By Ronica Stromberg
David Wedin recently received the 2025 Extended Service Faculty Award in the School of Natural Resources, capping 27 years of work there and three in the Center for Grassland Studies.
The director of the Center for Grassland Studies, Wedin is also a professor in the School of Natural Resources and a courtesy professor in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture and in the School of Biological Sciences. He has taught and done research in ecology, conservation, forestry and grasslands. He has also managed about 900 acres of university land but, recently, cut back to working a 75-percent appointment in preparation of retiring in 2026.
"It will be interesting to see who takes over my responsibilities," he said. "There's still a big chunk of time left this year, but I had my fingers in a lot of different things."
Larkin Powell, director of the School of Natural Resources, noted that the ecology professor helped transform the school's ecology, grassland and forestry courses. Wedin has taught foundational concepts and given students hands-on experiences in work such as restoring prairies and carrying out prescribed fires. He used to take students on canoe trips to Northern Minnesota and, during the COVID pandemic, shared the outside world with his students through videos of prairies and forests and Zoom discussions with international colleagues.
Powell said Wedin has 14 published papers that have been cited more than 500 times and five papers cited more than 1,000 times.
Wedin agreed that his papers and experiments with other scientists have had impact.
"I was a co-author on seven papers in Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," he said. "A lot of people in their career are happy to have one or two in there."
Still, he said that what he finds most rewarding from his career are the people he has had an impact on.
"One of the most rewarding things is to go any place where professionals or others working with natural resources and agriculture in Nebraska are and hear, 'Oh, I had you in class,'" Wedin said.
Follow David's full story at https://snr.unl.edu/aboutus/what/newstory.aspx?fid=1277