About Us
The Sloan Foundation Forest Industries Center (SFFIC) at Virginia Tech is an interdisciplinary partnership between the Pamplin College of Business and the College of Natural Resources. The SFFIC provides a forum for faculty and students in marketing, wood science and forest products, and forestry to collaborate on shared research and curricular interests to examine the business and technological needs of the forest and wood products industries.
The Department of Marketing, which has assumed the leadership role for the Pamplin College's participation in this center, has been ranked in the nation's top 20 marketing departments in research productivity. Marketing faculty members have conducted numerous research projects to examine inefficiencies in the "seedlings-to-goods" supply chain and have published papers in the area of wood products.
The Department of Wood Science and Forest Products is consistently ranked among the top five in North America. And faculty members of the Department of Forestry examine a broad range of forest-related issues, including forest economics, forest biometrics, remote sensing and GIS systems, industrial forestry operations, and forest biology. Five of the department's faculty members have served as editor of Forest Science, the premier forestry research journal
Our Mission
Through the collaborative efforts of both colleges, the Forest Industries Center seeks to promote the global competitiveness and sustainable growth of America's diverse forest industries. Global competition requires the continuous improvement of each segment in the forest industry supply chain and the linkages that bring these segments together. This improvement can be brought about through innovative business models that are responsive to market and consumer demands, technology transfer to enhance manufacturing processes, and a labor force with enhanced skills.
The center's research, technology transfer, and workforce expansion programs will examine technological advances at all levels of the supply chain and develop innovative business models that are firmly grounded in specific industry-related issues.
The center emphasizes communication among the key stakeholders in forest industries. It brings together leaders in primary processing and secondary manufacturing industries; major retailers of forest products; academic experts in forestry, wood products and business; state government officials; and representatives of the USDA Forest Service.
