>> Welcome, everyone, to

Wednesday Nite at the Lab.

I'm Tom Zinnen.

I work here at the UW-Madison

Biotechnology Center.

I also work for UW-Extension

Cooperative Extension, and on

behalf of those folks and our

other organizers, Wisconsin

Public Television, the Wisconsin

Alumni Association, and the

UW-Madison Science Alliance,

thanks for coming to Wednesday

Nite at the Lab.

We do this every Wednesday

night, 50 times a year.

It's your chance to experience

science as exploring the unknown

here at your land-grant research

university.

Tonight I'm delighted to be able

to introduce to you

Dean Kate VandenBosch.

She is the new dean of the

College of Agriculture and Life

Sciences, and that is the

college here at UW-Madison that

puts the land grant in the

university.

It's a remarkable organization.

I happened to get my PhD from it

in 1985, but I haven't worked

for the college since then, but

I'm pretty proud to be

associated with an institution

that does basic research, such

as in genetics here in this

building, biochemistry,

microbiology.

It also does the traditional

agricultural with horticulture,

agronomy, soil, dairy science,

animal science.

But it has some remarkable range

of other departments that study

fields such as rural sociology,

life science communication,

landscape architecture.

And I think that's one of the

things that's got to be an

interesting challenge for the

new deans, how do you guide a

college that is as diverse as

this is, as remarkable as the

University of Wisconsin is, and

to sustain the tradition of

public service and public

scholarship that is one of the

hallmarks of this university in

general, and certainly your

college in specific.

Tonight, we get to hear about

one of the tough things, and

that is how do you grow the

future.

And I'm looking forward to

hearing what Dean VandenBosch

has to say.

She is originally from Michigan.

She studied at the University

of Massachusetts in Amherst

and got her BS and...

>> MS and PhD.

>> MS and PhD, excuse me.

From there, she's a plant

geneticist.

She postdoc'd both here at

UW-Madison and the John Innes

Institute.

Then she went to Texas A&M

University for 12 years.

For many years she was at the

University of Minnesota.

And now, in the last year or so,

she's come to UW-Madison to

serve as the new dean here for

the College of Agriculture and

Life Sciences.

Would you please join me in

welcoming Kate VandenBosch to

Wednesday Nite at the Lab.

[APPLAUSE]

>> Well, thank you, Tom.

It's a pleasure to be here.

That was quite a good

introduction.

I thought I should start off by

telling you a bit about myself,

and he told a lot of the story,

but I'll tell a little bit more,

including I have some pictures

here from my early development

as a plant biologist, including

this one up here in the

left-hand corner where you see

me sitting at an electron

microscope.

That was during my postdoc here

in the mid-'80s.

And I think when I was here, I

was inoculated with something

because years later I found this

homing desire, a desire to come

back here, and I'll tell you a

little bit about that.

But in my early career, I worked

primarily on plant development

and plant cell biology,

interactions of plants with

microbes, both the friendly and

the unfriendly.

And then in later years, after

these pictures were taken, I got

into the area of plant genomics

and related topics.

And this gives a pictorial story

to what Tom already told you.

I grew up in central part of the

lower peninsula in Michigan.

Went to Kalamazoo College, a

small liberal arts college

there.

Graduate work at the University

of Massachusetts, and then here

as a postdoc.

Then to England for a couple of

years where I did a second

postdoc before going to Texas

A&M and then to the University

of Minnesota.

And, actually, there are a

couple of themes going on here.

One was that all of my training

was in the basic life sciences

and liberal arts, but all of my

adult life, except for the

couple of years in the UK, has

been at land-grant institutions.

So the first one was

Massachusetts, and then here,

and Texas A&M and Minnesota.

They're all the land-grant

institutions for their various

states.

And that really made a mark on

me.

Even though I started as a basic

scientist, as a plant scientist,

the places where that really

flourishes are at land-grant

institutions.

And also, there's this great

continuum of basic research all

the way to applications and

communication of new knowledge

to the public, something that I

have really come to love.

And while I was at Minnesota, I

got to be interested in how this

kind of university functions and

what we need to do to keep it

flourishing and keep serving the

public for the years to come.

