Faculty and staff from the School of Natural Resources planted a limber pine on June 3 to honor E.T. "Ted" Elliott. He was the school's first director, from 2000 to 2001. He died in 2002.
Just northeast of Hardin Hall, the pine is set among a grove of other coniferous trees and will be maintained by Landscape Services with funds provided by the Ted Elliott Memorial Fund. A plaque and a bench will also be installed.
“With Ted being from Colorado and loving trees and loving the mountains, we thought that honoring Ted with a tree would be very appropriate,” said Don Wilhite, SNR director, who coordinated the effort with Elliott’s family.
Before coming to UNL, Elliott was the associate director of the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University and program officer of Ecosystem Studies for the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va.
Elliott was a renowned ecosystems scientist internationally recognized for his research in ecosystems and soil science, and their relationship to agriculture.
“As an ecologist, Ted celebrated the complexity that we see in ecological systems, but what made him special was that he demanded we solve that complexity, because society demands answers,” said Dave Wedin, who worked with Elliott on the Sand Hills Biocomplexity Project.
Pat Shea served as associate director under Elliott. He said that while Elliott was only at UNL a short time, he had a major influence.
“It’s important not to forget Ted and his contributions to moving the school to become what it is today,” said Shea. “I’m confident that Ted would be pleased with the reality that we’ve created here.”
- Kat Shiffler, School of Natural Resources