-: Well, thank you very much, Richard
and I appreciate the opportunity to be here today
and to get a chance to visit with all of you
as stakeholders of the department.
As faculty members, as staff members
of what you may not know
is the single largest academic department
at the University of Nebraska.
I don't know if all of our stakeholders recognize that,
but Agronomy and Horticulture holds that distinction
across the entire University of Nebraska system
as the largest department that we have.
I think that speaks a little bit to the University's
commitment, to the general field of Agriculture
and long standing commitment to our field.
And I just have been asked by Roch
to kind of give you a little bit of
a fly at the big picture level of what's happening
at the University, what's happening at the Institute.
Why we consider this perhaps to be our most
exciting time in our history,
and I'll try to tell you why we feel that way,
why we feel that way currently,
why we feel that way out into the future years
that are out ahead of us.
Many of you have heard me say that the challenges
that we have in agriculture generally,
facing us for the next several decades are huge.
There are huge opportunities,
there are huge challenges to be met
that are ahead of us in agriculture
and the food system in general.
We are positioned here at Nebraska, we believe
better than anywhere else in the country,
in the world, ahead of us to be able to
address those challenges.
And that's an exciting thing for us.
I'm gonna tell you why I think that's the case.
Why I believe that we're in that kind of position,
and we're positioned well to be able to lead,
as your title says today, toward growing a
healthy future out ahead of us.
I've had the fortune of bein' here for five years.
I just finished my fifth year this summer
in the role as the Vice Chancellor of the Institute.
And if I look back on,
and I think about what the Institute looked like
five years ago,
when I had the privilege of coming back
to the University, I think it looks a lot different today.
And I'm very proud of that.
I'm very proud of where we've been able to come
and where we've been able to position ourself
for in the future.
And here's what I mean by that.
When I came five years ago,
we had roughly 30% fewer faculty than we have today.
By the end of this academic year,
that we're in the front third of,
we will have 27%, to be exact, more tenure track
faculty in Agriculture and Natural Resources
than we had in 2012.
That is an opportunity that no other university
that we know of in the world has.
That has made that kind of investment,
that has made that kind of doubling down I often say,
on food and agriculture,
that we know needs to be done to meet the needs
ahead of us, and that we know is
focused on the problems that we think
are the biggest problems.
Now, that's a mouthful.
Doubling down on problems that we think
are important,
putting more resources in place through people,
through expertise,
through bringing the best expertise we can
to our campus in order to address those challenges.
And that's what we've largely been about
these last few years.
That's been driven by, not only the need for
increased research capacity
and increased extension capacity.
It's also been driven by huge increase
in our student enrollment.
If you look at what has happened
in the College of Ag Sciences
and Natural Resources, our academic program
in the Institute, you go back
11 years, we have had 11 years
of consecutive year on year growth
in our student population.
Largely in the undergraduate student population.
Today, this year, in this academic year in 2015
we're now in our fourth year of
record enrollment
in the history of the University,
since 1869
for Ag and Natural Resources students.
Our graduate enrollment, which this department
plays a big role in for Ag,
is ticking up ever so slightly.
The last couple of years we've seen 2-3% growth
in our graduate student enrollment,
and what I challenged our faculty with earlier
this semester is that that number needs to now
become our focus.
That we need to increase our graduate student enrollment
in our Masters and PhD students,
to meet these needs ahead of us,
to deliver on not only training the
next generation of scientists
and professionals that are out there
to solve these problems, but also to be solving them.
To be contributing to that research base
that will do that.
We've challenged ourselves to increase
our graduate enrollment from about 650 graduate students
currently, in Ag and Natural Resources,
to over 850 (coughing)
excuse me, 850 in the next three years.
That should be pretty easy for us to do,
given that we have 27% more tenure track faculty.
If you do the math, you should think each one of those
faculty members is going to attract new graduate students
and attract more expertise for our graduate programs.
Enrollment growth, I'll just bring that out to you,
is not only exciting because we have more students,
but that enrollment growth is actually driving
our ability to grow our faculty.
That's what's been driving our ability to hire
so many more new faculty, and bring them
to our programs.
Now, this particular department,
in Agronomy and Horticulture, I think
has benefited from that growth, arguably as much
or more than any unit in the Institute.
Where the new faculty that we've been able
to bring onto board,
the new opportunities those faculty
are going to bring us,
particularly around production agriculture work,
particularly around stress biology work,
and those two zones that are particularly important
for Agronomy and Horticulture
will be the future of this department as well,
and I think you can understand that.
