Reflections in Time: Interview with Tom Bragg, 2004

- [Announcer] Reflections in Time is made possible in part by support from the UNO Alumni Association, fostering a legacy of Alumni giving since 1913.

- The interview series Reflections in Time was begun by the late Professor Paul Borge more than 20 years ago. This new series continues Paul's work and is 00:01:00dedicated to his memory. My name is Jack Newton. I'm retired now, but I'm still active as a Professor Emeritus. I've been on the faculty of UN Omaha since 1960, and I served for 20 years as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. I worked closely with Professor Borge in the development of his original interview series, and I can think of no more fitting tribute to him than to continue this work. The year is 2004. It's a rather dreary day in the month of November, but it's bright and cheerful here in the studio's of KYNE. And I have as my guest today Dr. Tom Bragg from the biology department and more recently from the Graduate Dean's Office. So Tom, welcome, it's good to have you here with us.

- It's a great opportunity for me to talk a little bit about some of the past 00:02:00that I know.

- Great, well, let's start in by learning something about you. Can you tell us, well, where you were born? Where you grew up? Where you went to school? Your educational experiences?

- Well sort of in a nutshell I grew up in a military family. My father was in the service, and, actually, he was in the old horse cavalry before they disbanded, so I grew up on horses and riding horses and the bit. So we spent a lot of time in Kansas during the early years, but we finally settled after World War II after four years in Germany. We lived there for a while. We settled in the Bay Area, which is where I was born. I was born in San Francisco. So most of my junior high school and high school years were spent in the Bay Area of California, which is how I got to California State Polytechnic University, which is where I got my undergraduate degree.

- [Jack] What was your undergraduate degree in?

- Well the degree itself was in business, but I passed through aeronautical engineering for a couple years and decided that wasn't my area and passed 00:03:00quickly through biology because that was going to take too long to graduate. I was in the ROTC at the time and was planning to make the military a career. And business seemed to be an appropriate field at that, for me to complete in so I finished up in business and actually graduated at the top of my class with honors and all that and went in the military. I was in the military for five years.

- [Jack] So that was about, what year did you graduate?

- 1963 was the year I graduated. As I said, with the business with specialization in labor management relations.

- [Jack] So there was still a war going on then.

- Right and I didn't, I was able to participate. Let's put it that way. It had not really picked up at that time. But I went in the military and as an infantryman joined the First Infantry Division and, during the course of the years, spent a year over in Vietnam. And, actually, it was in Vietnam where my real career kind of got a start. There in the newspaper, the Stars and Stripes, 00:04:00is a military publication at least at the time. I think it continues. And I was reading through it one day out in the field and I ran across this word ecology and it defined it. And in an instant I kind of said that's it. That's what I've always wanted to do. And so, eventually, I spent a year in San Francisco after I got out of Vietnam but during that time I applied to Kansas State University which is where the First Infantry Division had been located. So I knew the area, kind of liked it. I wasn't interested in marine biology or the coast. It was far enough from home and all those various things. So I moved out to Kansas State University after Lloyd Hobart there. I'm not sure how reluctant he was but certainly he was taking a business major on as a biologist and--

- [Jack] Did you have a lot of catching up to do?

- I had a lot of catching up to do. I actually was, in the ROTC, I was with the ROTC at University of San Francisco as my last year's assignment in the military. So I took some courses there and managed to catch up. But you never 00:05:00really catch up if you're that far behind. You just do the best you can. But I found the career that was... I just love everything I do right now I can't... I retired when I got the job here. So it took five years to get through Kansas State University which is where I was introduced to prairies and to prairie fires which is the work I do.

- That's pretty exciting stuff and we'll want to spend some time on that a little later. But that's, 'cause I know your interest in that.

- That would be an understatement. Anyway I got my masters and PhD from Kansas State University and that's my background. A real quick tour of my background, if you will.

- [Jack] And that was in the early 70s.

- '74 is when I actually--

- Got your doctoral degree

- got my doctoral degree and came here at the same year.

