Samantha Gonzalez brags to her friends that she gets paid to hike around every day.

There’s work involved too, which includes silviculture surveys on young seedlings or 100-year-old trees and block layouts for industry.

It’s all in a day’s work amongst the timber stands at UNBC’s Aleza Lake Research Forest, located 60 km east of Prince George.

Gonzalez, who graduated with her Bachelor of Natural Resources Management with a major in Forestry and a minor in Outdoor Recreation and Conservation degree in 2015, spent three-straight summers working as an intern before being hired as a full-time employee.

It’s a job she wouldn’t trade for anything.

“It’s nice to be excited about going to work every day,” she said. “It’s just nice being out here. You get connected with the area and know the places that you’re going.”

And it’s because donors have made it possible.

Dunkley Lumber, Moss Rock Park Foundation and Integris Credit Union -- helped build the Field Education Centre which opened its doors in May 2016.

The building is a 1,200 square-foot interpretive centre of log and timber construction, designed to host field courses, meeting, retreats, training and community events.

It’s essentially a classroom in the woods on a hilltop overlooking the Upper Fraser area and the MacGregor Mountains, providing a great space for the University’s faculty and students, for outdoor learning and research in forest ecology, forest and ecosystem management and environmental studies.

The Aleza Lake Research Forest Society is operating the Centre as an environmental learning centre, gathering place and hub for events at the 9,000-hectare research forest.

Befitting its forest setting, the Centre strongly incorporates and highlights northern B.C. wood in almost all facets of its construction, with a high level of craftsmanship throughout. Its construction, spread over two years, included the expertise of eight local contractors, and materials and supplies from 13 additional local businesses.

Donors also help fund the paid internship program where UNBC students are hired for the summer.

Gonzalez was fortunate to transfer the skills she learned in the classroom to her work as an intern.

“We did some outdoor labs in school which are great, but as soon as you’re out here in the summer you apply everything you’ve learned that year,” she said.
“We couldn’t do this work without donor support, especially building the centre.”

She credits Mike Jull, the manager of the Aleza Lake Research Forest Society and Colin Chisholm, the Society’s assistant manager for being her mentors in the forest, learning even more.

The Aleza Lake Research Forest began as a B.C. Forest Service Experiment Station in 1924. It was the first experiment station of its kind in the province.

Alan Nevison never went to university himself, but during his nearly five decades as an early builder and longtime vice president with Prince George-based
Industrial Forestry Service Limited (IFS), he came to appreciate the value of a post-secondary education.

Alan was often the first point of contact for clients needing help and information and he witnessed first-hand how technology drove progress in the forest industry. With his knowledge of aerial photography, geographic information systems and other new technologies in the forest sector, he led his company’s efforts to become one of the largest, most reliable and successful natural resource consulting firms in B.C.

In the company’s early years, investing in the technology was the easy part; what was more difficult was finding university-trained employees to collect, interpret and disseminate the data. In those days there was no UNBC, and the company
recruited trained personnel from all parts of Canada and some from the United States for forestry and mapping work. He found that those trained in the Lower Mainland rarely stayed long in Prince George.

So not surprisingly, the Nevison family were supporters of UNBC from the beginning and got behind the public campaign for a northern university in the 1980s.

“There was always this interest in our family with UNBC,” says Marjorie Nevison, Alan’s wife of 61 years. “We enjoyed watching it grow and develop as it came into being.”

After his death in November 2015, Alan’s family made a memorial contribution to UNBC to fund two endowed scholarships, valued at $1,500 each and awarded annually, for students conducting research at UNBC’s research forests.

“After Al died we wanted to do something to honour his memory,” Marjorie explains. “Forestry was his passion. A donation to support forestry students at UNBC was the obvious thing to do.”

Through this contribution, the Nevison family is strengthening research and teaching excellence, and growing UNBC’s grassroots efforts to strengthen B.C.’s and Canada’s North. UNBC’s research forests are important sites for discovery and guiding natural resource management, and the scholarships the family created will help future generations of foresters find innovative solutions for the next wave of forest sector advancements.

And, 25 years after its creation, UNBC is producing graduates who provide the skills and experience that Alan had to previously search for abroad.

“In the old days it was just cutting down trees, bringing them into town and selling the lumber,” Marjorie says. “Now there is so much more to forestry and the students at UNBC are on the cutting edge.”