-: We want to take a break from talking about our department
to brag a little bit.
We have a student award to have presented,
that really is kind of a big deal.
And to make that presentation,
we have Dr. Mike Stewart
with the International Plant and Nutrition Institute
to make the presentation.
So Mike, I turn it over to you.
-: Thanks, Richard.
And I wanna say I appreciate you all
setting aside a brief moment
in your program for this.
I think it's a worthy cause.
I'm with the International Plant and Nutrition Institute,
IPNI.
I'm one of the regional directors for the institute.
And before I actually present the award,
I wanna say a few things.
IPNI provides scholarships worldwide
to students working in the field of soil fertility
or crop nutrition.
And I was looking last night,
and I believe the count this year was 37
of these scholarships that we presented
in many countries across the world.
Among those 37, eight were awarded in North America,
the U.S. and Canada.
Among those eight, one is here at University of Nebraska.
I don't serve on the committee anymore,
but for many years, I served on the selection committee
for these scholarships.
And I can say, from experience,
that the competition for these is invariably very stiff.
Those that are awarded the scholarships
are among the best graduate students
in those fields of crop nutrition and soil fertility.
And certainly Zachary Stewart is no exception to that.
Last night, I was looking at his application,
and of the probably hundreds I've looked at
through the years,
his is among the very strongest I've ever seen.
He is outstanding.
His accomplishments are outstanding,
not only in academics,
or in scholarship,
but also with his research,
and probably most importantly,
his personal achievement.
And so, it is really a pleasure and an honor for me
to present this IPNI Scholar Award to Zachary.
And the award, you may wonder
what it consists of.
It consists of a nice certificate,
and probably most importantly, a $2000 check.
So, Zachary, please come forward.
(applause)
-: I'd just like to briefly thank Dr. Stewart,
but also I'd like to take the opportunity
to thank my advisor, my major advisor, Dr. Shapiro.
So, I didn't originally come from an academic background
of agronomy.
I studied control of infectious diseases,
mosquitoes and malaria control.
But, Dr. Shapiro was very influential in my decision
to work in this field, and provided a great balance
of oversight, but also autonomy,
and the ability to take my interests and blend them
with plant nutrition.
So, thank you, to both of you.
(applause)
-: I was visiting with Zach as he was planning to come here.
His background is really interesting.
Coming from London and Africa, Creighton University,
to now University of Nebraska.
So, just an example of the quality and the breadth
of the students that we have here.
Well, here before lunch,
we do want to emphasize and promote our students.
And I don't know the exact format,
and I think maybe I know who is talking,
so no particular order here.
So, if I get the names wrong or the order wrong,
correct me.
And I'm not sure whether you have presentations
or you're just coming up to give a talk
without presentations.
But we have several student organizations
that want to share briefly with you here ahead of lunch.
We'll start with Range, Range Science Club.
That's Amanda Hoffner? Hefner.
I cannot read my own writing.
Anyway, Amanda, we'll turn it over to you.
-: Like he said, I'm Amanda Hefner.
I'm a graduate student here
in the School of Natural Resources
and I'm in the Range Management Club.
The Range Management Club is a unique club
where we have a group of undergraduates
and graduate students involved.
We all have interests, obviously in range management,
but we all explore different facets
of landscape management.
We have students that are really interested
in wildlife with management.
We have students that really look at landscape matrices.
And then we also have students that explore
the normal cattle utilization of range management side.
I'll just talk about some of our events that we do.
So, this past fall semester,
we actually did a trip to the Henry Doorly Zoo,
where we actually looked at their rare plant species
research stuff that they're doing there,
and actually got a behind-the-scenes tour
of how the zoo was working to increase
these rare species,
and the kind of management that they want to implement.
And we also looked at lions and tigers and bears.
Oh my!
We also participated at the Nebraska Section Meeting,
which was in North Platt.
We had graduates and undergraduates present
there in North Platt,
and that also led to our international meeting
in Sacramento.
So, I think it's really unique with Range Club
that we have undergraduates and graduate students
who work together.
In fact, a lot of our undergraduates become the technicians
for our graduate students.
And so, when we do present research,
we have a fuller, more complete story,
because we have undergraduates
who do a lot of UCare Projects.
And so, they really complement the graduate students'
research that they present.
And so, it just gives a stronger story,
and I think it really shows that we have a great program
here at UNL in the Range Department.
But anyway, the important news
that you should get out of this presentation
is that in Sacramento
at the International Society of Range Management meeting
last January, our URME teams,
or Undergraduate Range Management Exam team,
placed first out of basically all of North America.
That was really led by Dr. Walt Schact,
so you should all congratulate him,
because he would love it.
Yes, you should give him applause.
(applause)
And that is our team, our URME team right there.
We also have students compete in Plant ID.
And we also had research presentations that were given
and extemp speaking.