You're gonna get to hear about that today.
You're gonna get to hear about how that
is developing for the department, in areas that
you probably didn't know the department was working in.
Many of you probly didn't know that we're working in drones.
And drone technology and UAV technology.
You're going to evidently get to experience that
up close and personal I hear, Richard.
I don't know whether Richard's gonna be on those
controls or not, but you might want to watch out,
'cause I understand you might have somethin' flyin'
at you a little bit later.
Our research portfolio is broadening,
I guess is my point to you.
I also would tell you
that this department holds more of the endowed chairs,
endowed professorships,
than any other department in our institute.
And that's a reflection
of the quality of the faculty.
A reflection of the quality of the work that they're doing.
It's a reflection of their expertise and their standing
on the world stage.
And we're proud of that.
We're very proud of that,
to house one of the country's best
Agronomy and Hort programs in the US.
And we want to grow that, we want to
continue to grow that.
Now I'm going to talk, just for a minute,
in wrapping up and then I want to give you a chance
to ask me any questions that you might have
about the University.
To talk about Innovation Campus.
Many of you have watched that progress
to the stage where it is today.
You probably heard or saw in the newspapers
in recent several weeks where we opened
the first phase of Innovation Campus,
Phase One's grand opening was in early October,
where we opened that to the public
for the first time, to see the new facilities
that we now have in place.
Those new facilities are also a huge investment
in our future.
And I'm gonna try to describe the impact that's
going to have on the Institute for you,
because it's multi-fold in ways that we don't
necessarily put two and two together for,
and I'm gonna try to give you that whole picture,
here in a succinct way.
When we opened that food innovation center,
which if you haven't seen it, you need to go see it.
It's the top of its kind in the world,
there's no doubt about that.
Where we now house our Food Science and Technology
department in total.
They moved there in July.
Some 200 employees for the Institute
now reside in that center.
Collectively with Industry support,
collectively around Con-Agra, collectively
around a consortium of other food companies
and advanced food sanitation,
and others that we'll bring to that space over time.
And couple that with the Greenhouse Innovation Center
that's across the street,
that several of the faculty members in this department
have been working closely with to bring online,
and to "burn in," as Dr. Clemente might refer to it.
The new phenotyping system that's there
that we're trying to get online and get available for use
in our research programs.
That capacity that we now have there
has opened up more capacity that we didn't have
on campus.
If you think about that growth that I was
just tellin' you about, student growth,
and faculty growth, and you think about
our physical campus,
the physical campus here in Lincoln,
the physical campuses we have across the state,
and our research and extension centers,
you don't just put 75 more faculty members
down on top of an infrastructure
that was largely full already
without having to figure out how to manage that.
Where is that new infrastructure gonna come from.
Does that make sense to everybody?
We knew that.
We also knew that the food sector was the place
we had the biggest opportunity
on Innovation Campus.
We also knew that for these kinds of
research campuses, public-private
partnership campuses, they don't succeed
unless there is an anchor.
Unless there is a major focal anchor point
for those campusus.
That's been true at the North Carolina Centennial Campus,
the best known research park in the country,
where they moved their textiles program there
from North Carolina State.
Early in that process, that became the anchor
for that campus, that now is one of the most
successful in the world.
Now it houses their College of Engineering,
their whole College of Engineering
on that campus from NC State.
We knew that anchor would be important.
But we also knew, when we moved that
Food Science department, that was going to
create capacity for us on campus.
In the backside.
We now have a Food Industry building
that we've been able to repopulate,
that we've been able to take, as many of you know,
the ARS unit that was in Keim Hall
now is part of that building, has been moved
into the Food Industry building in their own space.
It's created opportunities for us
to build a new residence hall on the campus
from the demolition of the old biochemistry building
across the street from Keim Hall,
and it's created the opportunity for us.
I was with State Senators yesterday
to start scoping a new classroom center
for East Campus in what were the pilot plants
for the Food Industry building,
where the dairy store is.
Innovation Campus has this big forward thinking
about public-private partnerships.
That's its main purpose, will draw those public-private
partnerships around food, fuel and water.
But it also has this other backside
that's helping us tremendously and the Institute
to be able to fuel the growth that we have
from an infrastructure perspective.
And I'm quite excited about that.
I think that's going to transform
the East Campus in many ways beyond
what we could have ever envisioned
it would transform the campus.
Where now all of a sudden
what was a sleepy quad with the library
and the old biochem building,
and the Food Industry building and the union
will become, two years from now, what I predict
to be a real hub of activity.
