Papers of Ted C. Sheng

Tse Cheng "Ted" Sheng was a professor in the Colorado State University (CSU) Department of Earth Resources and an expert in international watershed management, especially in policy, education, and training. Sheng was born in Chiahsin (or Jiaxing), Chekiang (Zhejiang), China, on October 16, 1924. He relocated to Taiwan in 1947 after earning a degree in Soil and Agronomy from the National Chekiang (Zhejiang) University.

Sheng worked for the Taiwan Forest Bureau and Taiwan Tea Company for several years before taking a position with the Chinese-American Joint Committee on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR) in 1953. For 16 years, Sheng worked for the JCRR's soil conservation program as a planner and technical specialist.

While with the JCRR, Sheng met and worked with JCRR consultant and CSU Professor Robert E. Dils. Their relationship led Sheng to study at CSU's newly established Department of Watershed Science, and in 1966, he became the first Chinese person to earn a M.S. in Watershed Management at CSU.

Sheng returned to Taiwan and headed the nation's watershed program. He also helped establish the Department of Soil and Water Conservation at the National Chung Hsing University in central Taiwan and taught there as an associate professor.

Sheng left the JCRR in 1968 to work for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The FAO stationed him in Jamaica, El Salvador, and Thailand and assigned him to assist many other emerging nations with watershed policy, planning, and training. Sheng's career also included international consulting work. Over the course of his career, the World Bank, Organization of American States, United Nations Development Program, and the U.S. Agency for International Development sponsored Sheng for short international missions to formulate new projects or to review and evaluate existing ones.

When Sheng retired from the FAO in 1984, CSU's Department of Watershed Science (later Department of Earth Resources) invited him to join the faculty and teach courses in international watershed management. He worked at CSU from 1984 to 1995 and then taught as an affiliated professor until 2014. Sheng served on committees for 28 masters and doctoral candidates; most students were from emerging nations.

While at CSU, Sheng also worked with Computer Assisted Development Inc. (CADI) as an international consultant to a dozen emerging nations. He conducted training courses and seminars in many countries, including Jamaica, El Salvador, Thailand, Taiwan, and Myanmar (Burma).

Sheng has received many professional honors. In 1991, the Soil and Water Conservation Society awarded him the Hugh Hammond Bennett Award, the society's most prestigious honor. CSU's Department of Earth Resources named him an Honored Professor in 1995. In 2015, he received the Chinese Soil and Water Conservation Society's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sheng was married and had two children. He wrote and published poetry under the nom de plume Hsia Ching. In the early 1950s, he was one of the founders of the Blue Stars Poetry Society in Taiwan. He has written fifteen volumes of poetry and five collections of essays, some of which are available at CSU's Morgan Library. Sheng died in October 2021.