- [Jack] And your doctoral dissertation I presume dealt with ecology and--

- It was, it had to do with woody plant post fire or post fire woody plant invasion of tall grass prairies. So it involved both burning and a lot of field work and looking at what happens when we don't burn and the different compositions.

- [Jack] Is that in the Flint Hills down there?

- In the Flint Hills of Kansas. Konza Prairie at the time which is a major tall grass prairie research site now was just getting going and Lloyd Holbert was the one that kind of put the whole thing together. And I was there during the early years of that. He was the one that I learned what I learned about fire from as far as being out there and actually conducting prescribed fire. But it was in the Flint Hills of Kansas and some, we're in the tall grass prairie region here. It's just that the substrate the soil is different here. We don't have the rocks but it's all the tall grass prairie ecosystem.

- That's interesting country. Well, we've explored just a little bit about how your interest in biology developed. Oh, I wanna digress for just a second.

- [Tom] Sure, that's what I do all the time. Digressing is my favorite thing.

- Well, you were talking about your time in the military.

- Yeah.

- And obviously Bragg is a famous military name. Were you related to Braxton Bragg of civil war fame at all? I'm not sure fame, infamy maybe.

- I was gonna say infamy is probably more appropriate term but yeah he was a cousin somewhere back when, and actually so is the Attorney General for the South. That's how, my middle name is Braxton. And so Braxton Bragg was the Attorney General for the South. Yeah there is that record, my grandfather came from Alabama to California and that's kind of how we got out here. My grandmother came from Italy. Yep, there is a connection there but as you say it's more of an infamous one than not.

- Well at least he's got a fort named after him.

- He does, he does that. And they, actually he did pretty well in the early in the Mexican War which is where he got his name. It was in the Civil War where he 00:08:00did not do very well. The phrase precipitant retreat comes into mind as one of his activities.

- [Jack] But if I remember correctly he was a good friend of the confederate presidents.

- Oh yes well that--

- [Jack] That helped him a little bit.

- It didn't hurt that's right. But apparently he died crossing a street somewhere in Texas and nobody bothered to pick his body up so infamous is probably a much more appropriate description of that. I hope not to be quite so unfortunate.

- Well, okay, so when you graduated you came directly to UNO?

- Right, there's a little bit of an interesting story there because I was actually in my applications here one of the people on my committee at Kansas State was Ted Barkley and if you knew Ted Barkley he was kind of a different person, really good person, but he approaches things slightly differently. So in 00:09:00my letter of application he said something to the effect since it is typical to put in some negative things about applicants and he went ahead and did that and apparently that got my letter placed on the reject stack according to some people that I visited with about that. And so they were waiting for a faculty member. This was in '74. They were waiting for someone they had wanted to come but he turned them down at the last minute so in mid August which was just before classes start I got a call would I be interested. And you know I was more than interested. It was the only job I had. I'd turned one down within a consulting firm because I just didn't feel I've gone through all this to work in consulting. I wanted to work at a university and so it turned out to be really good for me.

- [Jack] Well not just for you. I think it was a really lucky break for UNO too.

- Well it was. You can be, this is the kind of university where I can do well because I'm not, I don't like to be driven by others which is what happens at 00:10:00large universities. I drive myself sufficiently to take care of all that. I keep plenty busy.

- Well, let's see, I was trying to think. Allwine Hall which is where your office has been and where the biology department's headquartered was not very old, about five years old.

- It was just a few years old. In fact I had a really small little room in the basement of it when I first came here because most of it was occupied by chemistry at the time originally.

- [Jack] Yeah they had the top two floors.

- Right, and so it was relatively new. Of course when you come to a place you don't think of it as new or old it's just the way it is when you get there and so it just was the way it was to me. But, of course, the university has changed tremendously since then, not, Allwine hasn't changed that much but the campus has.

- Well, tell me a little bit about what the university was like back then.