Filled with students, filled with opportunity
for that continued growth that we'll have,
that we have new capacity for as well.
I'm gonna just close by congratulating
the department in another way.
You've been through, I think someone
has said it to me out in the hallway,
when they were walkin' in that they had helped
Tom Hoegemeyer and he had helped develop
several department heads.
Tom was that the statement that was said,
you've been through several department heads.
You're really fortunate to have a really good one
right now.
Dr. Gaussoin, it took me a long time
to get Dr. Gaussoin's name correct.
But, Roch, as the department head,
has done great things with Agronomy and Horticulture.
And we're very proud of what he has done.
(applause)
And to tell you how good he is,
he gets me riled up occasionally,
every so often.
But, you're very fortunate to have a department head
that's visionary, that wants to help grow the department,
wants to help lead the department to new levels,
and Roch we appreciate your service
and the work that you're doing.
And Richard, who you heard from earlier,
I know Roch couldn't do it in a department of this size,
and this scope without a good right hand person
at his side, and Richard we really appreciate
you serving in that role as well.
I'm going to stop there, I hope you have a great day
learning more about what's current in the department,
both those of you who are in the department
as well as stakeholders and alums of the program.
But, if you have questions you would like to ask,
it's a rare occasion, as Chuck Hibbert and others know
right now to get me in one spot for
15 or 20 minutes.
If you have questions that you'd like to ask about
the University in general,
about the department in general or the Institute,
I'd be happy to address any questions that you might have.
Yes, ma'am.
Voiceover: My husband and I travel nationwide.
And many times when we mention this University,
they say, "Well, they don't have that many programs."
And I know different.
But, how are you advertising and promoting
these various new programs and stuff
to bring in the grad students,
because I'm not seeing it advertised out there.
-: The question relates to PR and marketing
or how we're relaying what we're trying to do
to the general public and even more
specifically, perhaps on
graduate student recruitment
and bringing students to the University.
I'm gonna answer that generally first,
and then I'll drill down to the grad student piece.
Generally, I will tell you that in
enrollment, so in recruiting students,
in marketing the University for increased enrollment,
we're generally ticking up a little bit.
The University campus right now
is just over 25,000 students,
and one of its highest enrollments.
Our plan is to go to another 5,000 students,
which I believe we will do in the next five years.
That marketing to undergraduate students
is much easier than it is to graduate students.
And in the undergraduate side,
while we have improved, I believe UNL has really
improved over the last several years
in undergraduate student recruitment,
especially outside the state of Nebraska,
in the Big 10 footprint.
But also inside the state to some degree.
On the graduate student side we have a lot of work to do.
Because currently, the way I think most of our
programs operate, and I'll use the Institute,
I'll kind of ring fence INR here.
That's done at the department level,
and it's often done at the individual professor
level.
We're still operating very much in that
"go find myself" mode,
"go find my replacement" mode,
go find the students that George Graef needs
in soybean breeding and soybean breeding mode
and George recruits to that,
I'll use him as an example,
or Steve Baenziger or Tom Clemente
or name off an individual faculty member.
What we haven't done real effectively yet
is institutionally market our graduate programs.
And your point's well taken.
We've actually talked about this quite a bit.
Brian Larkins is over there shakin' his head
about how we changed that process.
I still, as a faculty member, was really comfortable
recruiting animal geneticists, because I knew
that territory, right?
And I used my network of animal geneticists
around the world to find those
students that might be coming through
their programs, or coming out of undergraduate
or Masters programs.
We've gotta move beyond that
in order to increase another couple hundred students.
Voiceover: Thank you.
-: Other questions.
Too early in the morning, not enough coffee yet?
(chuckling) (crowd laughing)
Haven't got Roch up here cheerin' you on yet.
One other thing I'm going to mention before I sit down,
I see Martha Mamo's sitting over in
the far right.
I mentioned expertise of faculty
and quality of faculty.
And Martha, I just was reminded about
the University-wide teaching award
that Martha was the recipient of this past year.
That's the kind of faculty you have in this department.
That's the kind of folks who are representing these fields.
So appreciate them, I know you do.
Learn from them.
We feel very good about where the department is
and by God, cheer hard for Mich,
for us against Michigan State tomorrow.
(crowd reacting)
I almost screwed up, Roch.
Cheer hard for us against Michigan State tomorrow.
Our students deserve your praise,
your support.
Our student athletes deserve your praise and support
and I hope you will continue to cheer them on,
as they work for the University of Nebraska.
Thank you very much.
(applause)