Fit for the Forest
If forest technology professor Matt Chagnon had been along when the SS Minnow started its ill-fated three-hour tour, the castaways of “Gilligan’s Island” would have been much better off. “No matter what happens, Matt is ready,” laughs Don Quigley, his friend and fellow faculty member in UNH’s Thompson School.
Even when he’s just taking a group of students out for a two-hour forest ecology lab, Chagnon leaves nothing to chance. His Buck folding knife is on his belt. The pockets of his cruiser vest are crammed with the tools of his trade: a clinometer to measure the heights of trees, a compass, pencils and markers, flagging tape, a field notebook. He makes sure he has matches, insect repellent, a bug net, and toilet paper. He loads his red backpack with a first-aid kit, socks, rain gear, and homemade beef jerky.
Chagnon’s motto mimics the Boy Scouts’: Be prepared. “I was in the Boy Scouts for a week when I was a kid,” he says. “I left because they were nowhere near prepared enough.”
He approaches teaching with the same care and attention to detail. “I’m not one for walking into class and winging it,” he says. “I have everything ready—all the handouts stapled, all the teaching aids prepared—the night before. That makes it easier to handle any unexpected situations that come up.”
An “unexpected situation” might mean 10 inches of slush and a driving north wind on the morning of a field trip. “In lots of programs, the students don’t go out if the weather’s bad. But I’ve been in some really tough conditions in this business, and I take my students out no matter the weather. If you’re going to have a career in the outdoors, there are times when you’ll have to work in the cold and the rain and the snow. They have to understand that.”
Thompson School teaching award nominees are chosen by secret ballot by the students; a committee then chooses the winner from among the nominees from the seven departments. Chagnon has won the award twice in the four years he’s been eligible. “Everybody knows Matt,” says committee member Garret Dubois, who graduated in May. “He makes it fun. That’s why everybody wants to be in his class. He knows what he’s talking about, and he knows how to get the point across to everybody in the class.”
Chagnon finds it easy to relate to his students, in part, because he’s a Thompson School grad himself. He attended UNH in the early ’70s, but dropped out to work at a sawmill. In 1977, he enrolled in the Thompson School and earned an associate’s degree. Then he worked as a surveyor for a few years until a job as a lab assistant brought him back to UNH. Eventually he was asked to teach a class in dendrology, and he’s been teaching ever since.
Early in his career at the Thompson School, Chagnon had to balance his job with his own schoolwork, completing a bachelor’s degree in forestry at UNH in 1986 and a master’s in 1988. Today he balances teaching with work as a professional forester, volunteer service on industry committees, and his own business organizing lumberjack competitions for ESPN.
“My dad taught me to work hard, but also that work can be fun for me and my students. If it weren’t fun, I wouldn’t do it.” Chagnon knows no better way to spend his time than walking through the woods with a group of students on a crisp fall day, sharing his lifetime of experience.
—Maggie Paine, UNH Alumni Publications