- Well, again I'm looking back and not usually paying a whole lot of attention to what's going on around me other than what I have a focus on. The campus was 00:11:00much smaller of course. We've expanded quite a bit since then. And I think that just the appearance of the campus has changed quite a bit. I think Del Weber put in a major, was able to put in a major effort into getting it look better and of course the Chancellor Belck has added to that with some major additions that has expanded the university considerably. I mean it's just grown and probably the biggest event that I think happened was the dorms, the fact that we have dorms. I think that makes the biggest difference.

- Well, we've been talking about that for years and years before but boy, when they came to fruition, why it was a major event.

- It was a major addition both in getting it done just to get the administration to approve, not our administration but the overall administration, the Board of Regents to approve it. But when it came on campus I think it changed the appearance of the campus. It changed the activity on the campus. And I think it's gonna, I think it's just gonna get bigger we're gonna have more--

- [Jack] It probably changed the student body. Now I haven't, I was retired before then. So I can't talk from personal experience but can you?

- I can't talk, I know that the average age has been declining of the students here, which may or may not reflect that. It may just reflect the fact that the university is maturing. I think there are some that say that, in time, UNO will be larger than UNL, and it's probably not unreasonable given that it's a population center, that we have a great campus, and we have great faculty. Our faculty can compete with anybody. And so I think that the average, the age of the students has declined quite a bit. Although we still serve, the large component of our student body are people, the non traditional students that work full time and all that. That's our role, and that's what we do. And I think we do it very well.

- Well back when I first came here which was almost 15 years before you arrived on the scene our president back then Dr. Bail used to call it the busiest night 00:13:00spot in town because we had so many night classes, and we served those people who were working all day and came in and took classes in the evening.

- I think we still have a fair number, maybe not night but more evening classes, late afternoon, early evening classes. But they're still active if you come here at six or seven o'clock at night don't expect to find parking at least not near any buildings because it's pretty busy.

- When new faculty used to join us they were always surprised by the fact that they often had at least early evening teaching assignments. Did you have that experience too?

- I didn't have a whole lot of that but part of that is because I taught on weekends. Some of my courses, one in particular is a field course and it's much better suited to where you have a whole day. And so because I taught weekends I 00:14:00was, I did not have a whole lot of the evening teaching. But yeah faculty were encouraged one or the other to accommodate people that work five days a week. And so I just, I found out--

- [Jack] It worked better for you to do it on--

- Well, the courses that I taught were more suited to that than an evening. Two, three evenings a week would not have suited itself to a field course.

- Okay, so that's a little bit about what the university was like and what Allwine Hall was like. Did it now a few years later, maybe more than a few, but some years later you mentioned the chemistry department having a lot of the building. They of course moved out to the Durham Science Center. Did that change things for the biology department?

- Well, yes it did, and it gave us a lot more space. A lot of people were restricted in their space. And I think it was around 1980. I only remember because that's about the time we built the house out and we moved. So I remember that roughly at that time. But that was when we moved from relatively small 00:15:00facilities where more faculty had more space. And the reality of it is is more and more faculty are coming in here. A lot of the research needs more space as we get more and more active researchers it's not just a place to work but, in biology in particular, a lot of lab work and space is needed for that, and so having that additional space was critical for some of us. I mean I have a fairly good sized lab, maybe bigger than I should have, but it's just a function of no money to refurbish it. But given the many things I do it's a fairly good sized lab but I've got it full of different things in there. And I think that capability to have a large, a lot more space enabled a lot of our faculty to do more and to be able to do things that they were unable to do prior to that.

- What was the, what was the curriculum like back when you first came here?

- Well, again you kind of focus on your own stuff and not a whole lot on the other stuff. I think it was more the typical botany, zoology kind of things 00:16:00where things were very compartmentalized as research and I think what we have done since in the interim is we've moved from compartmentalization to more integrating the courses so instead of botany and zoology we, in our case as an example, we have biology one which includes botany but it includes other genetics and some other things, and then we have zoology which goes into other aspects of ecology and environmental kinds of things. So I think we've integrated the courses a lot more. But as we added faculty, which is probably one of the bigger differences in biology, we've been able to add more disciplines, more specializations within disciplines I guess. It's not just biologists now. I mean we have we have a molecular cell biology program that is, or basically a biotech section, but we have an environmental studies program right now for undergraduates.

