ARD Dean Candidate - Dr. Mindy Brashears

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08/12/2022 Added

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Dr. Mindy Brashears, Associate Vice President of Research, Texas Tech University. Public Presentation — Aug. 11, 1:30 to 3 p.m. at Nebraska East Campus Union.

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[00:00:05.460]All right.
[00:00:06.360]Well, good afternoon and welcome.
[00:00:10.260]My name is Tiffany Heng Moss.
[00:00:12.510]And I've had the honor of serving as co-chair
[00:00:15.870]along with Dr. Ed Calhoun
[00:00:18.510]for the search for the next dean
[00:00:20.280]and director of the agricultural research division.
[00:00:24.390]And Ed and I are pleased to welcome our second candidate,
[00:00:28.020]Dr. Mindy Brashears.
[00:00:30.300]So a little bit about Dr. Brashears.
[00:00:32.910]She is the
[00:00:33.743]former Undersecretary of Agriculture for Food Safety,
[00:00:37.320]where she served as the highest ranking food safety official
[00:00:40.380]in the United States at the USDA from 2019 to 2021.
[00:00:46.110]She is currently Associate Vice President for Research
[00:00:49.050]at Texas Tech University.
[00:00:50.907]Dr. Brashears is
[00:00:52.380]the Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor
[00:00:55.050]in Food Safety and Public Health,
[00:00:56.820]and holds the Roth and Letch Family Endowed Chair
[00:01:00.150]of Food Safety at Texas Tech University.
[00:01:03.810]She also serves as the Director
[00:01:05.452]of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence
[00:01:09.330]at Texas Tech University.
[00:01:11.490]Brashears is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors,
[00:01:14.700]as her work has resulted in commercialization
[00:01:16.862]of various pathogen mitigation strategies
[00:01:20.040]with 27 patents approved are pending.
[00:01:23.250]She holds a Bachelor of Science in Food Technology
[00:01:26.010]from Texas Tech University
[00:01:27.750]and a master's and PhD in Food Science
[00:01:30.030]from Oklahoma State University.
[00:01:31.980]She is well published and cited within H index of 41.
[00:01:36.780]Her research focuses on mitigation strategies
[00:01:39.690]in pre-harvest and post-harvest processing environments
[00:01:43.170]to improve food safety and public health.
[00:01:46.230]She also studies the emergence
[00:01:48.150]of antimicrobial drug resistance in food and animal systems.
[00:01:52.590]Her interests are primarily in meat, poultry,
[00:01:55.260]and vegetable production.
[00:01:57.120]She also has a passion for food security
[00:01:59.520]and leads international teams around the world
[00:02:03.150]to establish sustainable agricultural systems
[00:02:06.000]in developing countries.
[00:02:07.830]She teaches courses in food microbiology and food safety
[00:02:11.670]and offers industry training
[00:02:13.170]in food, safety, sanitation, and security.
[00:02:16.860]She recently was named
[00:02:18.270]the outstanding graduate of distinction
[00:02:20.820]by Oklahoma State University's
[00:02:23.190]College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.
[00:02:27.000]She has received multiple awards including
[00:02:29.460]the International Association for Food Protection Award,
[00:02:33.210]the American Meat Science Association Research
[00:02:36.480]and Industry Extension Award,
[00:02:38.310]and was named as a future icon in the meat industry
[00:02:41.880]by the National Provisioner Magazine.
[00:02:45.030]She serves on multiple national boards,
[00:02:47.400]including the American Meat Science Association
[00:02:50.280]and International Livestock Congress board of directors.
[00:02:53.940]She will be Chair of the Reciprocal Meat Conference in 2022,
[00:02:58.200]which will be held in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
[00:03:01.050]Today's seminar is being streamed live
[00:03:03.720]in addition to those that are with us,
[00:03:05.460]and so for those of you that are online,
[00:03:08.070]Jason will be adding an email address for me,
[00:03:11.610]thengmoss2@unl.edu,
[00:03:14.280]it will also be in the chat.
[00:03:15.420]So please fill to post your questions,
[00:03:17.880]and so now I will turn it over to Dr. Brashears.
[00:03:21.467](audience applauding )
[00:03:28.200]Thanks so much, Tiffany,
[00:03:30.090]and thanks to Tiffany and Ed and the search committee
[00:03:33.690]for just all the work they have done for this position,
[00:03:37.620]and for bringing me here.
[00:03:39.043]I also wanna thank all of you for being here in person
[00:03:42.240]and online to hear today about vision, opportunities,
[00:03:46.860]and leadership for the University of Nebraska,
[00:03:49.950]in the position of Dean for the Ag Research Division
[00:03:53.220]and the Director of the Ag Experiment Station.
[00:03:56.550]As I was thinking about this talk and reflecting,
[00:04:00.360]a lot of things came to mind.
[00:04:01.620]What do you talk about?
[00:04:03.131]You know I'm a scientist,
[00:04:05.670]you see my vitae and I didn't wanna talk about research
[00:04:09.420]in great detail, but I really wanted to focus on who I am.
[00:04:14.280]So you can get to know me more,
[00:04:16.140]what my passions are,
[00:04:18.120]the things I've learned throughout my career
[00:04:20.580]and where I think that I could fit in
[00:04:23.460]at the University of Nebraska IANR.
[00:04:27.030]So I went all the way back to the beginning
[00:04:30.570]to when I was, you know, a very young child.
[00:04:34.890]My earliest memories are riding the tractor.
[00:04:39.960]Now I believe in the future of agriculture,
[00:04:43.380]how many in here have been involved in FFA?
[00:04:46.860]A few.
[00:04:48.030]If you were a freshman in high school
[00:04:50.430]and were involved in FFA,
[00:04:52.290]you had to memorize the FFA creed.
[00:04:54.720]I'm not gonna say the entire creed,
[00:04:57.120]but I also wanna qualify.
[00:04:59.580]And you can go on the FFA website and find this.
[00:05:01.860]When I talk about agriculture,
[00:05:03.330]I'm encompassing all things related directly
[00:05:06.270]or indirectly related to agriculture.
[00:05:08.640]I know that there are important things,
[00:05:11.250]natural resources, human science, even food science.
[00:05:15.150]I've had many food scientists say,
[00:05:16.800]this is an agriculture.
[00:05:18.270]So I'm not trying to exclude anyone.
[00:05:20.250]I'm using it as an example of who I am
[00:05:23.730]and what really defined me
[00:05:25.770]and put my career on a path in agriculture.
[00:05:29.130]But going back, my earliest memories,
[00:05:31.350]riding the tractor with my dad,
[00:05:34.115]raised on a farm.
[00:05:36.030]My family still raises cotton, cattle, sorghum, corn.
[00:05:40.350]I always tell people it is a multifunctional farm
[00:05:43.410]because, you know, when the cotton gets rained out
[00:05:45.600]or held out,
[00:05:46.500]you planting something else,
[00:05:47.850]and, you know, you had to be resilient if you're on a farm.
[00:05:50.760]And I loved it,
[00:05:53.490]until I was a teenager and myself had to drive the tractor,
[00:05:58.020]plant the crops, plow the fields, haul hay,
[00:06:01.320]feed the animals.
[00:06:02.160]Now I still loved it.
[00:06:03.660]I was involved with FFA, which was very important to me.
[00:06:07.560]I had my first date with my current husband, by the way,
[00:06:11.310]tomorrow's my anniversary.
[00:06:12.510]So I'm, you know, I'm,
[00:06:14.100]that's why my schedule was free and I could be here,
[00:06:16.020]but anyway.
[00:06:17.106](audience laughing) (Mindy laughing )
[00:06:19.440]but I met my,
[00:06:21.090]had my first date with my husband
[00:06:22.560]at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo,
[00:06:25.350]and, you know, the rest is history.
[00:06:28.080]I got a scholarship at Texas Tech University from Houston
[00:06:34.140]and from the Houston Livestock Show.
[00:06:36.210]And I was gonna be a biology major.
[00:06:37.980]I mean, I was gonna be a biology major,
[00:06:39.720]go to medical school.
[00:06:40.980]And I tell people that's the best decision I never made
[00:06:44.280]because I majored in animal science at Texas Tech.
[00:06:48.417]And I was like, I'll stay here a semester or two,
[00:06:51.180]and then I'll find a different major.
[00:06:53.850]I'll get outta here.
[00:06:54.960]Well, that was many, many years ago, about 33 years ago.
[00:06:58.890]I'm still in that department.
[00:07:00.330]So maybe I'm still looking,
[00:07:02.820]you know, for a place I'm here, I guess,
[00:07:04.920]but no, just kidding.
[00:07:09.094]The foundational, the generational experience
[00:07:12.120]in agriculture is very important to me.
[00:07:14.820]It's important to my family and every aspect of my life.
[00:07:19.740]Like I said, I went to Texas Tech University,
[00:07:21.870]majored in Food Technology,
[00:07:23.730]went on to Oklahoma State University,
[00:07:25.680]where I got my master's and PhD in Food Science.
[00:07:29.040]And then I had the opportunity to begin my first job
[00:07:32.940]at the University of Nebraska.
[00:07:35.293]I was here and I was extension food safety specialist
[00:07:39.630]in the Department of Food Science and Technology
[00:07:43.200]at a research and extension appointment.
[00:07:45.660]I'll tell you more about that
[00:07:47.190]as I go through my experiences.
[00:07:49.260]I was here for about five years
[00:07:51.090]and had the opportunity to go back home,
[00:07:53.310]where I joined the faculty at Texas Tech University,
[00:07:56.820]where I went through the ranks
[00:07:59.100]of assistant associate full professor
[00:08:01.680]now I'm a Horn Professor and all of those fun things.
[00:08:05.670]I've been there for over 20 years,
[00:08:09.450]but I took a little detour to Washington, DC.
[00:08:13.620]And in DC,
[00:08:15.660]I served as Undersecretary of Agriculture for Food Safety
[00:08:19.970]in the past administration.
[00:08:22.110]And just feel free to ask me anything about this.
[00:08:25.350]It's okay, nothing's off limit.
[00:08:26.820]So happy to answer those questions at the end,
[00:08:29.640]but people ask me, how did you get there?
[00:08:32.610]And I'm like, I don't really know
[00:08:34.890]other than the fact that I never said, no.
[00:08:37.500]I got a text asking if they could put from a Congressman,
[00:08:41.010]they said, can I put your name in the hat for this?
[00:08:42.687]I'm like, oh yeah, sure, I'm never gonna be chosen.
[00:08:45.450]And then I kept saying yes and kept saying yes,
[00:08:47.940]until the next thing I knew we were moving to DC,
[00:08:51.090]and, you know, then I'm serving in the office.
[00:08:54.240]It was a very interesting experience,
[00:08:56.820]which I will also tell you a little bit more later.
