Catch Up With Chuck | Episode 5

Rural Futures Institute Author

11/29/2017 Added

17 Plays

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In this recorded episode of Catch Up With Chuck, Engler Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Program Director Tom Field joins Chuck to discuss entrepreneurship and leadership opportunities in rural communities.

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[00:00:03.503]Welcome back to Catch Up with Chuck.
[00:00:05.355]This is a periodic broadcast of
[00:00:07.513]the Rural Futures Institute at the University of Nebraska.
[00:00:12.249]I'm Chuck Schroeder, I'm Executive Director here
[00:00:14.598]and I'm joined today by one of my dearest colleagues,
[00:00:18.865]Dr. Tom Field and we're gonna be talking about
[00:00:21.254]preparing students to be innovators,
[00:00:24.198]to be builders in a world of change.
[00:00:27.078]Tom is a recognized scholar.
[00:00:30.043]He's a popular teacher, a popular lecturer
[00:00:33.773]in the field of animal science,
[00:00:35.547]but he's also an entrepreneur that's involved
[00:00:37.873]in not only the ranching business,
[00:00:39.527]but other ventures in and around
[00:00:41.407]the livestock industry and for the last five years?
[00:00:44.854]Six.
[00:00:45.985]Six years Yeah.
[00:00:47.457]has been director of the Angler Agribusiness
[00:00:50.315]Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Nebraska,
[00:00:52.705]which was a pretty new venture.
[00:00:54.753]And Tom is really in the business of
[00:00:57.185]preparing motivated students.
[00:00:59.957]They're a pretty special population of students,
[00:01:02.475]I think that's fair to say, to be successful
[00:01:04.630]in a world that is quite different from that of
[00:01:07.233]their parents and even the world of their (laughs) elders.
[00:01:12.737]Nothing prepared us for this.
[00:01:14.422](laughter) Absolutely.
[00:01:16.211]So, Tom, talk just a little bit about your background.
[00:01:18.475]Give folks a framework of where you come from
[00:01:20.566]as you roll into this very unique opportunity.
[00:01:24.780]Well, I was raised in a ranching family
[00:01:27.505]in Western Colorado surrounded by
[00:01:29.894]entrepreneurial grandparents and parents.
[00:01:35.524]Loved the cattle and horse world as a young guy,
[00:01:40.242]went off to college at Colorado State,
[00:01:42.435]managed to crowd four years of education
[00:01:45.596]into five years of experience while I was there.
[00:01:48.077](laughter)
[00:01:48.910]I was one of the first five year to graduate types.
[00:01:51.164]I've tried to reverse that trend since,
[00:01:53.084]but went back to work for my dad after I got out of college,
[00:01:57.987]spent five years, brought a couple of new ventures
[00:02:01.879]to the ranch, had to learn a lot about
[00:02:04.930]breaking into new organizations, change of organizations,
[00:02:08.556]then went to work for a graduate program.
[00:02:12.290]I needed to develop some competence
[00:02:15.913]and some technical skills.
[00:02:17.848]Worked with Bob Taylor and Jim Brinks and Daryl Tatum
[00:02:21.570]and all those really good people at Colorado State.
[00:02:24.125]Ended up liking it enough that I stayed and did a PhD.
[00:02:28.588]They had a jam, John Edwards left for Texas A & M,
[00:02:32.236]they needed somebody to teach AN 100 and as I recall,
[00:02:34.881]Dave James, the department head came down and he said,
[00:02:36.866]"Field, we're in a jam, you're gonna have to do."
[00:02:39.490](laughter)
[00:02:41.303]And that's how I got my start on a faculty
[00:02:43.261]was I was sort of the stop gap guy
[00:02:46.142]and for a term and managed to survive that and got hired,
[00:02:51.948]spent 19 years at Colorado State working a systems group.
[00:02:55.362]A great experience.
[00:02:57.065]Then, got frankly tired of university life
[00:03:01.826]and the sort of craziness of the politics
[00:03:04.599]and left and joined an equally crazy world,
[00:03:09.076]the association. That was strategic move.