- Could you spend just a sentence or two elaborating on that so that our listeners who may not be familiar with the language you're using will understand better?

- Well, the biotechnology is more of the application of technological information in molecular biology, cell biology and that level of thing. And I don't know a lot about that, but that's one area. The environmental biology deals with all the field strengths. One of the things that we've been able to hang on to here is not get directed entirely to molecular and cell biology. A lot of campuses across the country have gone that way because there's money there. You need money for equipment, then that brings in overhead money for the university, so there's all those benefits. But environmental studies is where you can go out in the field and actually do things in the field. And that doesn't take a lot of money to do that but obviously you have to support the faculty. We have an extremely strong Environmental Studies program, perhaps even better than what's available in Lincoln. I mean there are those of us who think it is better. I'm willing to be--

- [Jack] A little competition, there?

- A little competition. Well, I don't think there is. I think that we do have it, and I think we've been able to retain it. I think that the--

- [Jack] Even with their emphasis in agriculture?

- Yeah, well, see this not agriculture. Our environmental biology is less about agriculture and more about the natural environment or how we manage the natural environment, although agriculture is part of our environment and there are, some of our studies deal with the agricultural environment and how it impacts native animals, for example. But I think we've been focusing on this so we have a very strong program with individuals in each of these disciplines. So we have a very strong environmental studies program and Dr. John McCarty, who's the director of our program, you know is a very strong biologist, has been able to build the program even further from where Roger Sharpe kind of left it off at one point in time.

- Dr. Sharpe, who unfortunately is deceased now.

- [Tom] He started the program.

- He was he was one of the real instigators of that program.

- Right, so the environmental studies program is a very good program. I think it's a strength that UNO has within the biology department, as is biotechnology. And of course we have other strengths too. The information technology. I'm just speaking within our department right here.

- Well, how about particularly in the area that you're less interested in, knowledgeable about, how about cooperation with the Medical Center which is just down the street? Is that pretty strong right now?

- There's, yeah, there are a lot of efforts to try to strengthen that. Biotechnology ties directly within that. Information technology actually does the same thing because information is data and data relates to the human body and elsewhere. A lot of it is tying biology and the Med Center and the ITS, the Information Technology Sector, together in these programs. And there's a lot of that integration that's going on to try to get these programs going and biotechnology is a good example of that. We are hiring a biotechnology specialist and the question is whether he is going to be housed down at the Peter Kiewit Center or here, indicating how closely they are tied together. I'm 00:20:00not sure. It just depends who comes as to where they wanna go, as to where they will actually sit.

- Maybe it's obvious, but what I'm doing is asking you some questions outside of your area of expertise because I figure that with your new title.

- I should know something.

- As Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, you are responsible for research all over the university and you probably are more familiar with some of these areas than you would be otherwise.

- Right, and I am. In fact we have, I do work across the whole university in that capacity, that other capacity of the associate vice chancellor for research component. Because we get grants, we try to to support the grant efforts. We don't get the grants ourselves but we work with the faculty to get them. And what we have is an extremely active faculty across the campus. So it's a huge diversity of information that comes in and some of them are better written than others and some of them are less clear than others and we just have to make sure 00:21:00that what goes out of the university to funding, potential funding sources, at least represents us fairly well, and so we do what we can to try to facilitate that.

- I was going to get into this deeper later, but as long as we're talking about it now let's do it now. Have we been fairly successful?

- We've been very successful. I mean that's almost an understatement. I'm putting together something right now and it's allowing me to kind of look over the past years. So I'm kind of guessing, I haven't put the figures together, I'm guessing in the last five years we have maybe doubled to tripled the amount of money that we have received back on grants. We get overhead money that comes back on grants and the activity is--

- Explain that. What's overhead money?

- Well, when you get grants, get a grant from certain agencies, a certain proportion comes back to the university to support the sort of the administrative back requirements that the--

- The administration, the lighting, the heating, all the other--

- Computers, the whole bit.