[00:08:59.790]I wanna say that
[00:09:02.160]my family foundational, everything I do.
[00:09:07.170]Over here, that's my middle daughter and her husband.
[00:09:12.510]She went to Baylor,
[00:09:13.800]but I finally got a daughter back to Texas Tech.
[00:09:16.950]She's back at Tech,
[00:09:18.360]getting her degree in Food Safety, Microbiology.
[00:09:20.910]So I'm very proud about that.
[00:09:22.920]My husband is up there that we were at the banquet
[00:09:25.200]at Oklahoma State
[00:09:26.700]when I received the award a few months ago.
[00:09:29.310]And he is a professor in Ag Education and Communications
[00:09:33.420]at Texas Tech University.
[00:09:35.970]And then over here are my three daughters.
[00:09:37.530]Bailey is my oldest.
[00:09:38.580]She's finishing a PhD at the University of Western Ontario
[00:09:43.170]in London, Ontario, Canada, in neuroscience.
[00:09:47.040]And then our baby, Presley.
[00:09:48.990]I take her to college next week.
[00:09:50.760]I tell people, oh, I'm sad, but I mean, I am sad,
[00:09:54.030]but it is gonna be nice to, you know,
[00:09:56.100]be able to have some good times as empty nesters
[00:09:59.400]and travel and all of that.
[00:10:00.540]My husband and I love to travel.
[00:10:02.370]So, you know, I've been fortunate to have a family
[00:10:06.690]that has supported me through everything.
[00:10:09.540]And without them, you know,
[00:10:11.640]you learn a lot through raising your kids
[00:10:14.010]and moving across the country, all of those things.
[00:10:16.950]So those have taught me a lot of skills to be resilient.
[00:10:20.370]So I wanna go back to my leadership experience
[00:10:23.340]and you'll see through here, I have little clips
[00:10:25.950]from the FFA creed, I won't read 'em all,
[00:10:28.410]but leadership is very important in this position.
[00:10:32.340]Leadership is both inherent and it is also learned.
[00:10:36.930]Now my husband would probably tell me that's not right,
[00:10:39.120]that's his area of research.
[00:10:40.290]And I probably just mess that up,
[00:10:42.240]but I really believe that naturally I like to lead,
[00:10:45.420]but also there are many things that I have learned
[00:10:47.670]in my different positions as a leader.
[00:10:51.270]First of all,
[00:10:52.103]I wanna talk about being
[00:10:53.040]director of the International Center
[00:10:55.350]for Food Industry Excellence at Texas Tech University.
[00:10:58.590]I know that is a very long name.
[00:11:00.720]I did not invent the name.
[00:11:02.400]I just I'm the director of the center.
[00:11:06.300]This center is an interdisciplinary center that spans
[00:11:09.990]the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources
[00:11:14.310]all the way into human sciences,
[00:11:17.850]but also into engineering, arts and sciences.
[00:11:20.700]We have faculty all across the university.
[00:11:23.460]I spoke to the center directors this morning,
[00:11:26.100]very similar concept.
[00:11:27.840]We bring together people to form research teams
[00:11:31.380]to be able to be competitive for grant funding.
[00:11:35.100]I'll say we have,
[00:11:36.540]the funding,
[00:11:38.700]it has a lot of diversity with it.
[00:11:41.070]We were fortunate early in the,
[00:11:43.860]early 2000 to have a federal earmark
[00:11:46.290]that supported the center.
[00:11:47.760]We all know where those went.
[00:11:49.080]So then we ended up with basically no support
[00:11:52.350]other than the funding that was coming in
[00:11:54.630]from the faculty members, supporting the technicians,
[00:11:57.390]the different staff positions
[00:11:59.160]but we still stayed together.
[00:12:01.650]We have both industry focused research
[00:12:04.230]and it's really underpinned by the basic sciences,
[00:12:07.830]and it's very interdisciplinary.
[00:12:09.720]And we also have a strong international component.
[00:12:12.748]So what did I learn here?
[00:12:14.910]I've been in this position for over 20 years.
[00:12:18.270]First and foremost was how to build collaborative teams?
[00:12:21.510]How to put people together that are very,
[00:12:24.330]strategically put people together that could solve a problem
[00:12:27.840]that we can move from,
[00:12:30.270]from one place to the next,
[00:12:32.100]without just staying in a silo?
[00:12:33.540]You're gonna get more done when you work together,
[00:12:36.240]when you work as a team, I also,
[00:12:39.540]I put on here work on minimal budgets.
[00:12:42.030]When I met with the center directors,
[00:12:43.470]we laughed about this,
[00:12:44.670]but it could have said worked on zero budget
[00:12:47.580]and still stayed together.
[00:12:49.650]We all know that centers have a little bit of a challenge
[00:12:53.940]with in regards to funding.
[00:12:55.770]So we had to be very creative.
[00:12:58.620]Also, I did have the opportunity
[00:13:01.020]to work on faculty, recruitment, and retention.
[00:13:04.260]We had many strategic hire processes at Texas tech
[00:13:09.060]and within our center,
[00:13:09.930]we have been successful twice getting, you know,
[00:13:13.320]anywhere from four to six faculty each time.
[00:13:15.780]And I had to lead those efforts of creating the positions,
[00:13:19.020]recruiting and bringing people in.
[00:13:21.480]And we have also really worked a lot on diversity
[00:13:25.380]and targeting some diversity hires as well.
[00:13:29.490]Managing staff and also engaging with our stakeholders,
[00:13:33.210]which are the industry.
[00:13:34.170]So I learned a lot through this experience
[00:13:36.810]as ICFIE director.
[00:13:39.240]Then as I mentioned,
[00:13:40.567]transitioned to the USDA
[00:13:43.374]where I was undersecretary
[00:13:45.510]and Tiffany read a lot of the responsibilities.
[00:13:48.960]It was a Highest Ranking Food Safety Official in the US.
[00:13:52.260]You really operate as the chief officer
[00:13:54.780]of the Food Safety Inspection Service
[00:13:57.030]and the Office of Food Safety within the USDA
[00:14:01.320]and you serve as a member of the sub-cabinet
[00:14:04.110]for the president.
[00:14:05.400]I worked very closely with Secretary Perdue
[00:14:07.860]on a daily basis,
[00:14:10.680]worked on, you know, all of these other things,
[00:14:13.980]chair the National Advisory Committee
[00:14:16.350]for Microbiological Criteria for Foods,
[00:14:18.930]and I was chair the US CODEX Policy Committee.
[00:14:22.200]So that was very much related with trade
[00:14:24.780]and all of the things related to food safety
[00:14:27.720]and trade across the globe.
[00:14:30.510]It was a Senate confirmed position.
[00:14:33.210]If you have never been through a Senate confirmation,
[00:14:36.150]I don't recommend it.
[00:14:37.890]It's not the hearing,
[00:14:38.820]it's all the other stuff that goes with it,
[00:14:40.770]but I'm honored to be able to go through that.
[00:14:43.650]I could, you know, write an entire book on that process
[00:14:46.770]because it was so difficult to get through that.
[00:14:50.610]So what did I learn?
[00:14:52.980]First and foremost,
[00:14:54.000]I think that great leaders have great mentors.
[00:14:58.080]I take that very personally,
[00:14:59.520]both being a leader and a mentor of new leaders.
[00:15:03.960]I look back through my career.
[00:15:05.880]I started my first day on the job at Nebraska
[00:15:10.463]with Steve Taylor there,
[00:15:12.510]supporting me as a great department chair.
[00:15:15.090]I moved to Texas Tech,
[00:15:16.920]I had Dr. Kevin Pond, who's now Dean at West Texas A&M,
[00:15:20.850]and they really taught me a lot about academia.
[00:15:24.600]I stepped into this role in the government
[00:15:27.060]and the responsibilities were incredible.
[00:15:30.930]The decisions that were made every day impacted the country.
[00:15:35.940]I took my oath very seriously.
[00:15:38.190]You don't take an oath to support the president,
[00:15:41.520]you take a oath to support the constitution,
[00:15:45.450]which means you have a responsibility to the people.
[00:15:49.740]And in doing that, you can't be selfish in your decisions.
[00:15:53.400]You have to make good wise informed decisions.
[00:15:57.870]And Secretary Perdue taught me so much
[00:16:00.510]and the other cabinet members or sub-cabinet members
[00:16:03.360]that I worked with.
[00:16:04.678]You know, he had been governor for eight years,
[00:16:08.220]served in many leadership roles,
[00:16:10.140]and he really helped me, continues to help me.
[00:16:13.094]He's now chancellor at the University of Georgia.
[00:16:15.810]I talk to him often and he just really helps, you know,
[00:16:19.950]helps me navigate some of the hard things that still are,
[00:16:24.450]precipitated from the role in office.
[00:16:27.120]I also learned about budgeting and managing people.
[00:16:29.790]We had a $1.1 billion budget.
[00:16:32.730]90% of that was spent on personnel,
[00:16:35.760]which becomes very difficult when you have a mandated
[00:16:40.410]salary increase and they don't give you any more money,
[00:16:42.720]you have to be creative in that.
[00:16:44.790]I had to manage essential workers.
[00:16:48.270]I had more than 9,000 workers
[00:16:50.610]out in the field doing inspection.
[00:16:53.160]Those are essential workers,
[00:16:54.540]and we had government shutdowns.
[00:16:56.910]They had to keep working.
[00:16:58.200]When the government shut down,
[00:16:59.490]Tyson doesn't shut down, JBS doesn't shut down.
[00:17:03.030]They keep working.
[00:17:04.200]So I had people working,
[00:17:05.520]not getting paid, which is very challenging.
[00:17:08.760]Fortunately, our workers were committed
[00:17:10.680]and they stayed on the,
[00:17:12.840]out in the field working,
[00:17:14.220]and then also working on a continuing resolution
[00:17:18.420]over and over and over.
[00:17:20.250]And I always remember we would have budgets
[00:17:22.470]and they would be like, this is the budget,
[00:17:24.060]but this is actually gonna be the budget.
[00:17:25.680]So we had to work and this is really not the budget,
[00:17:28.590]'cause it's never gonna be approved.
[00:17:29.970]And I mean, it was just,
[00:17:31.530]it was confusing,
[00:17:32.640]but, you know, you kind of got the hang of it over time,
[00:17:34.740]but just having to manage things at that level
[00:17:37.290]were very important.
[00:17:38.910]I'll talk about it a little more later,
[00:17:40.380]but the responsibility without money was large.
[00:17:43.770]There was accountability.
[00:17:44.940]I had to meet with the deputy secretary every quarter
[00:17:48.780]about how much money we had spent, where we were,
[00:17:51.390]if we were spending it quick enough or not fast enough,
[00:17:54.270]you know, managing our fleet of cars,
[00:17:56.490]all of the things that I never dreamed I would be doing.
