Good morning, colleagues,
I hope you had a good weekend.
Last week, we had a terrific visit from Yong-Sun Moon of Yeungnam University in South Korea, along with 16 students. She is the dean of their College of Life and Applied Sciences, with which we have a dual degree MOA, and a long history of reciprocal visits. If you know of an Iowa State student who might be interested in spending a semester at Yeungnam University (instruction in English), please let me know, as we'd like to ramp up a reciprocal semester exchange program, as well. Jodi Cornell in our Global Engagement Office is the key facilitator. Moon did a sabbatical here some years ago with Phil Beecraft and has done exchange programs with Dick Schultz and others.
Last week, the USDA announced its anticipated reorganization plan. The impacts of this on our land-grant university, contractual and partnership relationships with the agency are uncertain. Clearly, things are about to change very much, and we'll need to find ways to continue the critically important connections we have with USDA on behalf of everyone we serve.
And we learned last week that the EPA and NASA research capacities are slated to be severely reduced. These federal changes and more will require us to be flexible and entrepreneurial in our outlook and focus on securing support for research. There is a fundamental shift underway, and where we are a few years from now may be more different than it's been in roughly 80 years, since the Vannevar Bush Report. Hang on and keep focus. You know, they say courage is doing what you need to even when fearful...CALS has it.
Keep cool this hot week! My best - Dan
Scenes from CALS