But, research that was presented,
some were animal activity due to strategic grazing.
We had students discuss resilience of the sand hills.
And, we had some that even talked about dung beetles
and nutrient cycling.
So, lots of different areas of range management covered.
In the spring, we toured the Bluestem Valley Farms,
and we looked at how they manage their area
and their conservation easements that they implement there.
So, that was really important.
And, I think that a lot of people really enjoyed that tour.
We also went to the Agronomy
and Horticulture Department Banquet,
and had some awards presented.
And so, there's the picture of our group.
And then we also helped with CASNR Week,
and did community night where local kids come
and help, and it was a lot of fun.
I'd really like to thank the Department of Agronomy
and Horticulture and CASNR for all their support.
Our Range Club is kind of small,
but we do a lot of important things
and really go to a lot of opportunities
where we can talk to stakeholders and landowners
and really make an impact in this state.
So, thank you.
(applause)
-: Thanks, Amanda.
Next up is Turf, is that right?
Jeff Linehan?
-: Hi, I'll try to keep this fast,
because like all of you, I'm hungry, too.
First off, I wanted to address Keenan over there.
Keenan might be a little shocked to see me.
I'm supposed to be in his class right now.
So, we both skipped.
That might be a first time ever,
but, yeah, so, sorry.
Yeah, but my name is Jeff Linehan
and I'm a junior in the Turf Grass Management major.
I am also the Vice-President of the Turf Club
here on campus.
Throughout the years, I've really seen it grow.
It's been quite incredible, actually,
how much more we've done since my freshman year,
all the way up to this year.
My freshman year, I came in,
I didn't really know a lot of people.
So, Turf Club was a good way to meet people
who were in my major, including upperclassmen.
I got involved, started to get involved last year
a little bit more.
I became the secretary of the Turf Club,
and this year I'm now the Vice-President.
We have a purpose statement,
and I'll just kind of run through it real quick.
There's about three parts,
and it will give you a little feel of what we're all about.
The first part of our purpose statement
is to serve as an official organization
for students interested in turf grass management,
and to provide them with information
about career direction and credentials needed
to become a part of the industry.
One of the biggest things we do in Turf Club
is we have two or three meetings a month,
and we invite speakers to come in from different companies.
We've had a representative from Toro.
We've had Larry Ryan from Ryan Lawn and Tree.
And I know a lot of you know him,
but Zach Ryker from Bayer.
He abandoned us, but he came back and talked to us
for a little bit, so that was really nice.
Each of these people bring us kind of their career paths
and how they got into the industry,
and what they've done to further their careers.
But, it also gives us an opportunity
to connect with them,
and possibly provide some future internships or employment
within their companies, or companies that they know of.
The second kind of part of our purpose statement
is to promote and advance the profession
and enrich the quality of turf and our environment.
The way we do this is,
one of the other biggest things we do every year is
we attend the Golf Course Superintendents Association
meeting, as well as
the Sports Turf Managers Association meeting.
And these are basically two to three-day conferences.
We go there, sit in on sessions,
meet a lot of people in the industry,
and we also take part in the student challenge there.
It's mostly a quiz bowl and we compete against
usually 75 to 100 teams around the nation
from Big Ten schools, SEC schools.
So, it kind of gives us a mix of what everyone's doing
around the country.
With that, we do a lot of fundraising, as well,
to raise money, because airfare and hotels, not cheap.
We went to a golf tournament a couple weeks ago
and sold mulligans there.
We've done kind of a fundraiser with Noodles and Company
in the past.
We did that for a few years.
And we're always looking for new ways to fundraise,
to promote our trip out there.
Along with enriching the turf industry,
we have a Twitter page now
that's dedicated to the UNL Turf Club.
About before a week ago,
we hadn't tweeted on there since 2014,
but we're resurrecting it from the dead.
So, if you wanna go follow that,
it's @UNLTurf, Turf Club.
I guess the third part of our purpose statement
is to provide an avenue for an exchange of information
and ideas between students and professionals
in the industry.
Like I said, we've done that with speakers.
We do that through Twitter and Instagram.
We also connect at the GCSA and the STMA conferences.
We connect with students from around the country.
There's also professional turf grass industry
members there.
And one thing that's new that we did this year,
actually a couple Sundays ago,
was we had a golf tournament versus K State,
like Anne mentioned earlier.
And I regret to say that we lost,
but it was a hard fought battle out at Hillcrest.
But, we are looking forward to going down to Manhattan
in the spring and beating them down there.
So, that's kind of the three-pronged approach
of our purpose statement.
And I'll just finish off with how do we benefit as students
through this organization?
Personally, and I know through many other people,
it definitely gives us career advice and career help.
There's a lot of different avenues you can go through
with the Turf Club.
It just kind of points you to what you're interested in
and helps you out with that.
You also get connections through the conferences.