[00:18:00.210]Other things, stakeholder interactions.
[00:18:02.970]I put in their intense.
[00:18:04.530]We have stakeholder interactions at the university,
[00:18:07.200]at least at Texas Tech.
[00:18:08.610]And we get to choose our stakeholders.
[00:18:10.860]We have a board of advisors or you don't, you know,
[00:18:13.710]that come in and tell you what you wanted hear, I think.
[00:18:17.550]The stakeholders at the government
[00:18:18.990]are not quite as friendly.
[00:18:21.030]Some of them are, some of them are not,
[00:18:23.550]and there's, you know,
[00:18:25.050]you're always gonna make one group upset.
[00:18:27.690]So dealing with that on a literally a daily basis,
[00:18:31.590]waking up every day trying, you know,
[00:18:33.780]looking at the news clips,
[00:18:35.310]'cause that was the first email I got every day,
[00:18:37.710]I got two briefings.
[00:18:38.638]One was just daily updates and then one was the media,
[00:18:42.330]and I'd look through all the media clips,
[00:18:43.980]where's my name today?
[00:18:45.150]And what are they saying about me today?
[00:18:47.670]So that was difficult.
[00:18:49.410]Unions, managing unions.
[00:18:51.000]We renegotiated a union contract with our workers,
[00:18:54.300]which again was a whole new experience.
[00:18:56.460]For me, I'd never experienced that.
[00:18:58.290]So got to an end point.
[00:19:01.080]Lawsuits, many lawsuits.
[00:19:02.850]I remember the first one that landed on my desk
[00:19:04.890]and was like, do I need to get a lawyer?
[00:19:06.450]And my chief of staff said,
[00:19:08.040]I think you have the DOJ over here.
[00:19:10.087](Mindy laughing) (audience laughing)
[00:19:10.920]That's, you know, they'll help you out.
[00:19:12.840]But, you know, my name would be on it.
[00:19:14.690]It wasn't really against me.
[00:19:16.110]It was against the agency for whatever reason.
[00:19:20.705]Reclassification of jobs and HR issues.
[00:19:22.950]All of those things were massive.
[00:19:25.830]Grew me as a leader.
[00:19:28.020]But the main thing I learned
[00:19:31.440]more holistically were that the decisions
[00:19:34.680]we made were very complex.
[00:19:37.410]I talk about complex decisions versus difficult decisions.
[00:19:41.670]Difficult things you have to do have more of a linear path.
[00:19:45.510]You know, I'm gonna do XYZ,
[00:19:47.370]and you might have to make,
[00:19:49.140]write a research proposal or make a budget.
[00:19:51.540]That's difficult.
[00:19:52.373]It's not easy, but there's a linear path.
[00:19:54.780]You have a beginning and an ends.
[00:19:56.850]The decisions made in the government were very complex.
[00:19:59.790]There were no linear answers that we could ever come to,
[00:20:03.960]and they were never as easy as they seemed on this surface.
[00:20:08.580]Many times,
[00:20:10.080]I've said it myself,
[00:20:11.220]you may have said it or heard it.
[00:20:12.420]It's like, why don't they just do this?
[00:20:15.240]Why don't they just do this?
[00:20:16.710]Why don't they just do this in the government?
[00:20:19.110]We'll now understand why that is not the situation.
[00:20:21.990]There are so many unintended consequences that could happen
[00:20:26.370]if you just did this.
[00:20:28.020]If you made a decision that could do this.
[00:20:31.620]You have to vet out everything that you can think of,
[00:20:35.370]make the best decision,
[00:20:37.170]make it quickly,
[00:20:38.820]and hope that you've had a good group of advisors come in
[00:20:43.560]and help you,
[00:20:45.360]tell you all about the history of whatever policy it is
[00:20:49.500]that you're trying to pass or move forward with
[00:20:52.650]because it's very difficult.
[00:20:54.480]But you make the decision and you stand by it.
[00:20:58.170]So that's very important.
[00:21:00.330]It's important to have people around you
[00:21:02.100]that you can listen to,
[00:21:03.300]that you trust, that know the organization.
[00:21:06.300]It's also very important to be willing to change your mind.
[00:21:11.100]I could never walk in a room
[00:21:12.600]and not be willing to listen to the people
[00:21:15.450]on the other side of the table.
[00:21:17.190]I'll tell you, as a scientist,
[00:21:19.260]we know what we know,
[00:21:20.340]we have the data and this is who we are.
[00:21:22.830]But in big decisions like that,
[00:21:26.820]I had to listen,
[00:21:27.990]and I had to change my mind many times.
[00:21:30.840]That was probably one of the hardest things I had to do.
[00:21:33.570]And also not making decisions for personal gain.
[00:21:37.444]I could have gone in there,
[00:21:39.150]and you know, it's like, oh,
[00:21:40.350]my research is in this area.
[00:21:41.790]And we're gonna, you know, put in these policies
[00:21:43.860]and make a lot of things
[00:21:45.000]that could have been personally beneficial.
[00:21:47.010]You can't do that in the government.
[00:21:48.780]That's misuse of the government of, you know,
[00:21:52.380]upholding the constitution.
[00:21:54.150]You had to make decisions for the greater good
[00:21:57.240]and not just for yourself.
[00:21:59.370]I see that as very important
[00:22:01.590]as a university administrator as well.
[00:22:03.990]It's critical.
[00:22:06.600]So thankfully I survived that,
[00:22:09.600]got back to Texas Tech
[00:22:11.010]and now I am serving part-time of my job.
[00:22:14.310]I still have grad students
[00:22:15.570]and as part of my job,
[00:22:17.640]but I am the associate vice president for research.
[00:22:22.530]I get to work with the VPR on a daily basis.
[00:22:24.930]So I'm getting to learn university administration.
[00:22:28.050]A lot of it parallels the government,
[00:22:29.820]but just learning, interacting with the president
[00:22:32.400]and the provost now.
[00:22:33.390]Our president and provost,
[00:22:34.920]it's a little bit different structure.
[00:22:36.810]Our president is equivalent to your chancellor I believe,
[00:22:39.870]so it's just a little bit different.
[00:22:42.690]I'm engaged in many political interactions.
[00:22:45.330]When we have congressmen come to campus,
[00:22:48.210]talking about the upcoming Farm Bill how, you know,
[00:22:51.060]things in there that we could be involved with,
[00:22:54.810]but then I'm also get to see things
[00:22:56.730]from a greater viewpoint,
[00:22:58.470]outside of just our department and ICFIE,
[00:23:01.198]but also from a university perspective,
[00:23:04.290]all the different departments,
[00:23:06.150]managing conflicts,
[00:23:07.650]whether, you know, between scientists.
[00:23:09.873]See, I just really didn't know
[00:23:11.580]that we had so many conflicts
[00:23:13.560]that would bubble up to the VPR office,
[00:23:15.780]whether it be fighting over a lab or a piece of equipment,
[00:23:19.140]you'll laugh,
[00:23:19.973]yeah, it's like, oh my, you know.
[00:23:21.780]So there's always,
[00:23:23.550]if there's people involved,
[00:23:24.750]you're gonna have conflicts
[00:23:25.980]and you're gonna have to manage that.
[00:23:27.600]I've also been very involved
[00:23:29.730]in developing strategic initiatives,
[00:23:31.920]and I'm gonna mention this briefly,
[00:23:33.330]because I think some of the things that we're talking about
[00:23:37.080]at Texas Tech and agriculture that are very important
[00:23:40.440]are also very important here.
[00:23:42.030]And I would like to see some of these things continue.
[00:23:44.706]These things are one health
[00:23:46.470]and one health and well-ness,
[00:23:49.950]natural resource management,
[00:23:51.840]specifically water and climate change.
[00:23:54.630]And then also looking at social sciences and the rural,
[00:23:59.070]rural sustainability.
[00:24:00.510]I'm sorry, I not urban but rural.
[00:24:03.210]That's what I'm saying.
[00:24:04.080]I know my accent.
[00:24:05.093](Mindy laughing) (audience laughing)
[00:24:05.926]It sounds strange, but that's what I'm trying to say.
[00:24:08.310]So those things are very important.
[00:24:10.050]And then developing data management platforms
[00:24:13.320]and managing people.
[00:24:15.930]Managing the government people was a little different
[00:24:18.510]because they have a very structured hierarchy,
[00:24:20.940]which sometimes I didn't like.
[00:24:22.350]I wanted to have discussions
[00:24:24.210]and I didn't just wanna dictate ideas.
[00:24:26.280]So they got used to that after a while.
[00:24:28.770]But when you're managing faculty that are tenured,
[00:24:32.340]it's a much different environment,
[00:24:33.840]which is good because faculty like to have a voice.
[00:24:36.614]So that, it's been,
[00:24:39.780]it's been interesting at times,
[00:24:41.220]but mostly really good and very positive.
[00:24:43.800]Getting to hear the faculty bring ideas to us
[00:24:46.620]and then being able to bring those two fruition.
[00:24:50.160]So basically,
[00:24:51.900]I've been able to learn quite a bit.
[00:24:54.360]Our VPR is very deliberate in training the associate VPRs
[00:24:59.850]and it's been fun.
[00:25:01.920]He was like, "We're gonna have book club."
[00:25:03.600]And I was like, "Oh, this is gonna be great."
[00:25:05.580]And then I got the book on my desk,
[00:25:07.470]university finance,
[00:25:08.651](audience laughing)
[00:25:09.990]like, oh, this is great.
[00:25:11.099]But I learned a lot from that book.
[00:25:14.640]You know, every week we would have a do a chapter
[00:25:17.730]and, you know, talk about it.
[00:25:19.080]And it was, you know, it was a good experience,
[00:25:21.750]but he's always teaching us about budgets
[00:25:24.300]and managing people, HR issues, historical perspective.
[00:25:28.890]So I've appreciated that quite a bit.
[00:25:31.740]How to work with the provost and the president,
[00:25:34.500]and all these other initiatives.
[00:25:36.810]Like I mentioned, engaging with political leaders,
[00:25:39.660]financial responsibility, strategic planning,
[00:25:42.270]and just respecting all the people
[00:25:45.570]across the entire university.
[00:25:47.460]Again, this is stepping out of your one area
[00:25:51.014]and seeing things from a broader picture
[00:25:53.730]for the greater good of the university.
[00:25:57.300]So I've learned a lot through my leadership
[00:26:00.450]that I really think I can bring to the table
[00:26:02.880]for this position.
[00:26:04.470]Now I wanna switch gears to research.
[00:26:06.660]I'm not gonna spend a lot of time
[00:26:08.460]talking about details of my research,
[00:26:10.886]but it has prepared me for the position
[00:26:15.900]because this is a research focused position.
