Curriculum

The Forestry Training Institute’s forestry curriculum is a tailored series of courses designed to build practical skills and capabilities. This goal is accomplished through a largely practical-driven teaching style accompanied by a complete and relevance-centered theoretical component, and is meant to create individuals ready to support forestry projects and activities across Liberia.

The forestry degree is a two year program allowing three concentrations. The first year covers general and introductory forestry courses, and the second year focuses on components that prepare students for one of the three fields into which Liberian forestry has been established: Community, Commercial, and Conservation. This has evolved in line with the incorporation of the three (3) Cs in forestry in Liberia, and as such the curricula for different concentrations were developed one at a time.

Commercial Curriculum
Initially, forestry in Liberia centered around commercial use, management, and control of the forest. As a result, most forestry content at FTI was dedicated to commercial content and the core aspects of this content was maintained as the commercial forestry curriculum.

Community Curriculum
The Community Forestry Curriculum was developed in 2013 by a collaboration of local and international partners. The contents of the Modules in the Community Forestry curriculum can be found here.

Conservation Curriculum
The Conservation Forestry Curriculum has been developed by the U. S. Forest Service since 2018 in collaboration with local partners and actors in conservation in Liberia. The contents can be found here.

Harmonization
In November 2022, the faculty of the institute and its partners endeavored to create a harmonized version of the curriculum which ensured the responsively adjusted curriculum was clear and concise.

The current curriculum is outlined below:

Table of Forestry courses