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Dr. Steven Stehman

We are very pleased to announce that at the May 12, 2016 Academic Governance Meeting Dr. Stephen Stehman, Professor in the Department of Forest and Natural Resources Management, and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor, was named the College’s 11th Exemplary Researcher for 2016-17!

This College-level award recognizes successful, currently active researchers with exemplary research activity, publication record and a graduate/undergraduate student mentorship program. The nomination process allows for nominations from three categories: Lifetime Career Achievement – for which Dr. Stehman was nominated, Mid-Career and Early Career Achievement.

Dr. Stehman received his Ph.D. from Cornell University (Biometry), 1990; M. S. from Oregon State University (Statistics), 1982, and B.S. from Pennsylvania State University (Biology), 1979.

Dr. Stehman is an outstanding researcher who brings a quiet passion to his courses and imparts unsurpassed knowledge of his field of study, statistics, to his students. He is author or co-author on dozens of scholarly works, including a key article in Science: “High Resolution Global Maps of 21st Century Forest Cover Change.” He has reviewed more than 132 manuscripts in the past several years. He ranks among the most highly cited authors at our College. He has mentored a large number of graduate and undergraduate students, including service on more than 55 Master’s and doctoral committees. He serves as Associate Editor for Remote Sensing of Environment and Remote Sensing Letters. His recent work on the mapping of tropical forest loss, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, received national press attention.

Dr. Stehman’s scholarship is well known beyond New York, and he has been supported by more than ten grants from NASA and USGS over the past six years. He has given keynote addresses in China, Quebec City and Anchorage, Alaska. He presented talks on sampling design, forest loss, and accuracy assessment at the GOFC-GOLD Symposium on Forest and Land Cover Observations, Jena, Germany, October, 2008. He gave a talk in Corvallis, Oregon, entitled “Identifying Issues Related to Statistically Rigorous Use of Geo-Wiki for Accuracy Assessment and Area Estimation”, June 2011. In September 2012, he presented at ForestSAT 2012, a conference promoting science-based applications of remote sensing and other spatial data in forested systems.

Dr. Stehman has already received several awards from ESF and SUNY acknowledging his outstanding scholarship and teaching. In addition to being named a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2014, they include:

  • ESF Undergraduate Student Association Distinguished Teaching Award (1992)
  • ESF Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement in Teaching (2003)
  • SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2004)
  • Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities (2012)

Dr. Stehman will present a campus-wide research seminar highlighting his work as the first seminar in the Adaptive Peaks Series during the 2016-17 academic year. At that time he will be presented with a plaque recognizing this achievement, as well as a reception in his honor.

Congratulations to Dr. Stephen Stehman on this well-deserved honor!!