Wood Education Institute — The Entrepreneurial Spirit of Cooperation between the Wood Industry and the University System

Currently, a significant number of civil engineering programs do not offer Design of Wood Structures course, offer it inconsistently, or offer it as a part of another course. The report [Barnes 2007], presented at the 2007 NCSEA Annual Conference on US higher education institutions that offer degrees in Civil Engineering, demonstrated this deficiency in education as related to the use of wood as structural material. This was further supported by the informal survey by the Wood Product Council in 2007 as well as numerous comments by the participants of the 2008 Structures Congress Wood Research Needs Pre-Congress Workshop. These reports, surveys, and workshops simply re-affirmed what industry insiders have voiced for the last two decades. In contrast, other structural materials such as, Design of Steel Structures and Design of Concrete Structures, are offered with regularity at almost every university and as part of a core curriculum. While there are a number of reasons that have led to this current trend of educational practice, it is conjectured that the main contributor is the lack of research funding. The research opportunities available for wood design related activities are lagging far behind the opportunists related to other materials. Consequently, university professors that study and teach wood engineering are becoming scarce. The educational materials related to design of wood structures are limited and scattered and consequently many questions related to wood design remain unanswered. The Wood Education Institute (WEI), described herein, intends to be a catalyst of change helping to stop and ultimately reverse this unfortunate trend by focusing on improving basic wood education at the undergraduate and graduate level and by providing resources and guidance to the universities interested in offering cost-effective educational options related to wood design.