[00:03:12.236]Right, from the frying pan into the fire at NCBA,
[00:03:16.855]which you would know a lot about, given your background.
[00:03:19.455]National Cattleman's Beef Association.
[00:03:21.163]And worked with producer education,
[00:03:24.364]did a lot of really good work there
[00:03:27.094]with a great team, especially RDC team
[00:03:29.015]and then, this opportunity came along.
[00:03:32.044]I came here because this was an opportunity
[00:03:35.562]to start something and to do something special
[00:03:38.060]and to do it outside the realm of
[00:03:39.613]normal behavior at the university.
[00:03:41.772]Well, Tom, you've been a tremendous difference maker
[00:03:45.250]here at the University of Nebraska
[00:03:47.443]and you send ripples, I think it's fair to say,
[00:03:50.306]throughout the Land Grant community.
[00:03:52.695]I mean, it's fine having this conversation
[00:03:54.975]and all the people you've mentioned thus far
[00:03:57.005]have been mutual friends of ours
[00:03:58.988]through the course of our different careers,
[00:04:01.461]but when I look at the Angler Program
[00:04:03.404]at the University of Nebraska,
[00:04:05.341]it is, in my view, the most important embodiment
[00:04:10.547]within this institution of the new education,
[00:04:13.708]which is being discussed around
[00:04:15.906]higher education circles quite broadly.
[00:04:18.717]And that is an education that creates
[00:04:21.047]an experience for students in real world problem solving,
[00:04:26.338]including some failures, and trying to prepare them
[00:04:30.253]to contribute not only in starting businesses
[00:04:33.868]and contributing to the economy, but quite honestly,
[00:04:36.683]being people who can strengthen communities,
[00:04:39.543]who can strengthen the country,
[00:04:41.954]and quite honestly be citizens of the world
[00:04:44.705]that can really make a difference.
[00:04:46.901]So, it's not off the rack education
[00:04:48.695]at the traditional Land Grant institution,
[00:04:51.980]so I want you to talk a little bit about
[00:04:54.135]your underlying philosophy for the Angler Program
[00:04:57.653]and the experience that you and your
[00:05:00.253]colleagues are trying to create.
[00:05:02.306]The underlying premise of this program
[00:05:04.353]is that I'd gotten really frustrated with the fact
[00:05:07.553]that the university was, by and large,
[00:05:09.239]doing a pretty good job of creating employees
[00:05:11.906]and we were producing almost no employers.
[00:05:14.786]We had cookie-cuttered the game.
[00:05:18.434]We were producing widgets for industrial agriculture
[00:05:22.910]and doing a good job of it, but it wasn't very exciting
[00:05:26.434]and it certainly didn't appear to me
[00:05:29.612]like it was gonna work in the future.
[00:05:31.404]I'm a big fan of Lewis and Clark
[00:05:34.583]and you know, they had in that great adventure
[00:05:37.996]had to innovate and adapt all the time
[00:05:41.410]and I think that was the thing
[00:05:43.177]that really underlies our program
[00:05:45.228]is that we believe that the world that lies in front of us
[00:05:48.471]is nothing like the world that's in our past.
[00:05:51.692]We spend any time in the rear view mirror
[00:05:54.914]and it's a mistake today, because the future's unfolding
[00:05:58.903]at an unbelievable speed and in ways
[00:06:02.719]that none of us can describe.
[00:06:04.812]It's disrupting societal expectations, communities,
[00:06:08.929]people, careers, professions, and entire sectors
[00:06:13.132]of the economy are literally disappearing
[00:06:15.261]because of these transformative changes.
[00:06:18.098]And we were lucky that this guy named Paul Angler
[00:06:20.876]was willing and had the capacity
[00:06:23.330]to make a big bet that we could in fact,
[00:06:26.207]produce employers and job creators and world changers
[00:06:29.452]and that we had a moral obligation to do so,
[00:06:33.548]that there was a calling to produce doers, not talkers,
[00:06:37.794]to create citizens who were engaged in their communities,