And that, plus this homing

instinct, have brought me here

for this particular opportunity,

and I recently completed my

first year as dean.

So, here's the College of

Agriculture and Life Sciences,

a picture that I really like

because it shows the past and

the present.

What you see here is Hiram Smith

Hall, which is the home to life

sciences communication, and it

is reflected in the beautiful

new microbial sciences building.

About a half dozen years old

now.

So, we see here our past and our

contemporary sense and a site of

where a lot of our

forward-thinking work is going

on as well.

So, our college, we're proud to

say, is a leader in all aspects

of its mission, research,

education and training, and

outreach.

And the challenge today is, how

do we keep ourselves vigorous?

How do we address challenges as

they emerge?

How do we interpret the

land-grant mission for the 21st

century?

And that is what it has got at

work at today in planning for

our future.

I'll give you a little bit of

some highlights about where we

are today.

Tom mentioned many of the

disciplines that we cover here

in the College of Agriculture

and Life Sciences, or CALS as we

like to call it, from basic

science to applied life

sciences, many aspects of social

sciences that impact rural

development, community

development, and the economics

of our disciplines.

So, 19 departments currently.

We have about 4,000 students in

total.

About three-quarters of them are

undergraduates, and one-quarter

are graduate students.

Plus we have a large number of

people that come to us for short

courses or a variety of types of

professional training that might

be short in duration, as well as

postdocs and many others.

And here we have the degrees

that we awarded two years ago.

These numbers have been

climbing.

Our faculty is currently

numbering in about 260

individuals.

Many of them highly

accomplished, including 18

members of the National Academy

of Sciences.

And about a quarter or so of our

faculty have joined appointments

with Cooperative Extension, and

they're very much involved in

their educational activity of

educating the public and less so

with students on campus.

So, how do we position CALS for

future success?

Well, we have created a

hypothesis that what we really

need to do is to position

ourselves at the overlap between

the two circles that you see

here.

On the left are grand

challenges.

These are the great societal

challenges of the day and those

that we envision that will be

arising during this century.

And the one on the right really

represents our strengths or our

competitive advantages.

And we think that we need to

identify this overlap spot where

we have great strengths that

will allow us to address the big

challenges of the future.

So, we've initiated a strategic

positioning effort for the

college to address these and

other questions.

So, we're not the only ones

thinking about the grand

challenges facing our

disciplines, the places where we

can really make an impact.

The USDA is thinking about that.

The National Science Foundation,

NIH, our major funding

institutions are.

Also, there was just a report of

the President's Council of

Advisors on Science and

Technology addressing several

issues.

One is on training students in

our science disciplines.

There's been a similar report on

how to advance agriculture in

the coming decades.

And the National Academy of

Sciences has also recently

undertaken an effort to see

where biology is going in the

21st century and how it can be,

how the recent advances with all

the tools that we have in basic

science can be applied to some

of these grant challenges.

So we've been using these as

resources as well as other

sources.

Well, I think that this figure

really puts a lot of this in

context.

If there's one factor that

creates a lot of challenge and

has a lot of impact on the need

for our expertise, it's the

growing human population.

And although this is a cartoon,

it is absolutely to scale and

shows what an unprecedented

situation we find ourselves in.

For most of human history, we

had a slow growth in the

population until the industrial

revolution, and then more

recently really fast growth

projected through this century.

And although we don't really

know what this top point will

be, a lot of experts say we will

probably level off around about

this point.

Around nine or 10 billion

people.

We're currently at seven.

And we've never had this many

people on the Earth, and it

creates a lot of new challenges.

First and foremost, increased

demand for the products of the

Earth.

Food, energy, fiber, other

renewable materials, and

non-renewable materials.

And from the standpoint of

agriculture when we think about

this, in the 20th century, we

had phenomenal success at

increasing production, but that

was with not only advances in

genetics, but a lot of input,

irrigation, fertilizer, and so

on, and bringing more land into

cultivation.

But now we don't really have the

capacity to expand the areas

that are farmed, and we're

worried about environmental

quality and sustainability.