[00:26:19.230]I'm gonna go back to a story,
[00:26:21.210]I've already told the search committee this story.
[00:26:23.490]And some of you may have heard it
[00:26:24.750]'cause I've told it many times,
[00:26:26.430]but my first day on the job at the University of Nebraska,
[00:26:30.060]I will never forget it,
[00:26:31.170]and I'll date myself,
[00:26:32.070]but it was August 13th, 1997.
[00:26:35.046]That day is very significant in the State of Nebraska
[00:26:38.310]because,
[00:26:39.150]and I was hired,
[00:26:39.983]remember an extension to work with the industry
[00:26:42.300]and a research,
[00:26:44.040]that day was the day of the Hudson Foods ground beef recall,
[00:26:47.880]and there was a 25 million pound recall of ground beef.
[00:26:52.890]It was the first major recall after E.coli was declared
[00:26:56.490]an adulterant.
[00:26:57.690]This was in the State of Nebraska in Columbus, Nebraska.
[00:27:01.140]And it really, you know, shook the state.
[00:27:04.890]Now I walk in the office and I'm supposed to, you know,
[00:27:07.950]deal with the media, talk to the media.
[00:27:10.050]Steve Taylor was my boss.
[00:27:11.700]He'd forgotten to have a phone installed in my office.
[00:27:13.872]So I was like, oh dear.
[00:27:15.750]So I'm having these phone calls and the main office,
[00:27:18.951]sitting out there and answering questions about E.coli
[00:27:23.010]and Omaha World and all these people were calling.
[00:27:26.100]Steve's like, yeah, I just talked to her.
[00:27:27.600]And I was like, what?
[00:27:28.650]And it's all over.
[00:27:30.063]And I go in his office,
[00:27:30.896]I was like, do I have any rules that govern me
[00:27:33.450]as what I can say to the media?
[00:27:35.490]And he was like, no, if you say something wrong,
[00:27:37.560]you just make yourself look bad.
[00:27:39.570]That's the world of academic freedom.
[00:27:40.993](audience laughing)
[00:27:41.826]I was like, thanks.
[00:27:42.659](Mindy laughing)
[00:27:43.530]But, you know, it all turned out okay.
[00:27:45.150]I got up the next morning, got the paper.
[00:27:46.860]It was fine.
[00:27:47.693]Now not all my media experiences have been that great,
[00:27:50.984]but that one was okay.
[00:27:52.770]I've had much media training since then.
[00:27:55.260]But the interesting thing was the State of Nebraska
[00:27:58.950]allocated a large amount of money for research with E coli.
[00:28:03.180]It was pre-harvest food safety research,
[00:28:05.970]worked with Andy Benson on several projects,
[00:28:09.060]worked with the animal science department.
[00:28:11.847]We developed a lot of pre-harvest interventions,
[00:28:15.750]mitigation strategies,
[00:28:17.490]and it really was a great time to work together as a team.
[00:28:21.270]Now the other thing that happened at that time was
[00:28:24.930]in 1998, January 1 was when the FSIS switched from
[00:28:30.180]what they called command and control inspection
[00:28:33.060]in the meat plants to asset based well,
[00:28:36.570]and I'll just looked it up this week.
[00:28:38.340]Nebraska is still the number one slaughter state.
[00:28:41.100]There's a lot of small plants
[00:28:43.590]and I was supposed to work with our animal scientists.
[00:28:48.240]I worked closely with Dennis Berson
[00:28:50.010]to develop passive programs,
[00:28:51.411]to go out and train people and have.
[00:28:53.534]So I went all over the State of Nebraska.
[00:28:56.220]We received a lot of USDA funding
[00:28:58.860]for programs, for research and all of those things.
[00:29:02.880]But through that,
[00:29:04.650]I identified a lot of needs in the industry.
[00:29:07.710]There were so many research needs
[00:29:09.567]and that led to some of my research.
[00:29:13.590]So I learned to integrate my research
[00:29:15.960]into my extension program.
[00:29:18.990]So developed many pre-harvest mitigation strategies.
[00:29:22.805]I guess some of these did get cut off,
[00:29:25.320]sorry about that in the formatting.
[00:29:28.650]But working in the plant,
[00:29:30.690]we would show up at the plant with a swab and say,
[00:29:32.790]can we swab your carcasses, which is a big deal.
[00:29:35.040]And I wanted, like, we don't wanna see
[00:29:37.084]you define the pathogens,
[00:29:38.700]but we really was foundational
[00:29:41.010]in many of the things I did early in my career.
[00:29:43.830]Then as I moved through my career, that moved,
[00:29:46.950]led me into developing sampling methodologies,
[00:29:50.880]sampling techniques, microbiological techniques,
[00:29:55.710]molecular based microbiological techniques
[00:29:58.200]to isolate bacteria quickly that the industry could use.
[00:30:02.100]So you start very simple, you know,
[00:30:04.110]solving an industry problem,
[00:30:05.670]and then it grows into very basic research.
[00:30:09.630]Something I'm still involved with
[00:30:11.280]is pre-harvest food safety.
[00:30:13.050]Now back in the day when Andy and I were
[00:30:15.270]doing some food safety work in the early 2000s,
[00:30:18.870]pre-harvest food safety was new.
[00:30:21.240]Everyone was doing it.
[00:30:23.010]We're gonna look at all of these interventions
[00:30:26.250]and get rid of the pathogens in the animal.
[00:30:29.607]Then the agency implemented the zero tolerance for E.coli
[00:30:36.060]and the processor started taking care of it,
[00:30:39.297]and pre-harvest kind of went away.
[00:30:41.250]But now it's back again
[00:30:42.870]because of contamination of fruits and vegetables.
[00:30:45.090]So I'm back to doing some monitoring on this.
[00:30:47.910]One of the things that we developed
[00:30:50.280]and it started here at University of Nebraska
[00:30:52.260]was a probiotic.
[00:30:53.400]We developed a probiotic that could be fed to cattle
[00:30:56.340]that kills E.coli prior to slaughter.
[00:30:59.070]It still fed to about 60% of the feed like cattle in the US.
[00:31:03.420]So that was very good.
[00:31:06.502]I have no financial gain from that,
[00:31:09.990]but so just so we've developed a different company
[00:31:12.840]with a new probiotic, (audience laughing)
[00:31:14.034](Mindy laughing)
[00:31:16.714]but we,
[00:31:17.940]it's fine.
[00:31:18.773]It helped me build my career,
[00:31:20.100]but it is, you know,
[00:31:21.540]we did all the work from working with
[00:31:24.120]the vet science department here with Rod Moxley,
[00:31:26.910]and their group feeding cattle, inoculating cattle.
[00:31:29.702]So again, it goes from the very basic prob
[00:31:33.030]or very seemingly simple problem to very basic research
[00:31:37.260]all the way through the process.
[00:31:39.720]My funding,
[00:31:41.325]I really worked on diversifying my funding portfolio.
[00:31:45.120]So there was a lot of resilience.
[00:31:47.160]It can change.
[00:31:47.993]Your federal funding can go away
[00:31:50.490]all the money for extension.
[00:31:51.840]We were getting that's no longer out there in the,
[00:31:54.960]it wasn't even NIFA.
[00:31:55.950]It was something else before NIFA.
[00:31:59.190]Andy probably knows, (Mindy laughing)
[00:32:00.510]but it was a different program.
[00:32:03.480]But I did have had a lot of federal funding.
[00:32:07.110]We had the federal earmark funding.
[00:32:08.940]I also had quite a bit of commodity group funds.
[00:32:11.970]I'm working a lot now on endowments.
[00:32:14.670]I mentioned our
[00:32:16.020]International Center for Food Industry Excellence,
[00:32:18.870]our center that,
[00:32:20.430]our college just got a $44 million donation
[00:32:25.560]to name the college.
[00:32:27.240]But 15 million of that is designated for ICFIE, our center.
[00:32:32.490]So we worked really hard for about a year
[00:32:35.370]to get that donation.
[00:32:36.510]And we didn't even know till the day it was announced
[00:32:39.030]that it was gonna be increased
[00:32:40.470]from 15 million to 44 million for the entire college.
[00:32:43.890]So that was great.
[00:32:45.030]Foundation research,
[00:32:46.590]and then direct industry funding
[00:32:48.420]to solve different problems.
[00:32:49.710]So lots of different opportunities for funding.
[00:32:53.130]I think that this should be paralleled
[00:32:55.710]and taught to new scientists,
[00:32:57.900]new researchers throughout their career.
[00:33:01.560]Now I wanna mention something
[00:33:04.050]and I just remembered it today.
[00:33:06.000]I remember coming to Nebraska and thinking,
[00:33:09.240]how am I ever gonna write a research grant?
[00:33:11.010]You know, it was so overwhelming.
[00:33:12.630]I never did it as a grad student.
[00:33:14.790]And VPR at Nebraska at the time was having
[00:33:19.320]workshops on for new faculty on grant writing.
[00:33:23.650]Day one, he walked in and he was wearing a kilt.
[00:33:27.870]And I wish I knew I could remember his name.
[00:33:30.240]And I was like, oh my goodness,
[00:33:31.950]this is, you know, very interesting,
[00:33:34.080]but he made the point and he was like,
[00:33:35.670]you're never gonna forget this.
[00:33:37.230]And that's what you wanna do (audience laughing)
[00:33:38.190]with your research grant.
[00:33:40.470]I was like, okay.
[00:33:41.303]Yeah, you know, he is like,
[00:33:42.330]you want your grant to stand out, but he made a point.
[00:33:45.060]Obviously, he made an impression 20 plus years ago on me.
[00:33:49.020]So then, you know,
[00:33:50.550]I was pretty successful with my funding after that.
[00:33:54.660]I've mentored many graduate students.
[00:33:57.030]Published, had a lot of research funding endowments for,
[00:34:02.850]to prepare me as a scientist,
[00:34:04.830]to be able to look back from a perspective
[00:34:08.040]of being a scientist at the bench top,
[00:34:10.740]managing students that have prepared me for the position.
[00:34:15.780]So moving on to my international experience.
[00:34:20.160]We are the International Center for Food Industry Excellence
[00:34:22.890]and we've had many programs internationally.
[00:34:25.920]Now since COVID, we haven't started these back,
[00:34:29.190]but I have trips to Honduras, Costa Rica,
[00:34:32.550]and Columbia planned for the fall.
[00:34:37.140]So I'm pretty excited about that,
[00:34:38.790]to get back out into the international realm.
[00:34:43.590]I wanna take a little bit of time
[00:34:45.300]and talk about a project in the Honduras cattle industry.
[00:34:49.770]Now usually a scientist or even administrators,
[00:34:52.620]it's like we needed strategic plan,
[00:34:54.360]and what are your goals and what are your objectives?
[00:34:57.330]This happens, nothing like that.
