-: Bryce Doeschot, on the Rural Radio Network
with this week's Chat with the Chancellor program.
This week we're checking in
with the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
Dr. Ronnie Green is joining us.
Good morning, chancellor.
Thanks for being here today.
-: It's great to see you Bryce, as always.
-: You made some news in late December
right before the holidays announcing your retirement.
Congratulations on that announcement.
-: Yeah, it's a, you realize you have reached
that stage in life where you're thinking about
how long is too long
and when's the next chapter supposed to start.
And I've been thinking about that for some time
really the last couple of years
and had reached the decision some time ago
that it was time for me to think about retiring
and move into that next chapter.
And things weren't exactly
in the position where it was a good time to do that,
in the time that we've been through in the pandemic
and so forth.
So I made the decision this is the right time
now that we've kind of recovered from that
and out of that picture,
and so Jane and I are very much looking forward
to here in the next year, making that transition.
-: Well over the next several months
as we do our Chat with the Chancellor program
Dr. Green, we will be looking back on your time
at the university.
Going to do so a little bit here in a moment as well.
I got the sense as I visited with people
across the state of Nebraska
they were surprised by your news to retire right now.
Did you hear something similar from the folks
you've visited with?
-: Well, yes and no.
I mean, people that know me well and that I worked with
on a regular basis weren't terribly surprised.
They knew that I'd been thinking bout it for some time
yet I did get quite a few notes and calls and letters
and contacts over the holidays saying, wow,
didn't know you were thinking about that.
And I think more because they, you know,
it's not top of mind for people, number one,
and then secondly, you know, I'm in my early sixties
you know, the tradition has always been
people think about 65 still as that magical retirement age.
And so I got a lot of those kind of questions.
What are you, you're too young to retire.
Is this, you know, is something that's going on
that you want to retire differently because of?
And it, no, it is really not.
It's just the right time for us and the right time
to think about using our energy in a different way.
And our family is growing.
Our four children are establishing their own families now.
And we just wanted to have more time to devote
to our faith and our family.
-: Well, take me back.
You grew up in Virginia.
How did you and the University of Nebraska
first cross paths?
-: Well, I came to Nebraska in 1985
for the first time as a full-time resident.
So a number of years ago, number of decades back,
I came here originally to pursue a doctorate
at the university in animal breeding and genetics,
my field and background is in the beef cattle world
as many of your listeners will know
and spent the majority of my career in that field.
And I came here to pursue a PhD in beef cattle genetics
beef cattle breeding and genetics.
And at the time, the animal science program here
the USDA Meat Animal Research Center at Clay Center
tied to the animal science program was really the top place
in the world to pursue a PhD in that field.
Just the nucleus of people that were here at the time.
I came here to study with a man named Gordon Dickerson
who was still by many considered to be
the leading scientist in the field for livestock
for meat animal genetics in particular.
And Gordon had come here to Nebraska
at the end of his career in the early 1970s
to join the new Meat Animal Research Center at Clay Center
that was stood up in the 1960s.
And he was here on the campus in Lincoln,
he was a USDA scientist,
but he was in the animal science department at Lincoln
so that he could work with grad students at the university
with Clay Center.
So I had the opportunity to come here
and be Gordon's last PhD student before he retired.
And actually during the time I was here,
Gordon retired and it was a great privilege.
It really was to be here at this great university
to be able to study for my doctorate
with bleeding people in the field.
And so that's how I first came to Nebraska.
And the rest is history, I guess you'll say.
The university has been interwoven in our lives
really ever since.
-: You came back, I'm trying to think,
did you come back as vice chancellor at the time
that of IANR?
-: I did. So when I finished graduate school
in the late 1980s, I married here my wife Jane,
many Nebraskans know Jane better than they know me, actually
I think she knows pretty much everyone in the state
it feels like most of the time.
And Jane had grown up here, had done both of her degrees
at UNL and in AG Honors and then AG economics
and was an extension then, was 1980s.
Many of your listeners will remember the farm crisis
of the eighties and extension had stood up a program
called Managing for Tomorrow as a financial management
planning consultation with farm families
and Jane was in that program in helping lead
that program at the time.
So when we left Nebraska, we went into academia,
went to Texas Tech and was on faculty there
in Colorado State on faculty there for a number of years.
And then I left academia and went into private industry
and government work for about a decade.