My dad always said a lot of the times,
it's not what you know, it's who you know.
And it's just really important, I think,
to build relationships,
and to never burn any bridges,
because you never know when someone could give you
an avenue for a job or an internship.
And another way it does it is
it helps us get together outside of class and stay involved.
Like I said, when I was a freshman, I came in,
and I didn't really know anyone in my major.
So, it really helped me to connect with the seniors
and the juniors, and establish a relationship.
And I still talk to those people today
as they're out in their current jobs.
And I know they've been talking back and forth
about getting us out there for internships.
So, it's really just to connect us all
and help us further the program here at UNL.
So, that's basically all I have for the Turf Club.
Yeah, follow us on Twitter, if you want.
Thank you.
(applause)
-: Thank you, Jeff.
Next up is our Agronomy and Horticulture
Graduate Student Association, Leah Ruff.
-: Good morning, or maybe it's afternoon now,
I don't know.
My name is Leah Ruff, and I'm the President
of the Agronomy and Horticulture
Graduate Student Association.
It's a long name, so we usually just say AHGSA.
To give you a scope of the students in our club,
a lot of them are international,
so we have students from Eucador, Brazil,
India, China, Nigeria, Colombia.
I even cross the river from Iowa.
We have monthly business meetings,
and at those meetings we try to give opportunities
for the students to give research presentations
or have career development speakers come in.
This last meeting, we had a speaker from career services
talk about transferable skills
after you leave graduate school
and are in the industry or academia.
with your job.
And we enjoy that with food and lots of networking.
And we also, our club tries to strive to help new students
in their transition into graduate school.
So, we now newly offer a mentor program.
Each new student is paired with a mentor
from our organization that has volunteered.
We also have an orientation in the fall and spring
in partnership with the department
to welcome students and give helpful resources,
and also a tour of Keim and Plant Science Hall.
We also do a lot of fun and social
and fundraising activities.
A lot of times they're a theme to the month or the season.
So to give some examples, we have a fall barbecue.
We also do a winter white elephant gift exchange,
which is fun to teach the international students,
because they might not know
what that gift exchange is all about.
We also do pumpkin painting and ice skating.
We put on things like a chili cook-off competition
in our club meetings.
And, as you saw, a department banquet.
We help to organize that.
And just to tell you, we were pretty busy this summer
with lots of tours of industry.
We went to York, Nebraska for multiple trips
to visit DuPont Pioneers Research Station,
and also DelAgra Sciences and Mycogen's plant
out there in York, Nebraska.
We also toured a apple orchard in Ceresco,
Martin's Orchard.
And a pecan co-op in Valparaiso.
So, we have some neat opportunities
for students to branch out of Lincoln
and learn about things that are available in Nebraska
and develop those career skills and meeting people.
And I just wanted to wrap up with,
we have something new this year
where Dr. Oscar Rodriguez,
I don't know if he's here, but thank you.
He offers us the opportunity to pick sweet corn
and we then pick it and bring it to the department
and give it out, and we take donations.
And we've had a lot of fun picking it
and giving it out,
and we really appreciate all of the funds
so we can do trips like go to York, Nebraska
and learn about agriculture opportunities.
I think that's all I have.
(applause)
-: Thank you, Leah.
Next up is the Agronomy Club.
Amanda Vodvarka is the president of that.
Amanda, would you like to,
it may be a team effort,
so, I'll turn it over to you.
-: Hi everyone, my name is Amanda Vodvarka,
and he already said, I'm the President
of the Agronomy Club.
-: And I'm Brad Meusch.
I'm the treasurer of the Agronomy Club.
-: So, the mission of our Agronomy Club,
this year in particular,
is to grow our members as professionals in the industry.
So, a couple of ways of how we are doing that this year
is that, as Anne already mentioned,
we are taking our students out on tours
to learn more about the industry.
We are also,
we prepare them for career fairs
by having speakers come in
and kind of inform our students
about what is best to have on your resume,
what's a proper attire to wear to a career fair
and for an interview,
and what kind of questions to expect in an interview.
We also offer our members speakers that also come in
and talk about current issues
that are impacting them directly
when it comes to their industry.
We usually go to the regional SASIS conference.
So, this year that is in Texas.
And that is a great opportunity for our students
to learn about, not only agriculture in Nebraska,
but also elsewhere in the United States,
and to get to know other students, too.
Crops judging is another great opportunity that we offer.
It allows our members to learn,
not only about what they learn in the classroom,
but to also apply that to real-life situations, too.
And lastly, there is our Emeriti banquet,
which is kind of a new thing,
a new annual incorporation that we were trying.
So, you all should have hopefully gotten invitations
for that.
-: So, to kind of go off what she was talking about
and what Dr. Ferguson said about we kind of have
a team effort here.
So, as officers this year, we kind of talked a little bit,
and one thing we wanted to do was really build the club.