[00:35:00.270]One of my students was from Honduras.
[00:35:02.160]She wanted to take a group of faculty,
[00:35:04.260]show us agriculture in the country.
[00:35:06.840]We went to Zamorano, which is a ag university,
[00:35:09.720]if you're not familiar with it,
[00:35:10.920]it draws from all Central America.
[00:35:14.040]We have an internship program with them.
[00:35:16.050]It's a great university.
[00:35:17.640]And so we're at the hotel and the front desk calls me
[00:35:23.010]and they said, there's somebody here that wants to see you.
[00:35:26.010]I was like, oh goodness, I called another faculty member.
[00:35:28.530]I said, we need to go down here and talk to this guy.
[00:35:31.500]And he told me, he said,
[00:35:33.240]I heard there's a group of professors here from Texas
[00:35:35.910]and, you know, something about cattle.
[00:35:38.550]We would like for you to rebuild
[00:35:40.110]the cattle industry of Honduras.
[00:35:42.684]And I was sitting there like,
[00:35:44.430]okay, I'll get right on top of that.
[00:35:47.520]I mean, then he, you know, so he said,
[00:35:49.230]I went to Florida, University of Florida,
[00:35:52.950]and then I came back and we had a feed yard,
[00:35:56.700]but all the cattle are gone out of Honduras
[00:35:59.010]because there's no regulatory structure
[00:36:01.200]to keep it from crossing the border.
[00:36:03.840]It was kind of involved with the drug trade as well.
[00:36:06.510]And all of these reasons that the cattle had moved,
[00:36:08.910]but outta Honduras
[00:36:10.050]and there was no market, you know,
[00:36:11.700]all of these things happen.
[00:36:12.870]Well, we went back a few more times.
[00:36:15.060]We were working with the shrimp farm there
[00:36:17.430]and doing some food safety work.
[00:36:18.750]And I just started thinking about it.
[00:36:20.250]And I'm like, all right, let's put a team together,
[00:36:23.160]but let's bring in a ruminate nutritionist.
[00:36:25.140]Let's bring in meat scientists and experts.
[00:36:29.400]The good thing was Honduras already had equivalency,
[00:36:31.980]so they could export to the US,
[00:36:33.960]but none of their facilities, you know,
[00:36:35.880]were up to speed for that.
[00:36:38.160]So we worked at the facility,
[00:36:39.570]we got them reestablished for equivalency.
[00:36:42.000]We did validation studies on the food safety side.
[00:36:45.420]The most challenging part was,
[00:36:47.397]and these are obviously cattle eating in a feed yard,
[00:36:50.430]but they were out in the field eating the grass.
[00:36:53.640]I'm not a remnant nutritionist,
[00:36:55.290]so I'll get this completely wrong,
[00:36:56.790]but the grass was poor quality.
[00:36:58.890]And so we had to have a supplemental system.
[00:37:01.981]We developed a cattle diet based on Palm kernel meal,
[00:37:06.900]'cause Palm kernel oil is one of their primary experts.
[00:37:09.990]So we took the Palm kernel meal,
[00:37:11.608]mixed it with poultry litter
[00:37:13.470]and sugar cane,
[00:37:16.020]developed this diet.
[00:37:17.430]We did test the food safety parameters
[00:37:20.070]with the poultry litter and we could get the,
[00:37:23.160]they finally,
[00:37:23.993]they were harvesting cattle at about 700 to 750 pounds,
[00:37:28.530]if you can believe it.
[00:37:29.700]We finally got 'em to get 'em to a thousand pounds.
[00:37:32.430]We were actually getting marbling in the, you know,
[00:37:36.180]on the car 'cause we were so excited
[00:37:37.770]when we finally saw some marveling
[00:37:39.390]and a little bit of fat on these cattle,
[00:37:42.120]they built a couple more feed yards.
[00:37:43.803]The industry there is growing,
[00:37:46.080]we've worked on the genetics there.
[00:37:48.630]We're really anxious to get back to kind of
[00:37:50.820]just check up on the program.
[00:37:52.320]We still talked to 'em, you know, many times.
[00:37:55.560]Now the interesting thing is the gentleman
[00:37:57.870]who came in and said,
[00:37:59.707]"Hey, we want you to rebuild
[00:38:00.840]the cattle industry of Honduras."
[00:38:03.810]Whenever I started at the USDA
[00:38:06.057]and my position is undersecretary for food safety.
[00:38:09.270]He started at the equivalent position in Honduras
[00:38:13.260]with the government.
[00:38:14.093]So we got to serve together in equivalent positions.
[00:38:17.490]And you know, he, you know,
[00:38:19.380]he was there without a job,
[00:38:21.030]and then we all worked together for about five years.
[00:38:23.400]And then we were able to
[00:38:25.140]really do some fun things with our career together.
[00:38:28.740]We've also done quite a bit of work in Mexico.
[00:38:30.900]We did a salmonella baseline in the markets,
[00:38:35.220]in grocery stores in Mexico.
[00:38:37.410]The bottom line of that study is that
[00:38:39.030]if you get something in the grocery store, that's inspected.
[00:38:41.730]It was good.
[00:38:42.563]It was clean.
[00:38:43.396]No salmonella.
[00:38:44.370]If you go out into the wet markets,
[00:38:46.833]not so great.
[00:38:48.330]Worked also with the harvest facilities there.
[00:38:52.500]I think I just don't think there's really much you can,
[00:38:55.590]I can see that I haven't seen in a harvest facility.
[00:38:58.710]So lots of work there,
[00:39:00.210]building teams and solving international problems.
[00:39:04.020]Also work quite a bit in the Caribbean
[00:39:07.110]with goat and sheep farming, various feeding things,
[00:39:12.360]feeding programs for the cattle and also slaughter.
[00:39:17.370]And then we had a very large project in Australia
[00:39:20.880]where we had interns there for about six months,
[00:39:23.400]doing a lot of shelf life work
[00:39:25.830]on how we can extend the shelf life of product
[00:39:28.320]coming to the US.
[00:39:29.880]Now these two pictures,
[00:39:30.960]I just wanted to again,
[00:39:32.130]show you how your paths cross many times,
[00:39:36.900]this is a picture
[00:39:39.606]of me with other faculty and our interns that were there,
[00:39:43.200]here in the middle.
[00:39:44.310]And they were there for all that time.
[00:39:46.860]And then about a year later, I went back.
[00:39:49.470]It was my first government trip with FSIS,
[00:39:53.460]we ended up at the same place, same sign.
[00:39:55.890]And I'm like, okay,
[00:39:56.723]we have to retake this picture,
[00:39:58.020]because, you know, paths don't always cross that way,
[00:40:01.050]but it's cool when it does.
[00:40:03.450]The international experiences,
[00:40:05.130]I think are very important
[00:40:06.480]because when we're trying to solve global problems,
[00:40:10.410]we can't take agriculture as we approach it in the US,
[00:40:16.260]indirectly superimpose it in another country,
[00:40:19.740]you have to learn the culture.
[00:40:21.480]You have to learn the government system and the limitations.
[00:40:24.330]You have to understand the history.
[00:40:27.180]The same thing comes in as a university administrator,
[00:40:30.360]you can't come in and dictate something
[00:40:32.490]that's worked one place without getting to know the people,
[00:40:36.330]the culture, what's going on,
[00:40:38.460]and taking the time to learn and build those relationships.
[00:40:43.050]So moving on to work with IP technology
[00:40:47.130]and commercialization.
[00:40:49.170]I've been fortunate.
[00:40:50.130]You've heard many patents,
[00:40:52.530]a member of the national academy of inventors,
[00:40:56.250]and worked very closely in commercialization
[00:40:59.130]of three different products.
[00:41:03.450]I already mentioned Bovamine,
[00:41:05.190]which is Bovamine Defend,
[00:41:06.870]which is used in the industry now.
[00:41:09.660]Probicon is a new probiotic that we have developed.
[00:41:13.350]I am a partner in that company.
[00:41:16.050]The university is really good at saying,
[00:41:17.880]go start a company as a scientist.
[00:41:20.310]Well, we don't have the skills to start a company.
[00:41:23.130]I mean, I'm just gonna be honest.
[00:41:24.600]I didn't know what a business plan was
[00:41:26.370]or anything about getting a loan,
[00:41:28.560]I've learned over the years,
[00:41:30.120]but I think we could really develop programs
[00:41:33.120]to support faculty and IP
[00:41:35.130]in helping them commercialize product.
[00:41:37.170]And I know the English Center here,
[00:41:40.050]you have is fantastic.
[00:41:41.730]So I'm excited to learn more about that
[00:41:44.040]and discuss that more.
[00:41:45.180]And then also MicroZap technology,
[00:41:47.550]which is a microwave system that pasteurizers food.
[00:41:51.180]The primary role of this is right now using it for tortillas
[00:41:56.850]and bread to extend the shelf life in breads
[00:41:59.520]that have no mold inhibitor.
[00:42:02.040]It's used throughout Mexico,
[00:42:04.590]Bimbo Technologies used it.
[00:42:06.720]We just got a contract with General Mills
[00:42:08.820]to purchase a number of machines,
[00:42:11.160]and they're using it in their European markets.
[00:42:13.410]So that's exciting.
[00:42:14.636]But, you know, that took like 18 years to get to the point
[00:42:18.000]where we're actually selling product,
[00:42:20.070]'cause that's how long it takes a scientist to become
[00:42:22.260]a business person, I guess.
[00:42:24.240]But anyway, so I also serve on many boards.
[00:42:28.200]I put this up there,
[00:42:29.340]'cause I think it's important,
[00:42:31.950]when you serve on a board,
[00:42:32.880]you have to work together collaboratively
[00:42:35.730]with other people to make decisions for the greater good.
[00:42:39.210]I serve on both the scientific advisory boards
[00:42:41.850]for many organizations, as well as the board of directors,
[00:42:45.780]and that's just really gone a long way
[00:42:47.880]in growing my leadership skills.
[00:42:51.480]And finally, moving to diversity programs.
[00:42:54.510]Diversity has been at the core of everything
[00:42:57.270]that I've done from the beginning of my career.
[00:43:00.150]I think that embracing diversity is extremely important.
[00:43:06.150]First of all, we have developed a program,
[00:43:08.970]my husband and I developed this.
[00:43:10.350]It's called the SOWER Scholars program,
[00:43:12.868]sewing and reaping, reaping and sewing.
[00:43:15.690]So sustaining our world through education and research.
[00:43:18.810]This is about bringing,
[00:43:20.850]this is an international program.
[00:43:22.830]So we bring students,
[00:43:24.510]at first, it was primarily from Zamorano,
[00:43:27.120]now from across the globe into our program,
[00:43:30.750]either for an internship.
[00:43:32.430]Hopefully that leads to graduate studies
[00:43:34.980]and really providing a lot of diversity to our program.
