At universities and colleges, the fall semester always seems to be a time of great optimism. Despite the fact that we are more and more a 12-month operation, the fall inflow of both incoming and returning students is always refreshing. It always reminds us of the importance of teaching in the tripartite mission of the land grant university system —Teaching, Research and Extension.
Two important things are happening in SNR this fall semester. This past year we have worked on the five-year academic program review for the school. Drew Tyre headed our self-study during much of 2015 and that work resulted in a document that we have posted on the SNR website (http://snr.unl.edu/aboutus/why/visionorganization.asp).
I think the most important aspect of this process has been the shift from the older model that is mainly a review to something that is more like a strategic action plan. The idea is to move away from the traditional approach of highlighting our accomplishments to looking forward to what we want to become. In October, we had an outstanding team from around the country who met with us to discuss our goals and our self-study. We are now waiting for their report. Without irony, their preliminary observations honed in on some of the issues all program in natural resources seem to struggle with. How do we embrace our diversity, but maintain our identity? It is very much something that we will be focusing on in the next few years.
A second project for this coming year is a more detailed focus on our teaching program. We hope to narrow the scope of the APR and spend more time looking at all aspects of our teaching mission at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. We hope this evaluation will help guide us to a more efficient and effective teaching program in the future.
The last few months have been exciting in terms of hires of new faculty. This summer after a search led by SNR and Biological Systems Engineering, we hired two new groundwater faculty: Drs. Jesse Korus and Troy Gilmore. In addition, a collaborative effort with Nebraska Game and Parks has resulted in SNR hiring Dr. Chris Chizinski, who is an expert in wildlife human dimensions. We now have in the pipeline positions in fish genetics/physiology, climate risk, urban forestry, pedology (soil), and vertebrate biology. A number of other positions are on the horizon.
The School of Natural Resources is a pretty amazing and challenging place to work. There are no boring days around here and the future looks pretty bright.