Northeast Research and Extension Center VIP Tour

What a pleasure it is to be with you all tonight as we celebrate achievement! It is always a joy to me to see good work, hard work, work that matters, recognized. We certainly had the opportunity to see work that matters on today's tour, and I thank our Northeast Research and Extension Center faculty for all their research and extension efforts that further our land-grant mission. I also thank the staff of the Center for their good work in support of this mission.

Panhandle Research and Extension Center Field Day

Commodity trader. Financial analyst. Human resources director. Marketing analyst. Lending officer. Stockbroker. Public relations specialist. Zookeeper. Nutritionist. These are only a few of the varied careers recent College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources graduates are pursuing these days. Exciting, fulfilling careers for which the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources - we call the college CASNR for short - provides a tremendous educational base that students can build on for their lives.

Panhandle Research and Extension Center feedlot expansion dedication

Good morning. It's always a pleasure to visit western Nebraska with its wide open spaces, much of it filled with cattle. Cattle are tremendously important to Nebraska - it being our state's largest single industry. Nebraska boasts many more cattle than people - around 4 1/2 times more, counting all cattle and calves.

IANR Research and Extension Centers and their associated districts

It's a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak with you about the University’s four strategically placed Research and Extension Centers and their associated extension districts, all part of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Development of an interview version of the Native American Cultural Involvement and Detachment Anxiety Questionnaire

The present study sought to develop and validate an interview version of the Native American Cultural Involvement and Detachment Anxiety Questionnaire (CIDAQ; McNeil, Porter, Zvolensky, Chaney, & Kee, 2000) in an effort to construct a more culturally appropriate means of obtaining anxiety-related information from a tribally homogenous sample of Native Americans. Five pilot subjects (60% women; M age = 35.8 years) and 50 Native American participants (46% women; M age = 40.32 years) residing on a Northern Plains reservation were administered the CIDAQ - Interview, designed specifically for this study, the Worry Domains Questionnaire (WDQ; Tallis, Eysenck, & Mathews, 1992), a measure of non-pathological worry, the CIDAQ (McNeil et al., 2000), a self-report measure of culturally-related anxiety, and a demographics form. Using a mixed design method of analysis, interviews were audio taped and data was both qualitatively and quantitatively compared for convergence and discrepancies across measures. As hypothesized, CIDAQ-Interview subscales corresponded with subscales from the CIDAQ self-report and included worries and anxiety in three content areas: (1) social involvement with Native Americans and cultural knowledge, (2) economic issues, and (3) social involvement with the majority culture. Results further revealed similarities between CIDAQ-Interview items and those on the CIDAQ self-report, indicating reliability for the Interview. Findings also confirmed the Interview's validity (r 's range = .349-.754), as well as a high level of internal consistency for the CIDAQ self-report (Cronbach alpha = .931). Data suggest the CIDAQ-Interview is a more culturally appropriate method of assessment and may be capable of assessing anxiety at a higher level of specificity then the self-report version. Results of the study are discussed in relation to the assessment of anxiety for homogenous reservation Native Americans, study limitations and directions for future research with the CIDAQ-Interview are also discussed.

APC Hearing

Members of the Academic Planning Committee, and others here today, I will appear before this committee today and tomorrow during the APC hearing process to speak about proposed vertical cuts in the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources budget. Each time we will discuss a cut we in the Institute do not like ... a cut we would not make unless forced, as we are now, to do so. This is true of today's proposal to close the South Central Research and Extension Center at Clay Center.

School of Natural Resource Sciences

Good afternoon. Thank you for asking me to be with you today; I welcome this opportunity to talk with you, to hear what you're thinking, and to participate with you in an exchange of ideas. I've been asked to make some prepared remarks this afternoon, and when those are ended I welcome your ideas, your questions, and your comments. I look forward to more discussions with you at other times, as well. I do have open hours Friday afternoons, and encourage faculty and staff to stop by to visit, to share an idea, to ask a question, or to just visit. Sometimes duties call me away, as they will for the next few Fridays, but I try to be available as many Friday afternoons as possible for drop-in visitors. I hope you'll be among them. As a big believer in the land grant university, with our mission of teaching, research, and extension education, I also am a big believer that it takes all of us, working together, to fulfill that mission.

Omtvedt Innovation Award

It is such a pleasure to be here at the Gudmundsen Sandhills Laboratory Open House. Not only are we celebrating the 25th anniversary of the contributions and successes of this expansive research and extension laboratory, we are also honoring one of our own faculty members today with this Omtvedt Innovation Award. This award is made possible because of the generosity of Leone and the late Neal Harlan, great friends of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Nebraska Panhandle Connects with German Institute on Agri Benchmark Project

In the Spring of 2009, the University of Nebraska Panhandle Research and Extension Center was contacted by a representative from the Institute of Farm Economics at the Johann Heinrich von Thunen Institute (vTI) in Braunschweig, Germany. In the initial meeting, a partnership was arranged to provide Western Nebraska irrigated economic data for the Agri Benchmark project operated by vTI, with the University of Nebraska receiving access to the worldwide data set that exists within the project. This relationship has grown over the past 18 months to include a number of other opportunities.