[00:43:40.140]It's been very good for our local students
[00:43:43.800]because we have taken them to Honduras,
[00:43:46.200]to Costa Rica, to all of these, to Mexico,
[00:43:50.640]and some of these people had never left the state.
[00:43:53.310]So it's very exciting to expose them to other cultures.
[00:43:57.360]But then as far as diversity goes.
[00:44:01.200]Personally, it's something that in my lab,
[00:44:04.470]I always wanted a great amount of diversity.
[00:44:06.690]I wanted people with different backgrounds,
[00:44:09.450]different thought processes,
[00:44:11.850]different, just to be very different.
[00:44:16.080]that is how you learn.
[00:44:17.310]You bring people in that thing different from you
[00:44:20.460]and that's how you're going to learn and grow.
[00:44:22.230]So I really tried to embrace that
[00:44:24.630]from the beginning of my career
[00:44:26.580]to maintain the lab diversity.
[00:44:28.710]I've also, as I mentioned,
[00:44:30.180]been involved with many targeted faculty hires,
[00:44:33.307]working with student diversity programs.
[00:44:36.720]Several years ago,
[00:44:37.680]we started moving toward becoming
[00:44:40.410]a Hispanic serving institution at Texas Tech.
[00:44:44.340]Lubbock is over 50% Hispanic,
[00:44:46.980]but we only had about 15% in the university.
[00:44:50.400]And so we really started recruiting
[00:44:52.650]and trying to bring those students in into agriculture
[00:44:58.140]to at least not,
[00:44:59.700]we're still not where we need to be.
[00:45:01.800]Our student population is there.
[00:45:03.534]We're not there on the leadership side yet
[00:45:06.240]as far as faculty and people in leadership positions,
[00:45:09.166]but we're really trying to move toward,
[00:45:12.000]toward that goal.
[00:45:13.740]Diversity hires.
[00:45:15.534]We had a very strong female retention program at FSIS.
[00:45:20.160]That I started,
[00:45:20.993]we found that we were losing female vets
[00:45:24.690]kind of early in their career.
[00:45:26.370]So I put out a survey and then I created an inbox,
[00:45:29.700]asked the undersecretary for our female vets
[00:45:32.070]and identifying issues.
[00:45:33.900]And some of them would have,
[00:45:36.300]they would have a baby,
[00:45:37.380]and then when they would come back,
[00:45:38.790]they wouldn't have a place,
[00:45:40.350]if they were breastfeeding to pump or whatever, you know,
[00:45:42.720]and it's a federal law, you have to provide that.
[00:45:44.760]Well, they were uncomfortable asking the facility,
[00:45:47.400]but I didn't care.
[00:45:48.420]I was like, yeah, you have to provide this,
[00:45:49.980]and just making the environment better
[00:45:52.500]for our female population.
[00:45:54.720]And the bathrooms are too dirty and they're disgusting.
[00:45:57.900]Well, that was bad for both men and women.
[00:46:00.105]But, you know, I went in those facilities and I saw that.
[00:46:02.790]So little things we could do and also some big things
[00:46:05.995]that, you know, were more sensitive
[00:46:08.460]that I'm not gonna talk about.
[00:46:09.720]But we worked hard to retain females at FSIS.
[00:46:13.470]Also maintain,
[00:46:14.670]we have the Pink Ribbon Food Safety Action Team.
[00:46:17.040]It's a Facebook group of food safety professionals, women.
[00:46:21.150]And it's just a safe place to go
[00:46:23.370]and talk about issues related to food safety, agriculture.
[00:46:28.710]It's a community to support each other.
[00:46:31.500]And it it's a good community,
[00:46:32.970]even if you're not in food safety,
[00:46:35.220]you know, come and check us out.
[00:46:37.530]So switching gears and wrapping up.
[00:46:42.210]University of Nebraska
[00:46:43.770]is very,
[00:46:45.810]it's very special to me.
[00:46:48.150]It's where I started my career.
[00:46:49.680]It's where I received funding
[00:46:51.317]that really put my career path on a trajectory
[00:46:54.960]toward working with the industry,
[00:46:56.490]toward doing food safety research.
[00:47:00.222]I see it as having programs of excellence already,
[00:47:04.860]but I think all of the things that I've discussed,
[00:47:07.560]I can add value to,
[00:47:09.150]bringing my perspective,
[00:47:10.740]bringing my experiences,
[00:47:12.450]to take it to the next level.
[00:47:15.600]My visions are built on my passions.
[00:47:19.740]They're sustained by my strengths,
[00:47:21.900]and then they need to be informed
[00:47:24.030]by the team here at the university.
[00:47:27.693]We have to look forward in building programs.
[00:47:32.070]We do this through building relationships,
[00:47:35.100]building our programs and funding,
[00:47:36.960]building diversity into the programs as we build a vision.
[00:47:41.880]But we also have to look around,
[00:47:44.340]we can't only look to the future.
[00:47:46.590]We have to stop and say, what's going on today?
[00:47:49.740]What are the issues here that we have to address?
[00:47:53.130]Again, this goes back to relationships.
[00:47:55.620]Regular meetings with our unit heads.
[00:47:57.720]I put, we're gonna go around the world.
[00:48:00.120]That's something I brought in from a Secretary Perdue.
[00:48:03.660]Every Wednesday morning, we had sub-cabinet meeting.
[00:48:07.020]And the first thing we did,
[00:48:08.130]we sat down at the table and he said,
[00:48:09.840]we're gonna go around the world.
[00:48:11.460]And we all had to just basically say,
[00:48:13.260]what's going on in our agency?
[00:48:14.910]What are the big issues?
[00:48:16.050]What are, you know, even sometimes personal things,
[00:48:18.750]just so we knew what was going on within the department.
[00:48:22.047]But walk the park.
[00:48:24.450]This is a Walt Disney saying,
[00:48:27.330]I'm a huge Disney fan.
[00:48:29.041](Mindy speaking foreign language)
[00:48:29.940]and walk the park though.
[00:48:31.860]Well, Disney always would say,
[00:48:33.480]I have to go out and see what the people are doing.
[00:48:36.000]What do they like?
[00:48:37.050]I don't like to sit in an office all day.
[00:48:40.080]I wanna go out and see the labs.
[00:48:41.820]I wanna go out
[00:48:42.653]and see all of the different experiment station locations.
[00:48:45.990]I wanna come out and talk to you
[00:48:47.280]and see people in their element
[00:48:49.080]where they're most successful.
[00:48:50.940]I know a lot of times people feel
[00:48:53.280]that they have to come to the administrator
[00:48:55.230]and that will happen, that'll be part of it.
[00:48:57.510]But I want to have that connection with the faculty
[00:49:02.340]where I can go out and see what's going on
[00:49:05.220]because it makes it more personal.
[00:49:07.140]And it helps me become an advocate for the faculty
[00:49:11.040]and for your program.
[00:49:12.690]And communicate expectations.
[00:49:15.420]Communication is so important.
[00:49:18.630]I mentioned the other day that,
[00:49:21.180]or earlier that
[00:49:22.530]I have to take my youngest daughter to college next week.
[00:49:25.740]Well, I was on vacation this past weekend,
[00:49:28.440]my husband and I,
[00:49:29.321]and I got a text from my middle daughter who is married,
[00:49:33.480]and she sent me a text and it said,
[00:49:36.540]I'm going to move in with you,
[00:49:38.160]when are you coming back?
[00:49:40.415]And I was like, what?
[00:49:43.290]Are you leaving your husband?
[00:49:44.820]I mean, I am panicking,
[00:49:47.490]texting her, calling her, you know,
[00:49:48.870]I'm actually out of the country
[00:49:50.400]and I can't get a phone call out.
[00:49:52.950]Finally, she calls me back,
[00:49:54.360]and she's laughing,
[00:49:56.310]what the text should have said.
[00:49:58.200]I wanna go to Fort Worth
[00:50:00.180]when you take Presley, my youngest to move in.
[00:50:03.390]When are you going to come back?
[00:50:04.857](Mindy laughing)
[00:50:06.000]Communication is very important.
[00:50:09.840]She wasn't leaving her husband.
[00:50:11.640]She wanted to go to move in at TCU with me
[00:50:14.550]when I took my daughter to college.
[00:50:15.780]I was like, oh my goodness.
[00:50:17.247]So communicate, communicate, communicate,
[00:50:20.100]very critical.
[00:50:21.870]Also we have to look outside to build programs.
[00:50:24.864]Nebraska does a great job on this.
[00:50:27.400]Building relationships with USDA-ARS,
[00:50:30.720]other universities,
[00:50:31.770]our industry, the stakeholders,
[00:50:33.960]international partners, ag organizations,
[00:50:36.960]and just across the university.
[00:50:38.910]We don't have to stay within agriculture.
[00:50:40.710]There are people from other programs
[00:50:43.140]that can provide a lot of value.
[00:50:46.260]And to wrap things up.
[00:50:47.430]I wanna talk about fiscal responsibility.
[00:50:49.860]I've had a lot of meetings about this today.
[00:50:51.870]But there is a responsibility to manage funding
[00:50:55.818]for the greater good.
[00:50:57.030]I've already mentioned this many times,
[00:50:59.220]but this is where we're going to find
[00:51:02.550]strength in our programs.
[00:51:04.050]Investing in programs of excellence,
[00:51:07.920]investing wisely and knowing that we can do better,
[00:51:13.500]but spend responsibly.
[00:51:15.991]As I mentioned in my research program,
[00:51:18.510]I had diversified funding.
[00:51:20.460]I would like to see that across the university
[00:51:22.680]really instill that into our new researchers,
[00:51:26.017]looking at foundations, endowments, industry funding,
[00:51:30.990]because that's how you have resilience.
[00:51:33.480]When you don't get the USDA grant on this particular year,
[00:51:36.600]you have something to fall back on and to support them
[00:51:39.930]and just really build a culture
[00:51:42.030]of having a diversified funding portfolio.
[00:51:46.618]Short term goals and objectives will really be
[00:51:50.040]to build relationships, getting to know everyone,
[00:51:53.130]building diversity, studying your programs.
[00:51:55.590]I've already touched on most of this.
[00:51:57.480]Identifying strengths and gaps in the university,
[00:52:01.200]personally visiting the lab.
[00:52:03.300]So long term value added.
[00:52:05.490]We can invest in our programs,
[00:52:07.770]have diversity at all levels,
[00:52:09.450]not just students,
[00:52:10.440]in the leadership positions,
[00:52:13.800]establishing the diversified portfolio,
[00:52:16.740]building endowments
[00:52:18.090]and supporting innovations and entrepreneurism.
[00:52:21.630]Now show this slide to wrap things up.
[00:52:24.960]I started with, I believe in the future of agriculture.
