If you have walked through the Hardin Hall lobby much in the past month, you may have noticed that there has been a beehive of activity with a wide range of events associated with SNR and other entities. Jacki Loomis and her team are doing an outstanding job of scheduling and preparing for the many activities that take place in our building on a regular basis. At times the lobby may get a bit congested but all of these activities are good for SNR and our visibility across campus.
 
I trust you have noticed the beautiful scenery around Hardin Hall this fall. This has been one of the most beautiful falls for color since I have lived in Lincoln. To capture this beauty, I enlisted the help of Brett Hampton in CIT to take a full range of photos of our building and landscape. These photos are now available to anyone that needs them for publications, Powerpoint slides, or framing. Just contact Dee Ebbeka or Sue Ellen Pegg for more information.

Report from the SNR Review Team: Status

I have been informed that the report from the SNR review team has been prepared and is being reviewed by USDA for release to IANR and SNR. I am expecting to receive the report in the next two weeks, and then I will distribute it to SNR faculty and staff. Next I will meet with the SNR administrative team and faculty area leaders to develop a formal response to the document. The response document will be prepared systematically with faculty and staff input and will be submitted to IANR administration as quickly as possible. Stay tuned for more information.

Building Sustainable Partnership Forum: Part II

SNR hosted a very successful second Building Sustainable Partnership Forum on October 30 in the Hardin Hall auditorium, with more than 200 people in attendance. The key sponsors for this event were SNR, the University of Nebraska Rural Initiative, and the Mayor’s Environmental Task Force.  In addition to the support provided by the sponsors, support was also provided by John Owens, IANR Vice Chancellor and NU Vice President, J.B. Milliken, NU President, and the UNL Commission on Sustainability. The theme for this Forum was “transforming vision into action,” building on the outcomes and suggestions of the first event in February. The program was a mixture of presentations and breakout sessions. Our goal for this event was to focus on three critical sectors to promote the concepts of sustainability: higher education, communities, and business. The key to success lies in building partnerships between each of these sectors.

Speakers for the Forum included Debra Rowe, President of the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development, and Dennis Murphey, Chief Environmental Officer for Kansas City. Debra’s presentation challenged UNL to lead the way in not only educating our students about sustainability but also in being a role model for the community. Dennis illustrated the steps that Kansas City has taken to become a regional leader in sustainability through development of community-wide climate action plans. Both presentations were well received by a large and very diverse audience.

Following the breakout sessions, Beth Osborne, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Policy for the Department of Transportation, provided an outstanding overview of groundbreaking interagency partnerships between DOT, Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency to develop livable cities. Beth made an outstanding presentation via a video link with her office in Washington, D.C. and then fielded questions from the audience.

Thanks to all members of the planning committee for this event which included SNR faculty and staff, other UNL faculty, representatives of the Mayor’s office, and others from the private sector. I really enjoyed working with such an inspirational and dedicated group. A special thanks to Donna Woudenberg. Donna chaired this planning committee and did an excellent job.

The Forum was recorded for viewing on cable channel 5. The video will also be available on both the SNR website and the Lincoln Green by Design website (www.lincolngreenbydesign.org/bsp).

Debra Rowe also met with UNL student groups and the UNL Chancellor’s Commission on Sustainability. The meeting with the Commission was linked to the three other NU campuses, UNK, UNO, and UNMC. Representatives of these Commissions were able to participate in this discussion via Polycom.

The planning committee will be meeting this week to discuss outcomes of this Forum and begin planning for the next event in early 2010.

The breakout session in the Hardin Hall Auditorium focused on how to incorporate principles of sustainability into higher education. Other breakouts during the second Building Sustainable Partnerships Forum Oct. 30 focused on sustainability in business and in the community.

SNR’s Fall Seminar Series

We had two excellent seminars in October that were well attended by SNR faculty, staff, and students. My goal this fall was to organize an abbreviated schedule of speakers that would reinforce the crosscutting nature of our current and emerging issues. I believe Alan Ewert’s seminar, “Human Health, Quality of Life, and Natural Environments: What is the Connection” and Gene Takle’s seminar, “Midwest Corn Production Under the Influence of Climate Change, Climate Variability, and Wind Turbines” accomplished that goal.