So the solutions that we had in

the last century are not going

to be effective for this century

in boosting our production.

In addition, we have a changing

climate, and in ways that's not

entirely predictable.

So that's bringing new

challenges, volatile weather

patterns.

Last year it was drought.

We also have seen more strong

storms.

So, the fact that we have

limited natural resources and a

changing climate really makes it

even more challenging to meet

the demands of a growing world

population.

We also have changing health

challenges, many that have been

with us, but just as we have the

current seven billion, we've got

a hundred billion hungry people,

we also have about a hundred

people estimated that would be

obese or quite overweight.

So, with that over-nutrition

comes a lot of health

challenges.

We have different communicable

diseases also arising, some of

them related to animal health as

well.

And, of course, all of these

things impact the health of

communities and society and

relate to issues even such as

national security.

So, I think you'd agree that

these are all really very, very

urgent.

And so, I guess it's good news

for us that we have new tools,

growing knowledge base to

address these kinds of

questions, and I think, for

those of us in CALS, we're not

going to run out of work to do

any time soon.

So, in addition to the need for

our expertise to address these

challenges, there's also the

need to train the new generation

to enter the workforce and to

think creatively about problem

solving, in some cases for

problems that we haven't yet

learned how to articulate,

emerging issues that we don't

understand yet.

So we have to train the next

generation to be creative

thinkers, critical thinkers,

problem solvers, so that they

will be contributing to

addressing these issues.

So, we have a need for a plan

for the college going forward,

and to segue from the comments I

was just making about training

the next generation, locally

here we have a changing

enrollment.

So, this shows the change in

percent enrollment in CALS in

the red line, maybe you can't

see the color, but it's the line

that's sloping up there.

And overall you see that UW

Madison has stayed roughly the

same size, increased over the

last decade of a couple percent.

Whereas in the College of

Agricultural and Life Sciences,

we've seen a dramatic growth

especially in the last five

years, and this seems to be

continuing up and not

plateauing.

Our graduate enrollment has been

pretty stable at about 900-950

students or so pursuing Masters

and PhD degrees.

So, we're really thrilled about

the interests of students in our

areas, and we need to think

carefully about how we can

respond to this dramatic uptick

in the interest in our programs.

We can look at this on the

background of our capacity to

train students based on the

number of faculty that we have.

And here again, you see the dark

red line, this time it's falling

down.

So this is percent change in the

CALS faculty where we have seen

a loss of faculty positions.

So, over, this is a 30-year

period, we've had a loss of

about 30% of our faculty

numbers.

UW as a whole has varied, but,

right now, UW as a whole is

about where it was 25 to 30

years ago.

So, we have increasing interest

in our programs.

We have to train students to be

creative thinkers.

And there are other issues

around education that we're

thinking about too.

On the left here we see our

current interim chancellor,

David Ward, who has encouraged

us to think big, to set our

sights high, and he's also

encouraged us to be creative in

what we're thinking about in

terms of the way that we train

students.

And an interesting quote from

him is that we need to be

thinking more about 16th century

methods than 20th century

methods.

And that seems counterintuitive,

but what he is saying is that we

really need to be able to work

with students in small groups to

coach them, to get them to work

in groups.

So, for example, one of the

innovations that we are all

talking about is the flipped

classroom.

The flipped classroom refers to

the fact that students in this

kind of a training environment

listen to lectures at home with

material online, and then they

come to class to do their

homework.

So it's flipped.

Instead of coming to class to

hear the lecture, they hear that

at home, and they do the

homework while they're in class.

Well, not just homework but

problem sets, collaborative

work, and so on.

So, this is just one of the

types of innovations that we're

thinking about.

And, of course, we're thinking

about how to effectively use

electronic delivery of

information to give students

more access or just to be able

to provide them with the best

tools for learning.

So, where are we today?

Well, some of our teaching isn't

very contemporary or isn't very

forward-thinking.

You see here on the left is a

classroom, a lecture hall in Ag

Hall, right up at the other end

of Henry Mall here, and this is

the largest lecture room on

campus.