[00:52:27.930]This slide is a direct depiction of that.
[00:52:31.260]This was Marco Sanchez was one of my students
[00:52:34.080]at University of Nebraska.
[00:52:35.820]He was my first master's student.
[00:52:39.060]I met him when I was pregnant
[00:52:40.680]with my middle daughter at Nebraska.
[00:52:44.400]He's now a professor at Texas Tech.
[00:52:46.980]This is my daughter, he is her advisor
[00:52:51.150]and this is his daughter and I'm her advisor.
[00:52:54.562](audience laughing)
[00:52:55.395]So the future of agriculture is strong
[00:52:57.960]and it goes full circle.
[00:52:59.640]So thank you so much for your attention.
[00:53:02.250]And I will be happy to answer any questions.
[00:53:04.948](audience applauding)
[00:53:11.870]Perfect.
[00:53:12.840]Well, now we have an opportunity for a Q&A session
[00:53:16.470]with Dr. Brashears.
[00:53:18.090]So a first question, maybe from someone here in attendance,
[00:53:21.690]in the Great Plains room.
[00:53:24.960]Reminder to those that are online,
[00:53:26.760]you can send it to my email address,
[00:53:29.010]and Jason's thumbs up.
[00:53:30.570]He's got that address in the chat.
[00:53:33.360]Question?
[00:53:37.620]All right.
[00:53:39.090]Thank you, Dr. Rustin.
[00:53:44.655]Thank you for your nice talk.
[00:53:46.830]You're welcome.
[00:53:47.663]So my question is a future thinking one.
[00:53:52.050]If we happen to have another crisis that we cannot foresee
[00:53:57.090]and you have to make a tough set of decisions
[00:53:59.070]in a short amount of time,
[00:54:01.980]how do you do that?
[00:54:02.813]What's your process?
[00:54:03.646]Who's in the room?
[00:54:04.500]Thank you, sorry.
[00:54:05.910]You probably have a lot more experience
[00:54:07.110]in this than most of us.
[00:54:08.910]I can say one of my strengths is crisis management
[00:54:11.880]and I assure you
[00:54:14.760]and it's funny because I said, one day,
[00:54:17.700]I'm gonna be interviewing for a job
[00:54:19.110]and somebody's gonna ask me,
[00:54:21.090]you know, are you good at managing a crisis?
[00:54:23.940]And I'm gonna say during COVID, did you eat?
[00:54:29.340]Yes, I hope you did.
[00:54:31.080]Well, I was responsible for managing
[00:54:33.330]the food supply chain during COVID.
[00:54:35.280]That was not an easy decision.
[00:54:38.160]It was not an easy framework,
[00:54:39.930]but I had to make the best decisions I could.
[00:54:42.840]Now the president gave authority to Secretary Perdue
[00:54:47.070]to keep the meat and poultry plants open,
[00:54:50.220]and then he turned to me and asked me to manage it.
[00:54:52.890]Now, you know,
[00:54:54.150]there's all this information out there that says she shut,
[00:54:57.120]or she kept all these plants open, not true.
[00:55:00.600]Never did I overturn any health department decision
[00:55:03.720]just for full disclosure.
[00:55:05.340]But what we did was we really had a collaboration
[00:55:09.120]of the plant, the local government, sometimes the governor,
[00:55:13.290]sometimes the local sheriff.
[00:55:14.940]And I would say, what do you need?
[00:55:16.320]Do you need face masks?
[00:55:17.490]Do you need a CDC team to come and teach you how to,
[00:55:20.917]you know, do your distancing and put in programs
[00:55:24.196]and all of those things.
[00:55:26.040]There's not a template for that,
[00:55:28.470]but there is a template to know
[00:55:31.080]you draw on your past experiences and you have confidence.
[00:55:34.347]You bring together anyone with expertise that,
[00:55:37.890]you know, that might know anything about it.
[00:55:40.380]You gather that information
[00:55:42.270]and you make the most informed decision
[00:55:44.040]you can make at that time.
[00:55:45.690]The reality is most of the plants closed down
[00:55:49.260]for anywhere from two to four weeks,
[00:55:51.150]some of them longer
[00:55:53.550]in order to put up barriers, to mitigate,
[00:55:56.610]and they reopened at slower line speed.
[00:55:58.710]So they had less employees,
[00:56:00.300]but coming up with those strategies,
[00:56:03.240]that wasn't easy.
[00:56:04.590]I was on, I had 18 hour days,
[00:56:07.650]that was coast to coast,
[00:56:09.150]and it was a crazy time.
[00:56:11.190]But I know, I was thriving during that time.
[00:56:16.080]You know, I didn't sleep much,
[00:56:17.370]but I was on the phone.
[00:56:18.990]I was trying to make decisions.
[00:56:20.460]And you draw from the resources you have.
[00:56:23.760]It's very difficult as a scientist,
[00:56:25.890]not to have a peer reviewed published paper
[00:56:28.380]to make a scientific decision with.
[00:56:30.763]But then you draw on those skills that you learn
[00:56:33.840]as a scientist to make those decisions
[00:56:36.030]and you have a hypothesis and you will have some evidence
[00:56:40.320]and data to be able to do that.
[00:56:42.330]And, oh, I hope no more pandemics.
[00:56:44.557](Mindy laughing) (man laughing)
[00:56:47.400]All right, we'll take a question from online.
[00:56:49.950]This is from Dr. John Carroll,
[00:56:52.110]who serves as director for the School of Natural Resources.
[00:56:55.020]So INR is agriculture natural resources, human sciences.
[00:57:00.720]How do you see those of us
[00:57:02.110]who are not directly working in the ag industry
[00:57:05.760]fitting in with the institute?
[00:57:07.980]In my unit alone,
[00:57:09.000]we have climate scientists, water scientists, geologists,
[00:57:12.450]soil scientists, and fish and wildlife scientists
[00:57:17.400]and so on.
[00:57:18.390]Most of the faculty often view their stakeholders
[00:57:20.730]much more broadly than farmers, ranchers in the ag industry.
[00:57:24.420]Absolutely, as I mentioned at the beginning,
[00:57:27.930]when I talk about agriculture,
[00:57:29.640]I'm talking about all aspects that's directly
[00:57:32.880]or indirectly related to agriculture.
[00:57:35.397]That includes natural resources, human sciences.
[00:57:40.230]And like I said, food sciences.
[00:57:42.990]I'm a food scientist.
[00:57:44.610]And a lot of food scientists don't feel that
[00:57:47.250]they are in agriculture,
[00:57:49.350]but they are related to that.
[00:57:51.540]I mentioned that priority areas
[00:57:54.870]that I think are very important globally
[00:57:57.540]for agriculture are number one,
[00:58:00.540]one health and well-ness,
[00:58:01.710]that's extremely important from many perspectives.
[00:58:06.510]Water,
[00:58:08.160]water is very important,
[00:58:10.080]energy and climate.
[00:58:12.300]Those were the other two I mentioned.
[00:58:14.040]And then, like I said,
[00:58:15.120]the social scientist in rural,
[00:58:18.270]rural sustainability.
[00:58:19.920]So I have worked very extensively
[00:58:23.220]with many natural scientists,
[00:58:26.250]people in our natural resources department
[00:58:30.000]at Texas Tech on water issues.
[00:58:32.401]Water relates directly to food safety.
[00:58:36.570]Water is important for crops.
[00:58:38.310]Water is important for a carrier for pathogens.
[00:58:42.720]So there are so many aspects of that.
[00:58:45.810]In Lubbock, we have dirt,
[00:58:47.940]we have dust,
[00:58:49.020]we have dirt that,
[00:58:51.030]we have dirt storms that also can carry pathogens.
[00:58:54.390]There has been many studies on that.
[00:58:56.490]So mitigating that risk as a carrier of pathogens,
[00:59:01.110]that's related directly to me.
[00:59:02.880]But obviously, even though it's not
[00:59:06.930]maybe in the direct realm of agriculture,
[00:59:09.570]I consider it very impactful to agriculture.
[00:59:13.020]You know, that's why we have drought resistant crops.
[00:59:15.810]We have,
[00:59:17.400]we have all of these technologies that are related
[00:59:20.160]to natural resources
[00:59:22.290]that directly impact everything we do on a daily basis too.
[00:59:27.510]Inform the food and fiber production that we have
[00:59:31.740]in the traditional ag realms.
[00:59:33.840]To me, everyone is interconnected and interrelated.
[00:59:38.010]Perfect, thank you.
[00:59:39.090]All right.
[00:59:40.049]Don.
[00:59:42.810]Don Becker in biochemistry.
[00:59:44.190]So I'd just be like to hear what you think is unique
[00:59:47.520]or special about Nebraska,
[00:59:49.350]or what's attracting you here?
[00:59:51.270]And what opportunities do you see here
[00:59:53.430]that maybe you don't see at Texas Tech?
[00:59:56.160]'Cause we have dust and dirt here too, so.
[00:59:58.555](audience laughing)
[00:59:59.580]It's not the same, but no.
[01:00:01.263](audience laughing)
[01:00:02.910]First of all,
[01:00:03.743]I still come to Nebraska a couple of times a month.
[01:00:06.750]I still have many of,
[01:00:09.090]much of our research is done in Nebraska
[01:00:12.210]with the slaughter industry, the heart, the food industry,
[01:00:16.383]we're working with poultry companies, beef companies,
[01:00:19.355]these cattle, this is in Wisner, Nebraska.
[01:00:22.470]I took this picture about a month ago.
[01:00:25.777]Well spent Wagyu cattle that we are working on
[01:00:29.700]a fed cow program to see what the meat turns out to be.
[01:00:33.900]So still very engaged in Nebraska.
[01:00:37.153]I do tell people that Nebraska
[01:00:39.030]is my second favorite state
[01:00:41.670]next to Texas. (Mindy laughing)
[01:00:43.020]I just, I really,
[01:00:46.920]Texas Tech.
[01:00:47.753]I love Texas Tech, I'll say that.
[01:00:49.440]I won't say anything negative, but it's not a land grant.
[01:00:52.650]It doesn't have the same opportunities,
[01:00:56.700]the same structure,
[01:00:58.110]the same emphasis on agriculture
[01:01:00.990]as I see here at University of Nebraska.
[01:01:04.320]Also, there are many universities within the State of Texas.
[01:01:08.490]Texas has a what they call a puff permanent university fund,
[01:01:12.690]which is oil land, and it's a lot of oil.
[01:01:15.960]And it funds University of Texas and Texas A&M.
[01:01:19.050]So there's the haves and the have nots.
[01:01:21.750]Texas Tech ends up on the have not side,
[01:01:24.360]and so the funding is very limited.
[01:01:26.910]So I tell people,
[01:01:29.460]I've had many opportunities since leaving the government,
[01:01:33.900]but it's about where you can go
[01:01:35.310]and have the greatest influence for agriculture.