But in 2010, I was recruited to come back to UNL
to lead the AG programs as the vice Chancellor
of the Institute of AG and Natural Resources.
At the time I was an executive advisor
in their animal health division that is now Zoetis,
Zoetis Animal Health, helping to stand up and lead
the development of their genomics business.
They were interested in expanding into genomics at the time.
So I left that position, came back to Lincoln in 2010
to help lead IANR, which was a wonderful job.
As you're reflecting back in time,
I served in that role for about six years
before transitioning into this role.
And the time that I spent at IANR I will tell you
was some of the best professional time in my life
that I thoroughly enjoyed
but came back at that time in 2010.
-: I think, we'll pause the looking back and maybe
spent an entire future chat with the chancellor,
looking at your time at IANR and then another one
as your time as chancellor, lot to unpack there, obviously.
-: Right.
-: Before I let you go, the past couple of weeks
looking back on the lives of a couple of Nebraskan,
the first one, a man who have his name
on the new Feedlot Innovation Center.
What can you share with our listeners there?
-: Well, there are Johns in every place,
and Nebraska has its giants.
And one of those giants was John Klosterman.
John was a lifetime leader in agriculture
and particularly in the feedlot industry in Nebraska,
the Nebraska Feedlot Association in the early days,
the stock growers, the early days.
John was a leader of that.
That's now part of Nebraska cattleman today.
John passed away a couple of weeks ago
after a long and very productive life
from David City, the Klosterman family
well known in in the circles in Nebraska.
And John's celebration of life was just this past Sunday.
Jane and I had the opportunity to be there
with Beth and the family and just, we'll, miss John
we were talking about IANR earlier.
John was actually one of the key instrumental people
in the early 1970s that was behind the leadership
in the state that developed what is today
the Institute of AG and Natural Resources
and the structure and the frame for how that exists
here at the University of Nebraska.
Longtime leader in the AG builders of Nebraska.
So sympathies to the Klosterman family on the loss of John,
just a real giant in Nebraska agriculture.
And then the university this week ago
really suffered a tragic loss.
One of our creative people in university communications,
the lead for all of our videography work
for the University of Nebraska Lincoln,
had been that in that role for 25 years here at UNL.
Many of the things that the public sees about UNL
he created through video work
and through our public service announcements
and our ads and so forth.
His name is David Fitzgibbon.
Dave suffered a tragic accident,
fell from a roof here in a home in Lincoln,
suffered traumatic brain injury
and we lost him a week ago.
So having a celebration of his life this weekend
and you know, just a big loss for the university.
A big hole in the heart of many people
for what Dave did here.
He was just one of those people that did everything
for everybody and he did it without very much,
you know, he was a frugal guy that figured out a way to do
a lot of things without much resource
and we're just going to miss him.
-: I'm sure the two of you shared a lot of memories together
most recently filming that--
-: We did, yeah,
I mean he was the person who filmed the announcement
of our retirement with Jane and I,
was the last thing we did with Fitz,
we referred to him as Fitz,
in December just before the holidays.
And he was just a real professional, real friend,
and a really, just in his heart and soul was a believer
in this great university.
-: Yeah. There's a picture on the celebration of life
that was posted from the university's perspective
at the top of Love Library where you guys shot a film.
-: Yeah.
-: Was that his idea or yours?
-: Well, it was kind of both Dave, you know,
Dave was, I mentioned the word creative.
He was a creative genius in a lot of ways
and early this year when we were getting ready to start
fall semester and kick off the academic year,
In fact, I think I visited with you
early in that time period in the fall,
about how excited we were to be back on campus
for a normal year, for everything to feel back to normal,
a hundred percent.
And so one of the things we talked about was how
to kick off that year for our university community,
for all of our students and our faculty and our staff
in a different perspective.
So we came up with the idea of let's go up
in the cupola of Love Library,
film the welcome back to campus
and that message for our community there.
The cupola had been replaced last summer.
We'd rebuilt that historic structure on the campus.
And so David, Jane and I climbed up the ladders
and the lattice to get up into the cupola
and did videography work up there,
be a memory that we remember with Fitz for a long time.
-: Yeah, lots of memories with Fitz
and some great Nebraskans that we're honoring
and looking back on their lives here.
That is the voice of the Chancellor
of the University of Nebraska, Dr. Ronnie Green,
our guest on this week's Chat with the Chancellor program.
I'm Bryce Doeschot reporting here
on the Rural Radio Network.