So that's 20th century style.

And on the right, you see a

fermentation lab in the new

microbiology building.

One of the types of settings

that allows students to work in

small groups, hands-on,

project-based learning.

So we do the whole gamut of

types of instructional

activities.

And we need to be thinking

carefully about the best way to

train students, and what's the

best mix of all these kinds of

approaches for different types

of learners.

So, we have assembled a team of

about 18 folks, mostly inside

the college, a mix of faculty,

students, and staff and a couple

of members of the CALS Board of

Visitors.

And those are Susan Crane, is

our current president of the

CALS Board of Visitors.

She works for WE Energies in

Milwaukee, and she is a dairy

farmer.

And also Bill Oemichen,

down here, our past president

who works with cooperative

businesses around the state and

around the region.

And we've been working since

September on this task.

So, one of the major approaches

we've used is to get a lot of

feedback from a lot of different

people in different roles,

faculty and staff, students,

members of our stakeholder

groups that interact with us a

lot, members of the legislature

and others.

So, we have interpreted our

mission in a new way.

That's our new mission statement

here.

For the college, our goal is to

advance and share knowledge,

discover solutions, and promote

opportunities in food,

agriculture, bioenergy, health,

human well-being, and the

environment.

So, advancing in shared

knowledge to us means everything

from basic science,

understanding basic mechanisms,

to the applications.

Sharing knowledge refers to not

only Extension but also our

educational mission inside the

university and beyond its walls.

Our vision is to lead in

science, innovation, and

collaboration that improves life

and sustains the natural world.

And collaboration, I think, is a

really important part of this.

One of the emerging themes that

came from all of our

consultation and from all of the

homework we did in reading of

resources, the main point is the

importance of interacting across

disciplines to come up with

creative solutions to these

great grand challenges, we need

to bring lots of different types

of expertise together.

Also, we hear from students

frequently that they want to

have diverse types of training.

Students like to collect majors.

I think the most I've heard of

is four.

Or they may like to have, also,

certificates in different areas

or create custom areas of study.

So, I think this is important

not just to be responsive to

their interests but also in

creating this new generation of

creative individuals who have

training and expertise from

diverse areas.

And so, attacking problems in a

collaborative way is going to

be, and is today already, an

important tool that we have in

meeting those challenges.

Now, we have a tag line, growing

the future.

You saw that in my first slide,

my title slide, and I really

like this because we are

constantly thinking of a future

focus, the challenges that we

have, and how we are growing to

meet that, including the growth

of human potential.

So, one of the things that I

asked our group to do is to

identify some priority themes,

themes of research areas that

will be a priority for us going

forward, but not only for

research but also for training.

And so we have six of those, six

of these, and they're a work in

progress, but I'll introduce

them to you.

The first is to enhance food

systems.

And by food systems, what we

mean is the whole process of

producing food from the field to

the fork, from a local scale to

a global scale.

So it not only refers to raising

crops and food animals but also

how food is processed, how it is

transported, how it is available

to people, and even the waste

management.

So this is a really very big

topic.

And there are many contemporary

aspects of this that are new

challenges.

So, for example, getting

appropriate food to urban areas.

Today, we find that there are

urban areas that lack access to

balanced diet, fresh foods in

particular.

Urban agriculture is an emerging

area, and it's one that we are

making some of our first forays

into.

So, the goal here is that an

effective food system is one

that would ensure not only an

abundant and affordable source

of food, but it also has to be

accessible, safe, secure in that

it's reliable year to year,

sustainable, nutritious, and

delicious.

So this is a really big order.

What we see here in the slides

are a worker in, this is Babcock

Hall's master cheesemaker, Gary

Grossen, up here.

This is Bill Tracy, who is the

chair of agronomy and a

sweetcorn breeder in the field.

These are some students working

at Bucky's Butchery, processing

some meats.

And here is a school lunch.

So this is a topic with many

facets.

Another theme is continuing to

improve human health.

And not only fighting disease

but maintaining healthfulness.

This is a long topic of, it has

a rich history in CALS,

dating back to vitamin D

research early on and continuing

to the present day.