[00:06:41.761]people who actually understood that leadership
[00:06:44.962]was based on competency, not charisma,
[00:06:47.180]and that you could in fact, with not a lot of backing,
[00:06:52.602]create new ideas and solve problems
[00:06:55.602]from the very early stages of your academic career.
[00:06:59.420]And so, we came here to test that model
[00:07:04.218]and to prove that we could produce,
[00:07:07.122]if not in serial order, but in sort of a offering
[00:07:17.148]of unique product brands, which we view
[00:07:20.263]all of the people in our program as these unique brands,
[00:07:23.420]that we could in fact offer the world something
[00:07:25.829]rather different than what they were getting.
[00:07:27.962]Okay, Tom, you just said something awfully important,
[00:07:30.076]these unique brands, one of the things that I love
[00:07:34.471]watching and occasionally participating in
[00:07:37.051]is we engage with your students from the Angler Program.
[00:07:40.847]This is not a homogenous body of students
[00:07:45.798]and you don't treat 'em like number two corn.
[00:07:49.126]I watch on a daily basis that you look at these
[00:07:53.564]young men and women who come from a variety of backgrounds,
[00:07:57.039]many of them from rural communities,
[00:07:59.282]but certainly not exclusively by any means,
[00:08:01.650]they have different talents, they have different visions
[00:08:05.724]for their future and for the way the world should be,
[00:08:09.607]and rather than you trying to put them in this box
[00:08:14.364]and deliver them, I see you reaching in
[00:08:16.604]and pulling them out of boxes and saying,
[00:08:18.738]"Okay, there's something very unique and special here,
[00:08:21.788]we wanna build the most out of that."
[00:08:24.711]Talk a little bit about the amount of time and energy
[00:08:28.572]you invest in that and why.
[00:08:30.702]Well, first and foremost, every organization's success
[00:08:34.119]is built on the power of its people.
[00:08:35.890]It doesn't matter what the organization is
[00:08:37.938]and we have a deep respect in regard for the talent,
[00:08:42.567]the strengths, the skills, and the capacity
[00:08:45.724]of the young people that come to our program.
[00:08:47.602]We recognize, I think, early on, that
[00:08:50.290]building companies was second.
[00:08:52.871]First that had to happen was we had to build people.
[00:08:56.919]We're bought into lots of things,
[00:08:59.548]the writings of Steven Covey and Tom Peters
[00:09:02.855]and Bob Waterman and Nancy Austin,
[00:09:06.204]and the list goes on and on and on and on and on
[00:09:09.295]of folks who said, "Look, if you treat people
[00:09:11.708]like cogs on the wheel, they're eventually
[00:09:15.207]gonna fall off the wheel, but if you look for talent
[00:09:18.041]and you look for the unique capacity
[00:09:20.291]of young people to do what they wanna do, you can create
[00:09:23.207]these really, extraordinarily unique experiences
[00:09:28.046]and you can build better teams."
[00:09:29.734]And so, the two underlying things that I think we've
[00:09:33.272]tried to bring to the table is that
[00:09:35.047]every young person we encounter we believe
[00:09:36.924]is capable of starting things and running
[00:09:39.916]entrepreneurial behavior in whatever the undertake,
[00:09:43.151]whether it's starting a company, working inside
[00:09:45.671]of an existing organization, and then the second thing is
[00:09:49.171]is that, each person is capable,
[00:09:52.732]early on, of doing really good work.
[00:09:55.655]Most university parameters are built
[00:09:59.260]on this crazy hierarchy, take this, then this, then this,
[00:10:02.076]and then finally, about your senior year
[00:10:03.676]that you get this capstone course
[00:10:05.423]where you're supposed to get to do something fun
[00:10:07.154]and we were like, "Well, that's ridiculous.
[00:10:09.756]Let's flip the model, let's do something really interesting
[00:10:12.530]really early, like starting a company in 60 days
