Virginia Tech's Board Of Visitors Appointed Two College Of Natural Resources Professors To Professorships

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors has appointed Donald Orth the Thomas H. Jones Professor of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences and Frederick Kamke the Thomas M. Brooks Professor of Wood Sciences and Forest Products. Orth and Kamke are on the faculty of the College of Natural Resources.

Orth, professor and department head of fisheries and wildlife sciences, joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 1980. In 1992 he was elected president of one of the most active and visible natural resources education groups in North America, the Education Section of the American Fisheries Society. His research specialties are stream-habitat analysis and fish population dynamics.

Orth developed a capstone course in the fisheries science option, a writing intensive course that contains a magazine project. He also developed a new course for sophomores on career and life planning and a continuing education course called Computer Methods for Fish Stock.

Orth was awarded the Certificate of Teaching Excellence in 1999 and Virginia Tech's Outstanding Faculty Award in 1998. "His many professional accomplishments at Virginia Tech have culminated in his being named the Thomas H. Jones Professor," said Greg Brown, dean of natural resources.

"We are also pleased to have Frederick Kamke, a member of the Department of Wood Science and Forest Products since 1984, receive the Brooks professorship," Brown said. Kamke was elected president of the Society of Wood Science and Technology in 1997, and elected to the International Academy of Wood Science in 2001. Kamke's research focuses on the heat and mass transfer in wood and wood-based products, with emphasis on adhesion science and the manufacture and performance of wood-based composite materials.

Kamke is the founder and current director of the Wood-Based Composites Center, an industry consortium that works with Virginia Tech and three other universities to promote research and teaching to serve the wood-based composites industry. In 2002 he became the founding director of the Sustainable Engineered Materials Institute, a multi-departmental center linking forest management practices with the development of composite materials from natural fibers.