About Provost Perry J. Brown

Dr. Brown is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at The University of Montana-Missoula. He has served UM since 2008 as Associate Provost for Graduate Education, and since 1994 as Dean and Professor, College of Forestry and Conservation, and Director of the Montana Forest and Conservation Experiment Station. He has considerable expertise in natural resource social science, policy and planning, recreation behavior and planning, and wilderness studies. His Ph.D. is from Utah State University and emphasized outdoor recreation and social psychology. A lifelong resident of the western United States, he has served on the faculties of Utah State University, Colorado State University, and Oregon State University, in addition to The University of Montana.

Dr. Brown has served in formal advisory appointments with both the USDA Forest Service and the USDI Bureau of Land Management, including a 2004 leave assignment with the International Programs Office of the USDA Forest Service. He is a Past-President of the National Association of University Forest Resources Programs (NAUFRP) and former chair of the NAUFRP/CSREES McIntire-Stennis ATR Committee. He served as a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Forestry Research Capacity and Chair of the Pinchot Institute's National Panel on Wilderness Stewardship. He is a member of the executive/advisory boards of NAUFRP, the International Union for Forest Research Organizations, the Ecosystem Management Research Institute (a private non-profit research institute), the National Forest Foundation, the National Forest Service Historical Museum, and he chairs the Executive Committee of the Rocky Mountains Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit. He has published over 120 scientific papers, books, and book chapters and mentored 51 master's and 11 Ph.D. students.

For the past decade Dr. Brown and colleagues in the College of Forestry and Conservation have been extensively involved in developing academic capacity in protected area management at the University of Kwa Zulu-Natal in South Africa and that effort has recently been extended to the Copperbelt University in Zambia and the University of Namibia. In addition, Dr. Brown has engaged in professional activities in over 40 countries across the globe. As a leader and Executive Board member in the International Union of Forest Research Organizations he has an extensive network of professional colleagues throughout the world.

He and his wife, Shirley, have five adult children living in Washington, DC, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Japan.