Dana, Samuel Trask,, 1883-1978

Professor of forestry and dean of the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan, member of the Hoover Commission on the Reorganization of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government, and fellow and president of the Society of American Foresters.

Samuel T. Dana, a specialist in forestry and forest economics, was the first dean of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources, serving from 1927 to 1951. Born April 21, 1883 in Portland, Maine, Dana was educated at Bowdoin College (1904) and Yale University (1907). He immediately entered the U.S. Forest Service upon graduation where he first engaged in investigations of the culture of white pine and paper birch forests. He later helped to establish several forest experiment stations and conducted further research on the economic value of forests.

During World War I, Dana was a U.S. Army captain in charge of lumber statistics, serving as secretary of the commodity committee on lumber from 1918 to 1919. After the war he returned to the U.S. Forest Service as a forest economist and then was appointed forest commissioner of Maine where he served from 1921 to 1923 and where he was in charge of forest fire control. From 1923 to 1927, Dana was director of the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station of the U.S. Forest Service. He served there until coming to the University of Michigan.

Dana was active in his profession and as a teacher. During the 1930s, he was chairman of the U.S. Timber Conservation Boards. He also served as president of the Society of American Foresters and was editor in chief of its Journal of Forestry. From 1948 to 1949, he also served on the Hoover Commission charged with the reorganization of the executive branch of the government. In 1958, President Eisenhower appointed him to served on the National Outdoor Recreation Review Commission which studied trends in population, transportation and recreational land uses. He also served on the National Citizens Committee for Outdoor Recreation, and was selected by the Society of American Foresters to study different proposals to preserve California's redwood trees.

Dana died May 8, 1978