BANGOR – Motorists whizzing down the Massachusetts Turnpike can learn about the University of Maine’s wood science and technology program thanks to a billboard on the busy thoroughfare.

UM professor Barry Goodell said this week that he raised $16,000 to pay for the advertisement as a way to increase enrollment in the undergraduate program which currently has only three students – the lowest number in a decade.

Concerned that the wood science program could be eliminated “particularly when budgets are tight,” Goodell said lack of visibility could be contributing to its low enrollment.

“No one seems to know what wood science and technology is,” said the forest resources professor.

Through the program, which is based in the forest management department, students are trained to utilize forest resources efficiently and with the least environmental impact. The field is important since Maine has “a viable forest product industry that’s critical to the needs of the state,” Goodell said.

“We need to be supplying educated, trained people who can go out and work in this industry,” he said.

Donations to pay for the billboard came from a number of sources including the UM College of Natural Sciences, Forestry and Agriculture, the UM Department of Forest Management, and the UM Admissions Office.

The billboard was first put up in May on Route 290 in Worcester, Mass., where an average of 100,000 cars passed each day, according to Goodell. Since September it has been moved to a variety of sites in Massachusetts and now is displayed on the Massachusetts Turnpike in the West Springfield area.

Since 70 percent of forestry students are from outside of Maine, “our primary audience can be targeted along one of the few highways that lead into the state,” he said.

The professor isn’t sure exactly why the 35-year-old program isn’t more popular. At its highest, enrollment has hovered only around 12-15, even though brochures are mailed to every high school in the state each year, and a Web site generates “pretty good activity.”

Wood science programs across the country are experiencing the same problem, he said.

At UM, wood science and technology graduates choose from a number of careers including engineering and design, production and quality control, marketing and sales, and research and education. With five years of experience, a wood science graduate could earn as much as $100,000 a year, Goodell said.

Ben Herzog, 31, graduated from UM last year with a master’s degree in wood science and technology and now works as a scientist at APA – The Engineered Wood Association in Tacoma, Wash.. He heard about the wood science program as an undergraduate in the forestry department. It would have been hard to find out about it if the two departments hadn’t been connected, he said.

“UM has a good reputation as far as wood science,” Herzog said, noting that another graduate from the Orono campus also was hired by his company.

There are lots of job opportunities for wood science graduates, Goodell said. “Every week I get another request for a student and I have to tell them we only have three and only two of them will graduate within the next two years. So we can’t provide anyone who’s going to come out and start working for you immediately.”

But all that could change, thanks to the billboard. Last month the Web site received 16,684 hits, up from 11,450 before the billboard was mounted, according to Goodell. The litmus test will come this spring when he sees whether the number of applications have increased.

Using billboards to advertise higher education isn’t all that unusual. Community colleges, as well as larger institutions like Penn State and Johns Hopkins have publicized their programs on the giant placards, Goodell said.

Meanwhile, he is determined to find other ways to advertise his program.

He enlisted the help of UM business professor Harold Daniel who agreed to explore with his own students why more people aren’t enrolling in wood science and to come up with new ideas for more effectively selling the program.

“It reinforced for me that there are a lot of problems out there that … aren’t recognized as marketing problems,” said Daniel.

Students’ recommendations included: changing the name of the program to composites engineering; modifying the courses so they meet more general education requirements; and distributing the informational brochures around campus to target students who haven’t decided on a major.

Goodell said he and Daniel plan soon to discuss the ideas to see if they could be implemented.

More information may be found at http://www.woodscience.umaine.edu/

Professor Barry Goodell, head of the wood science and technology program at the University of Maine at Orono, is trying to recruit more undergraduates to join the program. Goodell has had a billboard placed on the Massachusetts Turnpike as one way to get the word out.

Triangular Strand lumber was created by Russell Edgar, a former student and now lab manager at the Advanced Engineering Wood Composites Center at the University of Maine. The lumber has a patent pending, and the goal of the product is to utilize species of Maine hardwood, such as the red maple seen here, that are not extensively used as lumber