[00:10:14.747]when you're 18 years old, finding customers,
[00:10:17.458]getting them to pay you, and they'll see what happens."
[00:10:21.276]Right, so that's our gig and it's not that we
[00:10:25.031]don't respect traditional education.
[00:10:27.847]We just don't believe it's very valid for the future.
[00:10:31.409]Tom, I have to say that those of us
[00:10:34.652]at the Rural Futures Institute really are
[00:10:36.423]proud of our daily association with the Angler Program,
[00:10:38.983]with you and your colleagues and especially,
[00:10:41.479]with your students, 'cause so many of your students
[00:10:43.757]do come from rural communities and they talk to you,
[00:10:48.136]they talk to us about their interest
[00:10:50.298]in going back to those communities
[00:10:52.111]and building a business, raising their families, being
[00:10:55.588]involved in a community where they can make a difference.
[00:10:59.023]So, we think that you really are preparing those leaders
[00:11:03.503]that can go back and bring that vitality to rural Nebraska
[00:11:09.199]and rural America that is so critically needed.
[00:11:12.143]So, anything you'd like to add about
[00:11:13.850]the program and what you're doing?
[00:11:15.492]Well, the connection to rural Nebraska
[00:11:18.179]and rural regions of the country and the world
[00:11:21.380]is so critical for us.
[00:11:22.895]There's something truly magical about the power of
[00:11:27.546]young people who believe that where they came from matters.
[00:11:31.818]We work with Rwandan students who believe deeply
[00:11:35.290]in the opportunity to go home and change a nation.
[00:11:38.998]We believe that our graduates, their greatest potential
[00:11:44.826]will be once they graduate, that's why we're building
[00:11:47.437]a culture and a community that's designed
[00:11:50.159]for lifetime experience and our hope is,
[00:11:52.975]is that these energized, smart, talented
[00:11:56.708]young men and women will go back into their communities,
[00:12:00.378]be the kinds of citizens that Jefferson imagined,
[00:12:03.828]that the founders thought we were capable of,
[00:12:07.439]if we would just you know, in our language,
[00:12:10.468]cowboy up and get it done.
[00:12:12.495]And that's what we try to do and when you honor
[00:12:15.418]where people come from, you honor their culture,
[00:12:17.935]you honor them as individuals, you can build
[00:12:20.687]a pretty extraordinary organization.
[00:12:22.863]Well, when you think about the individual brands
[00:12:25.423]that your kids develop, and they actually do develop
[00:12:28.154]their own brands, as we see on the walls around here,
[00:12:30.010]it's so interesting to me to see the culture
[00:12:33.551]that's created as they care so much about each other
[00:12:37.284]and try to contribute to one another's success.
[00:12:40.399]So, I think you're doing something awfully important
[00:12:43.663]and we're proud to be associated with you.
[00:12:45.455]Well, appreciate that and the last thing
[00:12:47.375]I'd say about what we do and I think
[00:12:49.039]what your program has done is what we've introduced
[00:12:51.276]to the Land Grant University is a word
[00:12:53.754]that doesn't get used very often,
[00:12:55.438]but at the heart of both our work is this concept of love
[00:12:58.700]and I think that's what drives us.
[00:13:01.263]I'm with ya.
[00:13:03.140]So, listen, stay in touch with the Rural Futures Institute
[00:13:06.447]through Facebook and Twitter as well as our website
[00:13:09.348]and know that we'll be back soon
[00:13:11.435]with another addition of Catch Up with Chuck
[00:13:13.914]as we talk to interesting people,
[00:13:16.794]we look at interesting places, communities,
[00:13:19.438]entrepreneurs, builders, who are making rural communities
[00:13:23.023]the place to build a worthwhile life.
[00:13:26.177]Thanks for joining us.

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Catch Up With Chuck | Episode 5

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