25 percent of the students in the College of Natural Resources receive.
“Next week I’ll be out in San Francisco talking with some of our alumni about one of our biggest needs in the next couple of years, which will be a remodel of the BNR Building,” Luecke said.
The S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources has three departments: wildland resources, watershed sciences and environment and society.
“What we do and what were good at is that we make assessments of the health of the various ecosystems surrounding us in the Intermountain West and in North America and in some cases in the world,” Luecke said. “So we do that assessment and we try to use those assessments to sort out which areas are most healthy and which are in need of restoration, and then we work on that restoration or rehabilitation.”
Luecke said he is interested in working more closely with the other colleges on campus than what has been done in the past.
“I think I’d like to change the way in which we link with other colleges,” Luecke said. “Sometimes it seems like we’ve tried to not necessarily join in with some of the university-wide initiatives, and I think we need to improve on that. So we’re going to be working more closely with the College of Science and Ag and Engineering.”
“There are some really natural linkages that we haven’t taken advantage of in the past,” he said. “One thing we’d like to foster is some sort of natural resources writing program that would link English and natural resources. Some of our students are very interested in pursuing that kind of writing.”
The College of Natural Resources Undergraduate Student Council President John Nudd said he likes what Dean Luecke has done so far. He said Leucke has been involved with many students and activities.
“He’s been really great,” Nudd said. “He came to a retreat that we had earlier in the year. He gave a little workshop. He played volleyball with us. He also came to the Real Howl, the activity we put together. He’s pretty active.”
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