A confidence vote in the dean of the College of Forestry at Oregon State University ended at 5 p.m. Thursday. Results will be released next week, university officials said.

All members of the college received ballots through e-mail Tuesday. The poll asked whether people support the Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility's recommendations on ways to improve the college, as well as Dean Hal Salwasser's proposed plan for implementing these suggestions, and whether they are confident in Salwasser's ability to lead the college forward.

Salwasser appointed the committee after some senior faculty in the college tried to delay publication of research led by graduate student Daniel Donato in the journal Science.

Salwasser has apologized for how he handled the controversy, and the committee has compiled recommendations on ways to prevent such conflicts from happening again.

The votes will be tabulated and comments reviewed beginning today, with a goal of releasing a report next week, according to Todd Simmons, university spokesman.

Salwasser will meet with OSU Provost Sabah Randhawa next week to discuss the results of the vote, which the committee said is intended to gauge the sentiment within the college.

"From the votes, the College of Forestry and its leadership will know where the priorities lie. The results and the comments will be known next week, and will provide feedback about the most pressing issues we will address. The committee's recommendations will be invaluable as I put together a long-term plan" Salwasser said.

Randhawa expressed his and OSU President Ed Ray's support of Salwasser.

"The dean has acknowledged that he made mistakes in managing internal issues but quickly took ownership of the problems that soon manifested. I believe he has taken every action to ensure that the college moves forward from this point. I expect that, given time, there will be longer-range plans that address challenges within the college and that create a nurturing environment for its faculty and students," Randhawa said.

"President Ray and I remain supportive of Dean Salwasser, and will look forward to positive changes within the college through the leadership."

Steve Paulsen isn't a member of the college, so he wasn't eligible to vote in this week's poll. However, as the spouse of Beverly Law, OSU professor of forest science and Donato's advisor and co-author on the salvage logging study, and as an aquatic ecologist who travels the nation working with various federal and state agencies, Paulsen is concerned with how the college is perceived by scientists outside OSU.

"My impression from talking to people in federal agencies and universities around the country is that they're all pretty amazed at the furor over what the vast majority of them saw as a very clean, clear paper," said Paulsen, who works at the Corvallis research division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"What they're even more amazed by, and what has given OSU the black eye, is that they see a very small group of faculty who have gone well beyond the bounds of professional scientific debate to criticize this group of authors."

Paulsen doesn't think a vote on Salwasser's leadership abilities will accomplish much unless the faculty learn to have professional disagreements and debates in a collegial manner.

"They're going to have a tough time changing the culture in the college if they don't address this problem of unprofessional behavior on the part of the professors attacking this study," he said.

Michael Newton and John Sessions, two of the professors who tried to delay publication of Donato et al.'s study, offer a different take on the controversy that precipitated the Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility's naissance, as well as the confidence/no confidence vote.

Both have said they were trying to help Donato and his co-authors strengthen their paper. They believe their professional code as members of the Society of American Foresters obligated them to prevent what they viewed as a flawed study from entering into permanent scientific record.

Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net or 758-9518.