Hi, I'm Michael Gillilan, and I'm a senior rangeland ecosystems major in the School of Natural Resources. I'm also majoring in grazing livestock systems in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture.

I became interested in natural resources by being around agriculture while growing up on a farm near Hardy, Nebraska. We grew corn and soybeans, both irrigated and dryland, as well as wheat, and raised pigs and cattle too. One of the reasons I like studying rangeland is that all my life I've wanted to know what every plant was. In high school, I did well enough in a plant identification contest sponsored by the Nebraska section of the Society for Range Management that I got to go to a range youth camp.

As a sophomore at UNL, one of the classes I took involved the study of range plants, and I was hooked. I'm more interested in the tallgrass prairie than any other form. I especially like the wildflowers that grow in tallgrass ecosystems.

I'm involved in the Range Management Club. The club usually gets to attend the annual meeting of the International Society for Range Management. There, I take part in the undergraduate range management exam. I also get involved with range plant identification and take that test every year. I'm also in the Agronomy Club and am a recruiting "ambassador" for the grazing livestock systems major.

The students I've met in the School are a diverse group I really like being around. If you have questions about what class to take or what a certain professor's like, they're easy to ask. In addition, the professors here do a wonderful job. They're accessible and easy to get along with. They give really good lectures and challenge you to think. They're so good at what they do, I think they're underpaid.

I haven't decided on a definite career goal yet, but some of my options might be working for an environmental consulting company or for some governmental organization charged with managing rangeland. I've also thought of becoming an extension educator or using the grazing livestock systems side of my education in the private sector while managing rangeland sustainably.