Please plan to attend this month’s seminars. If you want to meet individually or as a group with any of these speakers, please contact the local host for more information.

Extension Educator in Climate Variability and Change: Status

The search committee for SNR’s new extension educator position in climate variability and change conducted interviews via Breeze technology with the two candidates for this position in late October. Based on those interviews via distance technology, I have invited Tapan Pathak to interview for this position on November 19-20. Tapan is a Ph.D. candidate in Agricultural Engineering at the University of Florida. His M.S. is from Utah State University. For the past four years Tapan has been a research assistant working on using crop modeling tools to aid stakeholders in the Southeastern U.S. in making critical management decisions. He has also been using climate indices as early indicators of cotton yield. At Utah State he worked with remote sensing techniques for various agricultural assessments. Tapan expects to complete his Ph.D. early next year.

I am currently setting up the interview schedule for Tapan and I will be distributing that to SNR faculty, staff, and students in the next week. Please try to participate in portions of the interview, as your schedule permits. Tapan will be presenting a seminar to describe his research areas of interest and how he will apply his skills to the position of Extension Educator in climate variability and change at UNL.

SNR to Host an Inter-regional Workshop on Indices and Early Warning Systems for Drought: An Update

As mentioned in my July 2009 newsletter, SNR will host an Inter-regional Workshop on Indices and Early Warning for Drought. It will be in Lincoln, December 8-11, 2009, at the Holiday Inn-Downtown. Sponsors for the event include the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The local hosts are SNR and the National Drought Mitigation Center. I am serving as the local organizer for this event. The workshop is in the final planning stages and the provisional program has been distributed to participants coming from each of the six WMO regions. Other participants will be from the scientific community in the U.S. and elsewhere. We expect between 50 and 60 participants at the meeting. If you are interested in learning more about this meeting or participating in it, contact me as soon as possible. Attendance is limited because of the interactive/training nature of the workshop.

UNL Signs MoA with the Korean Rural Institute

Chancellor Perlman has signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the Rural Research Institute of the Korea Rural Community Corporation. The purpose of the MoA is to establish a framework of cooperation between the National Drought Mitigation Center and the RRI to facilitate effective and efficient drought risk management. The collaboration will involve issues related to drought monitoring, vulnerability, mitigation strategies, decision support tools, and training activities, among others. The development of this MoA was facilitated by Jae Ryu, a post doctoral research associate with the NDMC. On October 29, Mike Hayes and I met with Drs. Hai-Chang Chung and Jongwha Ham for the signing ceremony.

In the photo are, from left, Jongwha Ham, Hai-Chang Chung, Director of the Office of Research Planning at the Korea Rural Community Corporation, Don Wilhite, and Mike Hayes, Director of the National Drought Mitigation Center.

Grants Awarded and Proposals Submitted

SNR faculty and staff were awarded grants totaling $3,875,975 in October. The total for grants awarded in 2009 (January through October) is $12,682,923. I previously projected that grant awards for calendar year 2009 would exceed $14 million. We’re almost there! Congratulations to Paul Hanson, Scott Hygnstrom, Mark Svoboda, Craig Allen, Jim Merchant, Dave Gosselin, Donna Woudenberg, Matt Joeckel, Drew Tyre, and Sue Lackey. The two very large grants this month were the NSF IGERT grant for $2,966,035 by Craig Allen, Drew Tyre, and Sheri Fritz (Geosciences) and a NOAA grant for $497,797 by Mark Svoboda. Congratulations to all!

Faculty and staff submitting proposals in October included Sunil Narumalani, Hong Chen, Song Feng, Bob Oglesby, and Steve Hu. The total amount for grant proposals submitted in October was $505,390. The total for grant proposals submitted by SNR faculty from January through October 2009 was $53,974,990.