It is hard to believe another year has passed by. When we are young we do not believe our parents when they say that time speeds up as you get older, then you get older and find out they are right. As Director of SNR, I am heading into my 5th year, seems like I just started. There is no doubt that the job is a roller coaster where we swing to extremes of good and bad almost every day. However, when I step back and look at the School of Natural Resources, what see is an amazing collection of individuals each with their own lives, professional and personal, who seem to be able to coalesce into this team we call SNR. This is when I look around Hardin Hall and consider myself very lucky to have my job. Immediately the bad things seem a lot smaller and the good that I see here shines right through.
SNR has a very bright future. We have an exciting faculty which many new faces representing all our Mission Areas. We continue to add faculty and shortly will be interviewing for positions in spatial science and a new Director for the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Two more faculty positions are waiting in the wings for release by administration. Our team, encompassing all three of our missions; teaching, research, and extension, seems to be able to raise the bar of impact every single year. We are getting more grants, publishing more, increasing enrollment, getting our message out to more people, and each of these with higher quality.
My goal when I arrived in Lincoln was to help SNR garner the respect that the team deserves on both national and international levels. There is no doubt that this team is creating waves and helping to put UNL on a much larger stage….and I am lucky enough to help it along.