We are now approaching the half-way mark in time between our ALL HANDS IANR meeting on January 13th and the deadline of June 30th for the team reports with recommendations from the Innovating Agriculture and Natural Resources to 2025 planning process. I have watched and listened with interest as the teams have gone about gathering feedback and input from our faculty and staff around the eleven focus areas where we are seeking to identify innovations in the way we work together to achieve our goal of becoming one of the very top programs in agriculture and natural resources in the world by 2025 – all the while staying true to our land-grant mission and being at work for the people of Nebraska.
I have been pressing the team leads and steering groups to make sure that they get wide-ranging input from IANR’s people in this process, and that we carefully evaluate what is learned in the process. One systematic means for getting such input and feedback was a forum that was held on March 8th in the East Campus Union which also involved a webinar link to the district research and extension centers. We were pleased that a number of our staff and faculty participated in this session and gave the teams very valuable input. Additionally, 55 folks took the time to provide additional feedback via an online survey tool that was made available, and this information has been summarized and relayed to the teams.
I know that each of the teams is also working to canvas the campus and beyond for input on specific questions that they have in their work, both internally and externally to IANR. Please take advantage of every opportunity to contribute and provide input – and if you do not feel you have had opportunity to do so, do not hesitate to contact either me or any of the team leads or steering team members. There is also a suggestion box on the newly created IANR to 2025 website – http://ianrhome.unl.edu/web/ianr/ianr-2025. The page is a work in progress. The purpose of the page is to allow you one place to check in on the actions of each of the 11 teams.
I have asked each of the teams to provide a formal written progress report to me by April 13th and I am looking forward to hearing about what they have found to-date, and their plans for completing the process over the coming 3 months. I remain confident that there are many areas that we can seek to improve upon as we move forward. I fully expect that some of the recommendations will be “low hanging fruit” that will be obvious and relatively easy to implement quickly, while others will likely require significant work to implement over time.
Thanks to all of you for contributing to the process of a new day for IANR as we seek to provide leadership for solving the grand challenges ahead for food, natural resources, energy, and community security.