[01:01:38.113]I could have gone to work in industry.
[01:01:40.080]I could have stayed in the government as director of NIFA
[01:01:43.710]I was offered that position.
[01:01:45.480]But I wanted to come back to agriculture
[01:01:48.090]and or to the university
[01:01:50.100]because I saw so many people come to Washington, DC,
[01:01:54.390]and sit in positions where they made decisions.
[01:01:58.530]And that I'm talking about staffers for congressmen,
[01:02:00.750]which you think, oh, well they're just staffers.
[01:02:02.730]No, they're not just staffers.
[01:02:04.470]They're influencing the decisions.
[01:02:06.570]Those decisions makers knew nothing about agriculture.
[01:02:10.140]When I was undersecretary,
[01:02:11.700]I remember sitting in Ronnie Green's office
[01:02:14.100]and saying, I so appreciate having
[01:02:16.999]as someone with a ag interest as president.
[01:02:20.820]Our students at that age,
[01:02:23.490]when they're at that age, they're willing to learn,
[01:02:26.220]and they're just absorbing the information.
[01:02:29.010]Once you start your career,
[01:02:30.300]it's much harder to change someone's mind.
[01:02:34.110]So just the influence and the university here,
[01:02:38.550]the resources, the people, and all of those things,
[01:02:42.180]and the programs are wonderful.
[01:02:43.823]I just, I appreciate the diversity from biochemistry
[01:02:48.180]to natural resources to food science.
[01:02:50.520]We don't have that at Texas Tech.
[01:02:52.200]It's more the traditional ag focus.
[01:02:55.980]Thanks.
[01:02:57.210]Okay, we'll take another question from online.
[01:02:59.910]So when talking with stakeholders across Nebraska,
[01:03:03.360]we find a tension between their short term concerns
[01:03:06.360]to stay in business and what we see as long term priorities
[01:03:09.780]for research on such issues as climate change,
[01:03:13.740]global land grabs and equity of distribution of benefits
[01:03:17.730]from the food systems.
[01:03:19.320]As land grant researchers and leaders,
[01:03:22.230]how do we deal with the potential disconnect
[01:03:24.450]with our clientele?
[01:03:26.190]That is a great question,
[01:03:27.660]and that goes back to the impact of the research.
[01:03:32.490]I think that any research project at the end,
[01:03:36.480]you should always look at the end.
[01:03:37.590]What is the impact on our clientele?
[01:03:40.230]Especially if you're utilizing federal resources.
[01:03:44.040]Those are taxpayer dollars,
[01:03:45.990]and we need to impact the taxpayer and the stakeholder.
[01:03:49.590]Now something at the very molecular level,
[01:03:53.040]and developing a GMO Crops
[01:03:55.890]that's gonna take a while to come to fruition,
[01:03:59.160]but, you know, at the end,
[01:04:00.480]that's where it's going.
[01:04:01.950]So always having that in mind.
[01:04:05.315]I'm approaching my research now very differently.
[01:04:07.920]It's like, how can this data be used
[01:04:09.981]by the agency to inform policy?
[01:04:12.716]How do you structure that
[01:04:14.400]so it informs policy and decision making?
[01:04:16.860]So you always need to have that in mind as a scientist,
[01:04:20.400]not inhibiting the discovery of new information,
[01:04:23.520]but hopefully having some long term impact
[01:04:28.770]in the back of your mind.
[01:04:30.300]And it's just critical that,
[01:04:32.940]that we train people how to communicate
[01:04:36.960]what they're doing to the stakeholder.
[01:04:39.502]And it may be to engage our communications programs,
[01:04:45.030]some scientists are great communicators, some are not,
[01:04:49.530]and it nothing against scientists,
[01:04:51.120]but it's getting in the weeds of the details
[01:04:53.670]and the scientific jargon that might turn people off.
[01:04:57.210]I think just about everything that we do has an impact,
[01:05:01.140]but it's the ability to communicate that to the stakeholder,
[01:05:04.860]so that's another important part of the puzzle.
[01:05:07.200]Perfect question from the audience.
[01:05:09.990]All right, Kelly?
[01:05:12.000]No, that's okay.
[01:05:12.833]I need my steps today, so you're good.
[01:05:20.430]I appreciate some of your comments
[01:05:22.260]on the last question.
[01:05:23.220]And I want you to expand upon it from this perspective,
[01:05:27.330]whether you're in the position of dean of ag research or
[01:05:32.850]the position in itself,
[01:05:34.350]what role does that play in encouraging
[01:05:37.590]and supporting academic freedom,
[01:05:39.390]especially where it connects with policy
[01:05:41.850]and making sure that that research
[01:05:44.430]is communicated, supported in a way that communicates back
[01:05:49.050]to consumers into an educational opportunity?
[01:05:52.440]Yeah, I think in this role,
[01:05:54.060]you're the facilitator of that,
[01:05:57.536]and that involves working with our counterparts
[01:06:00.870]with our dean of extension, our dean of education,
[01:06:06.090]communicating that back down to our students
[01:06:09.000]and then back down to the constituents
[01:06:11.250]through extension or whatever mechanism,
[01:06:13.950]but it's a responsibility to make sure that
[01:06:17.040]research isn't simply something that we do
[01:06:20.040]in the lab publish and use to get tenure.
[01:06:23.520]It needs to be impactful,
[01:06:25.260]and it's taking that out and getting it out to the end user
[01:06:29.460]so that it's impactful
[01:06:31.020]to whoever it's supposed to be benefiting.
[01:06:33.690]And that can be on a positive and negative side,
[01:06:37.410]even if the results are negative,
[01:06:39.150]it could still be something that should be communicated.
[01:06:43.080]Did I answer your question?
[01:06:44.970]Yeah, okay, thank you.
[01:06:46.351]Okay, question from one of your colleagues
[01:06:49.290]at food science and technology, Bob Hudkins.
[01:06:52.170]Attracting excellent graduate students
[01:06:54.480]can be a challenge,
[01:06:56.340]you have done very well in this space,
[01:06:59.040]what's your secret?
[01:07:00.001](audience laughing)
[01:07:02.040]I have a very high amount of vetting.
[01:07:05.640]You know, you can't, and it's interesting,
[01:07:09.240]'cause I think Bob Hudkins
[01:07:10.680]actually gave me this piece of advice.
[01:07:13.200]He said, you're gonna have a lot of grad students
[01:07:15.150]that come across, you know, your email,
[01:07:17.760]and they're gonna say I have funding,
[01:07:20.580]and, you know, I can come here for free, you know,
[01:07:23.370]that doesn't mean you should take them,
[01:07:25.650]but, you know, you have to have a high level of vetting,
[01:07:29.220]making sure that as faculty members,
[01:07:32.430]I'm sure you all get,
[01:07:33.900]you know, the emails I wanna be in your program,
[01:07:35.910]take me as your grad student.
[01:07:37.680]You can tell the copy and paste
[01:07:39.240]and you can tell the genuine ones.
[01:07:41.640]And just so that's really important to vet at that level.
[01:07:46.140]Another thing is that we have that
[01:07:48.450]a strong internship program at Texas Tech
[01:07:51.450]and we have students come in,
[01:07:53.850]they work either for the summer or for a semester.
[01:07:56.850]And so we kind of get to have 'em on a trial basis,
[01:07:59.310]and then we can take the best of the best in doing that.
[01:08:02.961]Thanks Bob.
[01:08:03.794]Okay, we have time for one last question.
[01:08:06.540]Is there someone from here in the Great Plains room
[01:08:08.640]that would like to ask a question?
[01:08:11.670]Right.
[01:08:22.855]Really nice talk, Dr. Brashears,
[01:08:25.160]so yeah, thank you very much for being here.
[01:08:27.450]Thanks.
[01:08:28.290]In role as dean,
[01:08:29.640]what do you see as the opportunity for creating
[01:08:33.210]the next generation of Mindy Brashears?
[01:08:38.284]Yeah, well, wow.
[01:08:40.710]Well, I don't know if anyone wants another one of me,
[01:08:42.900]but, (Mindy chuckles)
[01:08:44.160]I actually had that in there and I didn't talk about it.
[01:08:46.560]It's really important to always be investing
[01:08:50.160]in the next generation and to be preparing,
[01:08:54.120]who's gonna step into your shoes.
[01:08:56.550]We shouldn't be arrogant enough to say I'm irreplaceable.
[01:08:59.550]Who's going to be next?
[01:09:02.550]So you need to make sure that you not only lead
[01:09:07.860]and provide resources and provide funding,
[01:09:10.350]but you step back
[01:09:11.340]and you take the opportunity to continue to teach.
[01:09:15.870]Even as, you know, I'm pretty much a 100% research in my,
[01:09:20.370]I didn't do,
[01:09:21.330]I've stepped outta a classroom teaching as much,
[01:09:23.400]but I still consider myself a teacher of my grad students.
[01:09:27.600]I'm teaching them on a daily basis and it's mentoring them.
[01:09:31.230]It's bringing the skills that I learned
[01:09:34.410]in the government or as a university administrator,
[01:09:37.350]and in bringing that to them.
[01:09:40.140]Young professors, you know, they,
[01:09:42.390]you just make mistakes and you don't know that,
[01:09:45.720]you know, something might be out of line,
[01:09:48.090]but it's saying, okay, well maybe you shouldn't do that,
[01:09:50.340]or maybe you shouldn't say this
[01:09:51.660]and it's just grooming people.
[01:09:53.400]We talk a lot in the VPR office that there's no handbook
[01:09:57.660]for even becoming a professor.
[01:10:00.180]So we train grad students
[01:10:02.070]and then you step into a faculty realm,
[01:10:04.110]and I get the call all the time.
[01:10:05.850]They're like, why didn't you tell me
[01:10:07.140]this was what I had to do, you know,
[01:10:09.210]you didn't tell, you know.
[01:10:10.407]And so I've tried to be a little more aware of that.
[01:10:13.183]And then training people for department head,
[01:10:16.020]you know, it's just like,
[01:10:17.040]oh, well they're a great scientist.
[01:10:18.630]Let's make 'em a department chair.
[01:10:21.330]Not knowing the management skills and the leadership skills
[01:10:24.300]and you just have to keep passing that on and on
[01:10:26.760]and you can read lots of leadership books
[01:10:29.160]and I listen to podcasts and read the books too,
[01:10:32.790]but it's on the job action.
[01:10:34.860]And it's being able to put that into practice
[01:10:36.870]that really grows a leader.
[01:10:39.726]Perfect.
[01:10:40.710]All right, well, please join me in thanking Dr. Brashears.
[01:10:43.611](audience applauding) Thank y'all very much.

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ARD Dean Candidate - Dr. Mindy Brashears

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