That's the chemical symbol that

you see along the left is

vitamin D.

And, today, we work hard at

understanding the mechanisms of

disease to enable development of

new treatment methods.

We have special expertise in

metabolic diseases, including

diabetes and obesity related

areas.

We have commitment to

understanding nutrients in food

and how they contribute to

health, with the idea that in

the future we will have more

personalized diets and

functional foods, nutraceuticals

and the like.

And another aspect relates not

only to human health but animal

health and how these areas

intersect, especially diseases

that can have a reservoir in

animal populations and cross

over into humans.

A third area that is a newer

emphasis is bioenergy.

Probably, I'll bet that this

group has, in the past, had an

opportunity to hear about

bioenergy research that happens

on campus.

We're very proud of the advances

that we're making here,

particularly in the area of

using biomass or plant materials

and waste materials to create

new energy sources.

And this is something that

really sent us back to the

drawing board because, of

course, we've raised, as humans,

we've raised crops for millennia

for consumption and for fiber.

We've used them for energy in

the sense of burning them, but

to be able to create crops that

we will harvest energy from to

produce, for example, a liquid

fuel that you can burn in your

car or use for other purposes is

new.

And this sent us back to learn

new things about how plants make

biomass as well as how microbes

can help degrade it and turn it

into new things.

Not only energy is important,

but using renewable sources,

such as biomass, is another

objective is to create new

products from those materials.

And we're also looking at animal

waste and parts of animals that

we don't consume, that we don't

eat, for creating new

bioproducts that will influence

health and for other uses.

Fostering healthy ecosystems is

really important, obviously.

Our ecosystems provide us with a

lot.

Not only products, but what we

call ecosystem services, such as

cleaning water, managing floods,

as wildlife habitat, recreation,

and so on.

And sometimes these different

objectives for using a landscape

come into conflict.

Competing demands of this sort

are going to become even more

intense as the population

continues to grow.

So, our goal, really, is to go

beyond conservation, beyond

sustaining current environmental

quality towards a more resilient

future.

And the goal is that we need to

understand the interactions

among all of these functions and

also create new inventive

technologies that will foster

innovative management systems

for ecosystems as well as

appropriate policies and

economic opportunities.

I think we're up to the fifth

one now, and that is related to

climate change.

Our goals here are to mitigate

the effects of climate change

and also to adapt to them.

We anticipate that this is going

to become an increasingly

important theme in the coming

decades and that we need to find

a way to have robust solutions

to erratic weather patterns and

general warming of the climate.

The kinds of problems that we

expect to deal with are extreme

weather events, drought in some

cases, warming temperatures, but

also changes in interactions

among organisms with new pests

and pathogens coming into our

area.

So these are our many

challenges, and we're already at

work on these areas.

Finally, as a life scientist,

sometimes I have to be reminded

to not forget the social

sciences, but we also have to be

thinking about how all of these

areas impact our community

health and economic development.

We need to ensure healthy local

economies and prosperous stable

communities, and this requires

understanding both their

internal dynamics and the nature

of their interactions with

national and global systems.

So, this kind of understanding

is the foundation for good

policy advice at community,

state, and national levels.

So, the next steps, we still

have quite a bit of work to do.

A next step will be beginning to

implement these ideas in the

college.

One of the very next steps will

be to have our academic programs

and departments map their

current activities to our

priority themes.

And we are now undertaking

planning for our educational

mission.

What programs we want to grow,

new opportunities, and, of

course, new innovative

approaches to training students.

So, why does all of this matter?

Well, we want to inspire the

next generation of citizens and

scientists.

We want to ensure a healthier

future for our ecosystems and

for humans and the planet in

general by our science and by

training this next generation of

problem solvers.

And we think that solutions are

best identified by cooperation

and collaboration.

We need to ensure that our

structure and the way we use our

resources best allows for that

and even encourages creativity.

So, by being purposeful in

planning, we are all pulling in

the same direction.

So, I want to thank you for your

attention this afternoon.

I've been very pleased to be

here, and thanks for listening

to my talk.

Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]