- All of the other things.

- The stuff that basically supports our faculty, and so a certain amount of it comes back. That which comes back, a portion of it goes back to the people who actually wrote the grant, and a portion of it goes to the administration. A portion actually stays in Lincoln. So there is a distribution pattern, and the idea is to encourage more research by getting a good portion of it back to the faculty. But that money that comes in is important to universities. It's not as big a part of our budget because we're a relatively small university, given the size of the university and our focuses. I guess our role in the community is less research and more teaching, although we do both. And we have excellent researchers, it's just that our role is not, isn't quite as clear as Lincoln's is and that UNL's is in that. I'm not sure I answered the question or not.

- No, I think you did. I think you've answered it very well. What sort of a, as 00:23:00long as we're talking about that area of your responsibility, what sort of a staff do you have to help you with that?

- Well, and I guess it's worth noting, that this double to triple amount of output has come with the same staff that we've had all along. We're only now looking to hire a third person. We have two full-time staff and then we have a couple of part-time and a couple of graduate assistants at work in the sponsored programs, office of sponsored programs and research. So they've done a huge amount of work. These people, Mary Laura and Nancy Schlesiger, Mary Laura Farnam and Nancy Schlesiger, have been just the backbone of getting this done. And they work very closely with faculty. They're extremely cooperative. I mean, I just, I watch them work all the time and without them this would not have been possible. And as it is we're really pushing them.

- Well, can you describe a little bit for us what their work entails, what sort things they have to do?

- Okay, well generally what they do is they facilitate the granting process. So 00:24:00a faculty member that comes that wants to write a grant to a funding agency, pick any one you want, US Department of Agriculture, or National Science Foundation is a good example, or National Institute of Health, will have to follow certain guidelines. And more often than not they don't always follow the guidelines. And so it becomes the Sponsored Programs Office, Sponsored Programs Office to look at these, to work with the faculty, to get the grants in, to make sure that they meet the criteria, that they also meet the deadlines, and that it is, and that at least meets certain criteria of quality. And then there's the whole administrative part that has to be dealt with, as we have separate forms that have to be filled out within our university because it has to be accounted for. Grants accounting has to be brought into it. So there's a whole layer of administrative work as well as the quality of the work itself. And all this is facilitated by our Sponsored Programs Office. So they're the ones that coordinate this effort and it takes a lot of meeting with faculty sometimes, a 00:25:00lot of suggestions and advice and a lot of running things around. And typical of faculty, and since I am both the faculty and not a faculty, everything I do is last-minute, and so when things come in at the last minute there's big problems it takes a major effort to to actually get that work done and they do it. They're just, I can't say enough how much they worked with the faculty to get this done, even at the last minute.

- Of course somebody has to find out, know, what various agencies, governmental and private, are interested in supporting. And is that part of, is that something that faculty members do on their own or is that something your office gets involved in?

- We're involved to the extent that we support a program that allows them to put names out on different websites so that whenever a grant comes in with a key 00:26:00word that the faculty have directed, it automatically gets, they get a copy of it. And so the Community of Science is what the program we're using right now is called. And a faculty can go on there, log in, and put keywords, and then any time a grant comes out with that particular subject they get a copy of it. So that's, we provide that service for the faculty, or, you know, that's how they find out about the grants. Occasionally we get things that come in individually. You know, grant comes in, it's kind of an oddball, and we take care of getting those out as well. It's fairly automated but we do have to get them trained. And so part of it is training the faculty on using Community of Science, the software package. And part of it is just training them on writing grants and how to do it. It's critical that they get to us early for example, and that's not often what faculty do.

- You don't have though, I suppose that, suppose some of your staff get involved in it, but with such a small staff I don't suppose you do a lot of actual, the 00:27:00sort of thing that a professional technical writer would do in writing a grant.

