The Daniels Faculty is pleased to announce that Associate Professor John Caspersen has been appointed to a one-year term as director of Forestry programs.

Caspersen joined the Forestry program in 2002 and teaches courses in forest ecology and forest management. He also supervises MFC and PhD students and has served as both undergraduate and graduate coordinator at various points in his career. He will continue in these roles while serving as Director.

“I look forward to advancing the vision of interdisciplinary teaching and research that inspired Forestry’s integration into Daniels,” he says. “For example, I hope to strengthen the connections between the MFC and MLA programs—giving landscape architects greater exposure to urban forestry, and urban foresters more insight into landscape architecture. Similarly, I aim to foster more interaction between faculty and students in our two PhD programs to encourage interdisciplinary research across Daniels' diverse academic fields.”

Caspersen holds a BA in biology from Oberlin College and a PhD in forest ecology from the University of Connecticut. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University, where he studied the role of forests in the global carbon cycle. Since joining the University of Toronto, much of his research has been based at Haliburton Forest in central Ontario, focusing on the management of sugar maple and other hardwood species.

“Working with managers at Haliburton Forest has allowed me to bridge the gap between basic and applied research—something I believe is essential in professional disciplines like forestry and architecture.”

He adds that Daniels is uniquely positioned in this regard:

“With both professional and research-based programs across several disciplines, we have a rare opportunity to see how practice and scholarship inform each other. Observing these connections in other fields helps us identify similar synergies within our own.”

Caspersen succeeds Sandy Smith, who has served as Director of the Forestry programs since 2019.