Welcome

It is a real pleasure to have this opportunity to visit Bluebird Nurseries and talk with everyone gathered here, and I join John Trumbull in welcoming you this morning. I am looking forward to learning more about the Nebraska nursery industry today, and I look forward to visiting and working with you now, and in the days ahead. Getting to know Nebraska and its residents is one of the real pleasures of my new job, and has been since I started in January. My wife Virginia and I literally slid into the state one snowy day last December - almost hard to remember that icy, snowy winter, given the past few months - and ever since our arrival we have been impressed and delighted by the friendliness and warmth of Nebraska's residents. This is a great state, and we are very happy to be here. As I welcome you I also want to offer Chancellor Harvey Perlman's regrets that he could not accept the invitation to be here, too; he is unable to join us because of conflicts in schedule.

U.S. Meat Export Seminar Welcome

What a great pleasure it is to welcome you to our campus today. We are so very glad to have you here with us in beef country. I'm sure you are all very well aware beef is big business in our powerhouse agricultural state. And as a connoisseur of the product, let me tell you - it's very good beef!

Welcome: Fourth Annual Water Law, Policy and Science Conference

It was Mark Twain who, in 1884, penned the words, and I quote, "Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over."

New Faculty Orientation Welcome

It is a true pleasure to join Chancellor Perlman and Senior Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Couture in welcoming you to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Dinner Prelude to the Nebraska Great Gardens Symposium

It’s a pleasure to welcome you to the University of Nebraska here in Lincoln. I’m delighted to be asked to join you for this dinner prelude to your Nebraska Great Gardens Symposium tomorrow. I’m also pleased to be able to welcome you to East Campus tonight, and to the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and I understand you’ll be meeting at the City Campus Union tomorrow. I am glad you have the opportunity to visit both campuses, and I hope you will come back when they are in bloom. As a newcomer to Nebraska myself – my wife Virginia and I arrived on a cold, snowy day last December, and I began my position here January 2 – I’m certainly looking forward to the arrival of spring. I have been told what a joy it is to be on this campus when plants and trees are in bloom, and when that special sense of spring renewal surrounds us.

Nebraska Agribusiness Club

Thank you for inviting me to be here with you today. I've now completed four months as University of Nebraska Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and Harlan Vice Chancellor of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and I welcome every opportunity that comes my way to meet and talk with Nebraska's residents. I'm particularly happy to be here with you; I appreciate your interest in agriculture, and Ed Woeppel tells me that many members of this group are very supportive of the Institute, and worked hard to create IANR in the '70s.

Family, Youth and Community Partners Luncheon With Senators

Good afternoon. I am so pleased to be here with you today. I welcome this opportunity to talk with you about how University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension, part of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, works with Nebraska’s at-risk families. I’m extremely proud of our work to help families meet their needs and develop and strengthen skills they can use to better share in Nebraska’s good life.

Congressional staff dinner /reception

It is my very real pleasure to welcome you here tonight. We are so pleased to have this opportunity to talk with you about Nebraska agriculture and natural resources, and the work we in the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources do as partners with Nebraska. We welcome your insights and your help in doing all we can to strengthen our efforts on behalf of Nebraska, where one in four people depends on agriculture for employment. That number underscores the importance of Nebraska's agricultural farm gate to consumer plate industry, as well as the importance of the work we conduct in IANR.

Maxwell Arboretum Anniversary Celebration

What a pleasure it is to have this opportunity to welcome you to campus today as we celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Earl G. Maxwell Arboretum. Henry Van Dyke once wrote that "He that planteth a tree ... provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him."

Sorghum Research Meeting

It is my pleasure to welcome you to East Campus this morning, and I thank you for inviting me to be here with you. I am pleased that we have this opportunity to come together to exchange information and ideas, to update on what's happening now, and to look to the future. It is important that we make and take advantage of such opportunities to communicate with each other, to learn each others' views, and to work with each other toward our common goals. I want to personally thank the people who have worked to organize this meeting and to put this morning's agenda together.

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.

Agriculture at the Crossroads

What a pleasure it is to have this opportunity to welcome you all to this thirteenth annual Agriculture at the Crossroads Conference sponsored by the Nebraska AgRelations Council and the Department of Agricultural Economics here in the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln.

Association of American State Geologists 95th annual meeting

What a great pleasure to welcome you to the 95th annual meeting of the Association of American State Geologists. I truly hope you enjoy your stay the next few days here in Lincoln, our state's capitol and Nebraska's second-largest city. Mark mentioned that I'm from Texas. My family started there, our first family home in the United States, when my maternal great-grandfather immigrated to this country from Germany, to escape military conscription -- just as the Civil War broke out here. With remarkably bad timing, he landed at the port of Galveston just in time to be rounded up and sworn, under gunpoint, into the Confederacy.

2004 Nebraska Grazing Conference

It is both my privilege and pleasure to have the opportunity this morning to welcome you to the 2004 Nebraska Grazing Conference. I am sure you are looking forward to the next two days of great topics and excellent speakers. This is the fourth year this conference has brought people together to hear, to discuss, to exchange a wide variety of ideas. Reading through the list of conference sponsors and supporters, I think how fortunate we are in Nebraska to forge and foster such productive partnerships for the good of our state.

Omtvedt Innovation Awards Presented to Chris Calkins, Steven Jones, Rodger Johnson, and Sheila Scheideler

It's a great pleasure to welcome you to this very first recognition ceremony for the Omtvedt Innovation Awards. We are present here to honor innovation strengths of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and certainly the four faculty members receiving today's awards are greatly deserving of this recognition. Just hearing about their work is gratifying!