- No, the, well, there's two components to that. One is our staff doesn't feel comfortable taking a look at faculty's writings but I don't feel uncomfortable doing that so if it really needs it I will do that. But we are limited in what we can do. We, different to like the education and information technology have their own people that are really good at doing that. And we're trying to encourage, and the deans are working as best they can within the budgetary constraints to try to get people that are technical writers that get to it before we actually get it. Because we really can't provide the technical guidance. We can say if it doesn't make sense but we don't know how to make it make sense 'cause we often don't know the subject matter involved. So it's very limited in that aspect of what we do.

- Well, the way we've been talking here and you have your background in science, it's no wonder we have, but we've been talking as primarily or at least 00:28:00implicitly about scientific grants. And obviously there are a lot of other disciplines outside of the science area, social sciences, humanities, business, a lot of other disciplines that could be involved in this.

- There are. Their grants tend to be smaller and not quite as big of a problem to submit, but we're talking about, when I talk about grants or funding, we're talking across the board from every discipline. I may talk about them as scientific project but we do encourage the arts and the music and all the various just in the humanities, all those are important parts of what we do. And we support them as well. It's just that they tend to have, their grants tend to be smaller in nature and less time-consuming, although sometimes even the smallest thing can be the biggest problem and so there are those issues that have to be dealt with. No, when we're talking about research, we should really say research and other humanities related activities. It's not just research in 00:29:00the context of science. Our university supports research, or, you know, enlightened activities across the board.

- Maybe I'm getting a little too technical over this question but we've been talking about grants. The other aspect of funding is sometimes contracts. Do we have anything much in the way of contracts that your office works with?

- Not that our office works with contracts. We don't work that much with contracts, per se. That's more something, at least I'm not familiar, if it is being done it's done at a point where I don't have the--

- I know the medical center would be more likely to have those.

- I know our faculty--

- That's where you have a specific written agreement for what you are going to do right then.

- Right, there are occasionally, a lot of the grants are written like contracts and sometimes we get subcontracts for other person's grants. So a granting 00:30:00agency in Lincoln may give us a subcontract for some of the people in transportation, public administration, or something to work on. So there are that type of a grant. So to the extent that they are part of another grant, yes, that goes through our office as well, because they they have to meet all of our criteria. They have to be tracked the same way. They have to go through grants accounting the same way. And what we do that is not really, proposals and all that, the Nebraska Research Initiative is a project, is a statewide project where the intent is to provide money to encourage research, across the board type of research, that has some economic potential benefit to the state. They're not grants, but they look a lot like grants and the requirements are a lot like grants. So that's one other thing that that our office does.

- [Jack] You wanna mention the history of that, the background a little bit?

- Well, I don't know a whole lot about the background. It was around when I got here, and there basically was money set aside to do that.

- Okay, so it might've been a little, was when Governor Orr proposed a $20 million amount of money that should be set aside for this within the university for the very purpose that you mentioned, as kind of seed money to build up an infrastructure and get people reputations where they then have an easier time getting additional monies elsewhere.

- Just shows that learning goes both ways here.

- [Jack] Oh I had a long discussion on that this morning.

- Oh, I see.

- Professor of physics was telling me about it.

- Yeah I kind of came in when it was already established and didn't know the details of it. The other thing that we do of course is federal proposals where we try to get money from the federal government. It's pork-barrel type of money that, everybody's doing it and you have to do it just in defense of yourself and we've been somewhat successful in getting a few million dollars a year out of that program. So those are other activities that our office supports is the 00:32:00reason I mention them.

- We started talking a while back about changes over the years and one that you've, that hit me that you were talking about here just a few minutes ago when you were talking about well this is a software package that we can use for people to find out who wants this work done and so on, that's something we never would have thought of back when you first came here.

- No, the computers back then were rooms rather than little things on your desk, obviously, and that's added a whole dimension to what we are able to do. There's some analyses now for example that can be done and I'm sure there's a lot of things in arts and other things that can be done that just simply couldn't be done because of the time crunch back then. It's a huge difference but it's allowed us to do a lot more and do it I'll say a lot better, at least it can look a lot better. The problem with computers is they've added work. Now we expect to do a certain level of quality work and that's no longer where you can 00:33:00get by with something that isn't absolutely perfect. You just go back and do it over again.

