A retired Minnesota university administrator, author and wood science researcher will be featured speaker April 22 for Mississippi State's Carlton N. Owen Lecture.
Jim Bowyer now is president of Bowyer and Associates Inc., a wood science and bioenergy consulting firm. His public presentation will examine the current state of world forests and wood supplies, as well as the impact of bioenergy on world forest plantations and international lumber trafficking.
The 2 p.m. program will be held in the Franklin Center auditorium. A reception, also open to the public, will follow at the west-campus facility.
Bowyer also is professor emeritus in the University of Minnesota's bioproducts and biosystems engineering department and former head of the wood and paper science department. He is co-author of the leading introductory wood science textbook used in North America, "Forest Products and Wood Science," now in its fifth edition.
He is a Fellow of the International Academy of Science; chairman of the Tropical Forest Foundation, an organization serving Brazil, Gabon, Guyana, and Indonesia; and former president of the international Forest Products Society and Society of Wood Science and Technology.
Bowyer holds degrees from Oklahoma State and Michigan State universities, and a doctorate from Minnesota. While working at UM, he founded the Forest Products Management Development Institute to further educate and develop industry professionals.
MSU's Owen Lecture Series was established in the College of Forest Resources by the Greenville, S.C., resident and 1974 MSU graduate for whom it is named. Begun in 1992, the public service program focuses on forest resource stewardship issues.
For more information about the 2008 Owen Lecture, contact Rubin Shmulsky at 662-325-2116 or rshmulsky@cfr.msstate.edu.
