OIERP

Education

Ph.D. Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 2002
M.S. University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 1996
B.A. College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts 1990

Biography

Dr. Christopher Keyes joined Louisiana Tech in 2021 as Director of the School of Agricultural Sciences & Forestry, an academic unit of 18 faculty and 9 staff serving approximately 380 students enrolled in Agricultural Business, Agricultural Education, Animal Science, Forestry, and Geographic Information Science degree programs. He is responsible for oversight of the school’s South Campus agricultural and forestry facilities, which include the 1,150-acre Tech Farm and its beef cattle, swine, and equine units; a 28,000 ft² production greenhouse and its growing operations; the full-service Meats Processing Lab; the Tech Farm Salesroom; and an expansive horticultural complex consisting of a glass-roofed botanical conservatory, a 50-acre arboretum, and demonstration gardens. Dr. Keyes joined Louisiana Tech in 2021 after 14 years at the University of Montana, where he served as Associate Director of the Montana Forest and Conservation Station, administrator of the Lubrecht Experimental Forest and Bandy Experimental Ranch field stations, and Research Professor of Forestry. Previously he spent six years as Assistant Professor of Forestry at Cal Poly Humboldt. Dr. Keyes is a research forester with specialization in forest stand dynamics, and his research focuses on the development and testing of novel silvicultural strategies to restore forest health, complexity, and resilience. He and his students and staff have generated a diverse portfolio of research publications, management plans, and silvicultural prescriptions for forests, parks and conservation reserves of the western United States, including California, the Pacific Northwest, and the northern Rocky Mountains.