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Hugh Potter Baker was an American forester and colledge president.
Background
he was born on January 20, 1878, in St. Croix Falls, Polk County. He was the fifth of the six sons of Joseph Stannard Baker, real estate agent and owner of extensive timberland, and Alice (Potter) Baker. One brother was the journalist Ray Stannard Baker; another, Charles Fuller Baker (1872 - 1927), became a zoologist and botanist of some note.
Education
After local schooling, Hugh entered Macalester College, St. Paul, but transferred after a year to Michigan Agricultural College, where he received the B. S. degree in 1901. He earned the master of forestry degree at Yale University in 1904 and the degree of doctor of economics at the University of Munich in 1910.
Career
Over the next six years Hugh Baker participated in the preparation of forest management plans for the owners of private timberland and helped compile data for the possible forestation of sand dunes at various shore points on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the Great Lakes. Pinchot regarded him highly and apparently would have been pleased to have him as a full-time employee, but Baker decided instead on a teaching career. In 1904, after receiving his master's degree, he became an assistant professor of forestry at Iowa State College in Ames.
Three years later he moved to Pennsylvania State College as professor of forestry, succeeding Bernhard E. Fernow, a pioneer in American forestry. Building upon Fernow's early efforts, Baker raised the forestry department to major status within the college of agriculture, with access to a 7, 000-acre state forest reserve for study and demonstration work. Baker's achievements attracted the attention of officials at Syracuse University, who in 1911, after a long contest with Cornell University, had secured the location of New York's new State College of Forestry on their campus. Early in 1912 they persuaded him to become the college's first dean. Aided by a generous state appropriation, Baker soon made it one of the leading schools of forestry in the United States. He developed a five-year program leading to the degree of master of forestry, and established summer courses in forest ecology, botany, soils, geology, and woodcraft. He also helped establish the New York State Ranger School in a 2, 000-acre forest in the Adirondacks. A subsidiary unit of the State College of Forestry, the school by 1913 was offering one-and two-year courses training men for positions as rangers, guards, forest estate managers, tree planting experts, and nursery foremen, the first such technical institution in America. In 1920, evidently tired of constant struggles with the state legislature for financial support, Baker resigned from Syracuse University to become executive secretary of the American Paper and Pulp Association in New York City. He regarded this position as an opportunity to bring the principles of scientific forestry into a major organization of manufacturers dependent upon forest resources. During this phase of his career he was also a member of the National Forestry Program Committee, an industry-oriented group that encouraged forestation and protection against fire through cooperation of the federal government, the states, and private timber owners. He undertook similar work in 1928 as manager of the trade association department of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, an appointment that evidenced the growing commercial concern for better forest management during the 1920's.
He later (1931 - 1932) served as a member of the advisory committee of the Timber Conservation Board appointed by Secretary of Commerce Robert P. Lamont. Baker returned to academic activities in 1930 when he again became dean of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University. Three years later he was chosen president of Massachusetts State College in Amherst. His administration saw a significant expansion of the programs and facilities of what had been until 1931 the Massachusetts Agricultural College. Moving conservatively in response to pressures from students and the outside community, Baker presided over a gradual broadening of the agricultural curriculum marked by the introduction in 1938 of the A. B. degree and the creation of separate departments in such fields as economics, psychology, and engineering. The building of new dormitories made possible a modest expansion in enrollment on the eve of World War II. Postwar pressures for state-supported higher education brought the official transformation of the college into the University of Massachusetts in 1947, the year Baker retired from the presidency.
In poor health Baker spent the last months of his life in a sanatorium in Orlando, where he died of cancer at the age of seventy-two. He was buried at St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.
Achievements
A dormitory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Baker Hall, is named in his honor.
Baker Laboratory at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, successor to the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, is named after him.
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Membership
He was a member of the National Forestry Program Committee.
Connections
On December 27, 1904, he married Fleta Paddock of Three Oaks, Michigan. Baker and his first wife had three children: Carolyn, Stephen Paddock, and Clarence Potter. In 1928 Fleta Baker died, and on November 27, 1929, Baker married Richarda Sahla of Bückeburg, Germany.