And actually, since I started the Agronomy Club,
we had probably, I don't know, 15 to 18 active members.
And then, as of last year, we had 30.
Well, this year we have 71.
So, I mean, (applause)
thank you.
So, we've kind of really fulfilled
what we wanted to do as officers this year
and really get people involved in the club,
and not just take it as,
"Well, I'm just getting my degree here,
"let's get involved and meet other students."
And also to build themselves as professionals
in where they're going to go,
whether in industry or research.
So, I honestly think that we have done a great job this year
and still looking for next semester
to add more people to the members.
-: So, as a lot of people already touched on,
you know, the Agronomy Club for me and Brad,
it's been one of the most beneficial opportunities
that we could have ever had.
So, that's why we've worked so hard this year
to try and improve our club,
which has greatly shown.
Because of that, just touching a little bit on it,
we've only touched on a few highlights of our club.
So, if you have any further questions,
we're gonna be sticking around for a little bit afterwards.
But, we really would like to thank all of you
for giving us opportunity to come in
and talk to you about our club.
(applause)
-: Very good, thanks.
Two more.
Pi Alpha Xi, Emily Stein.
Emily, turn it over to you.
Do you have a presentation?
-: Good afternoon, my name is Emily Stein.
I'm a senior landscape management major.
I'm also the President of Pi Alpha Xi.
For those of you who don't know,
Pi Alpha Xi is an honor society,
honors horticulturist society.
And our main mission is to unify students,
educators, and professional horticulturists,
and to promote high scholarship,
fellowship, professional leadership,
and enrichment of human life through plants.
So, we do a number of different activities
throughout the year.
We kind of stay low key.
We know a lot of our members are involved
in other organizations.
So, just to give you a brief history
over what Pi Alpha Xi is,
we are a National Honor Society for Horticulture,
founded in 1923 at Cornell University.
And there are over 40 chapters across the country.
At UNL we were established in 1982.
Our advisors are currently Dr. Ellen Paparozzi
and Dave Wham.
The big thing we do every year, so far,
is our winter wreath making class.
We invite in members of the community to come in
and have fun, enjoy cider,
and make beautiful live wreaths around Christmastime.
All of the funds that we acquire from this event
go to our scholarship that we award at the end of the year.
And this year, putting the plug in,
it's December 5, 2015, obviously,
because that's this year.
So, if you're interested, feel free to contact Dr. Paparozzi
and we can get you the form for that.
The other award that we present at the end of the year
is the President's Citation.
This is an award given to an individual
in the horticultural industry
that we feel has had a large impact.
The really cool thing about this award
is that it is nominated by the students
and chosen by the students.
We partner with the horticulture club
to choose the recipient.
Last year was Todd Foller,
and the year before that was Dr. Reed.
And that concludes our presentation,
so thank you and have a good rest of your day.
(applause)
-: Thanks, Emily.
And last before lunch is Emily,
or Kara Sousek is with the Horticulture Club.
Kara?
-: Hello, I'm Kara Sousek,
President of the Horticulture Club this year.
Basically what Horticulture Club does
is we have members that come in to work
semester-wide.
We put on two sales a year.
In the fall semester, we put on a poinsettia sale.
That's coming up about the second week of December.
And then in the spring, we do a spring bedding plant sale
that we host in our teaching greenhouse.
And we sell spring bedding plants and vegetables.
The proceeds that we earn from those sales
we use for two things.
We use for outreach and for traveling.
We go on trips every year as a club.
In the past, we've gone to Chicago,
to Florida, Denver,
and this year we went to Minnesota.
We toured the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.
In the past, we went to Florida.
And on these trips, we tour different horticultural
industries and do a little bit of networking.
And actually, on the Florida trip,
we toured Disney Epcot.
They had kind of a greenhouse production there,
as one of their attractions.
One of our past Hort Club presidents
actually learned about internship through them
and applied and was accepted
for this very prestigious internship
down at Disney Epcot.
So, we do a little bit of networking on these trips.
And also, the proceeds from these sales,
we use for outreach.
And we've done different forms of outreach in the past.
Some of the things we're looking at doing this year
are doing some youth outreach,
maybe through partnering with a community garden
in Lincoln, maybe offering a workshop,
and just providing educational services
to youth in Lincoln.
And we are also investigating
looking into partnering with maybe a county 4H program,
to donate some of the vegetables that we raise
for our spring sale,
donate that to
a 4H county program
and really hope to
inspire some curiosity
and a passion for horticulture in today's youth.
So, that's kind of a rundown of Horticulture Club.
If you're interested in supporting us,
you can like us on Facebook.
We have a very active Facebook page.
We convey a lot of our information about our sales
on our Facebook page.
So, if you need a poinsettia for this Christmas,
like us on Facebook and come find us.
Thank you.
(applause)