last updated: 13 January 2002

Rule, Lita C.

Lita Rule received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Forestry Extension from University of the Philippines at Los Baños in 1975. She received her Master of Science Degree in Forest Resources Management from University of the Philippines in 1982, and in 1988, she received her Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Forest Economics from Texas A&M University. She has been a member of the Forestry Department at ISU since 1989.

Dr. Rule has a 59% research appointment. Her research interests lie in the area of agroforestry and forest industry with emphasis on forest economics. She is currently involved in an economic evaluation of several eucalyptus species in plantations in South Africa, in cooperation with a scientist from the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg. She is also the ISU co-director of a new cooperative program with a South African institution, Mangosuthu Technikon, which is located in Umlazi, just south of Durban. This is a 3-year program funded under USAID's Tertiary Education Linkage Program, and is primarily aimed at cooperating with the technikon to develop its research capacity. It also involves activities that will enhance Mangosuthu's extension and teaching capacities. This program includes participation of other faculty from several colleges and units of the university such as Agriculture, Education, Engineering, Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the International Agriculture Office. She also has conducted a study characterizing agroforestry systems in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico) in cooperation with ICRAF-Mexico and the US Forest Service Center for Agroforestry.