B&C University Programs

Educating the Next Generation of Conservation Leaders

Our system of conservation and wildlife management in North America is based on the principle that someone will take care, and that someone will be trained professionals. While citizen conservation is a very important part of the overall process, we rely on expert agencies in a coordinated effort to do the heavy lifting, day in and day out. This system has proven its worth for more than a century. The cornerstone of this system is education and career guidance. The Boone and Crockett Club has been at the forefront of educating conservation leaders, those whose career trajectories place them in positions where they can act on their passions, practice stewardship, apply best science, and advocate policy. 

Six years after the Club purchased the TRM Ranch, B&C solidified its place in the West when it relocated its national headquarters to Missoula, Montana. This city, centered in the Rocky Mountains, made perfect sense with the establishment of the Club’s first endowed professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Montana. The Boone and Crockett Club University Program is designed to provide science-based knowledge from seasoned wildlife professionals and educators to college graduates in the wildlife field to better prepare the graduates for the responsible and wise management of wildlife in the future. Since that first chair was created in 1993, the Club has established endowed chairs or fellow programs at Michigan State University, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, Texas A&M University, Oregon State University, Mississippi State University, and Texas A&M University–Kingsville.

The Boone and Crockett Club University Program is designed to provide science-based knowledge from seasoned wildlife professionals and educators to college graduates in the wildlife field to better prepare the graduates for the responsible and wise management of wildlife in the future. 

It is the mission of the Boone and Crockett Club to promote the conservation and management of wildlife, especially big game, and its habitat, to preserve and encourage hunting and to maintain the highest ethical standards of fair chase and sportsmanship in North America. 

The mission of the Boone and Crockett Club University Programs is the development of a diverse community of high-impact wildlife conservation leaders.

The University Programs of the Boone and Crockett Club help serve that mission by “facilitating a coordinated system utilizing higher education, including the targeting of universities for professorship and other relative programs where the university is strategically located or has strategic capabilities…” 

Among the Boone and Crockett Club’s most forward-looking initiatives is its University Programs. This initiative is designed with a bold vision: attract the brightest young people to the strongest universities to work with the foremost wildlife faculty in the country. The Club now has Professorship programs at three universities and Fellowship programs at four others. Over the past six years, the Club has rejuvenated these programs with new professors and an expanding fellowship program. In the next two years, we will see a fourth Professorship program at another of the nation’s finest universities. The young people we are attracting into these programs bring a passion for wildlife every bit as great as that of the members of the Boone and Crockett Club.  We can be proud of our University Programs because we are kindling that passion with an education that one day will lead these people to be the 21st century’s premier scientists and leaders in conservation.

Boone and Crockett Club's University Programs is committed to welcoming and supporting a diversity of people and perspectives in equitable and inclusive ways and in forums that empower Boone and Crockett fellows, faculty, and members to learn, collaborate and work in dignity.

Boone and Crockett Fellow Outstanding Achievement Award

University Programs Events