August 24, 2013

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is more than one-third of the way through filling about three dozen key new faculty positions in the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The hiring initiative, announced earlier this year, is aimed at subject areas critical to the global challenges of the future, including expanded and more efficient food production and improved water and natural resources management.

As of Aug. 15, 13 positions had been filled. Progress on the hires has come faster than is often the case with university positions, said Ronnie Green, vice chancellor of the university's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, where the new positions are being housed.

"We have moved forward aggressively in filling these jobs because they are all so important to our land-grant mission in the areas of food, fuel and water," Green said. "If UNL is to be a part of solving the critical challenges of the future, there simply is no time to waste."

Green noted that the world's population is expected to increase from about 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050, and the challenges of feeding that population are significant.

The 36 new positions, listed at http://ianrhome.unl.edu/growingianr, are primarily in the areas of science literacy, stress biology, computational sciences, healthy humans and healthy systems for agricultural production, and natural resources.

So far, hiring has been completed for science literacy. Other hires have come in topic areas including community leadership development, micrometeorology, agrosystems ecology, behavioral economics and health disparities, and lipid metabolism and health.

"They cover a fairly wide range of areas across the institute addressing contemporary agricultural and natural resource issues," Green said.

This initiative fits with UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman's goal of increasing faculty and student enrollment significantly by 2017. IANR is in a position to do this thanks to eight years of annual enrollment growth in its College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, record levels of research funding, and a strong agricultural economy in Nebraska.

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