- Well, I suppose that that affects you also as a researcher yourself because you have, then, the opportunity to do to do much more thorough searches of the literature.

- Searches of the literature and analysis of data in particular. My case, again, I'm speaking as a scientist so I have large volumes of data. I work with plants. My specialty is plant community ecology and the effects of fire in grasslands. And plants don't move, so because they don't move you can collect a lot of information. And so I have huge data sets that would be very difficult to analyze 20 years ago but now they're much more easily analyzed in much more elaborate ways. And so it's added a lot to what we can actually interpret from our information 'cause a lot of my information is relevant to management of natural areas, and so the more I can get out of it the more I can tell people about what they ought to be doing or not doing.

- Let's talk a little bit about that. Your work has, your research work, you spoke of as field work and a lot of it is done, at least the local part of it's done, we'll talk about the part that's not local, too, but the local part of it's done right outside of Omaha here right here in the Allwine Prairie Preserve.

- Right.

- Could you tell us what that prairie preserve is and how it got started and what you do out there?

- In about 1960, Arthur Allwine gave the university a half mile by half mile, a quarter section of land that was farmed. And about 1970, when the person was living there moved off, it was reseeded. All of this is before I came out. It was reseeded to native grasses. And in 1974, when I came in, part of my job was, in the letter that you signed, basically said was to take care of Allwine Prairie. And that's what I've been doing in the past since I've been here. And 00:35:00what we've done since then is we've incorporated a prescribed burn plan which has divided into three parts and we burn one part every year. So there's portions that are burned. So we have a management plan that involves prescribed fire. We've also worked to try to increase the plant diversity that's there. Initially it was just seeded to grasses. But what it is, it's used, let me just back up. What we have now at this point in time is a half mile by half mile section of tall grass, prairie glass, with a huge amount of diversity of plants, and virtually all of the insect species, virtually all of the birds, including some birds that are migratory. And among the insects we have the regal fritillary, which is the butterfly. It's kind of one of those watch species. The grassland birds are very diverse and numerous, as I said. And that's, the grassland birds are declining in numbers, so it's important for that purpose. We have all the small mammals. So we effectively have a site that represents our 00:36:00historic prairie. Even though it's restored site, it has all these components on in there because we've compared with native prairies and we see that it has the same part. And then in 2000, the Allwine Prairie had a small, well it's basically springs that fed a small Creek that were dammed up by the previous owner. And in 2000 we got money from the Nebraska Environmental Trust to remove those dams and restore the creek to their historic drainage and then to reseed it back to grass. So we've gone from this tree wooded farm pond type of thing back to what the prairie and the grassland might have looked like when it was historically in it without trees. And we know that it was without trees. We can go back and read about the area. And so what we have now is a site that represents our natural heritage, but what's important about that is its use as an educational site because it was used by everybody from the scouts to Audubon Society to university, you know both UNL Creighton, the Metro Community 00:37:00Colleges, as well as of course UNO, used this site for a number of things. There's a number of research papers that have come off of the site and are continuing to come off long term studies. I have long-term studies on there that were started in 1976 and they're being continued. And these long-term studies provided really valuable information because they incorporate a variety of climate, which you don't get if you just do something for a short term. And so, and it also provides sort of a service in the sense that it provides information to others about how they might manage land. So it's a very important site for the university but it's a very important site for the Omaha area as an environmental resource center. And we're working to try to expand that. It sits in the, it sort of a sits in the lowland surrounded by hills. And right now developers are looking at those hills to put houses on and so there's a threat now. And so we started in about 1998 or 99. We started what you call the Glacier 00:38:00Creek project. And I don't know if this is the appropriate time to get into that.

- [Jack] Yeah, good, yes, let's do that.

- But I will go ahead and roll into that because that's what I've been involved with, you know, for several years now. Essentially what we're trying to do is work with the developers. Either to acquire land around us so we own the whole surrounding landscape, so that, when you sit in our prairie and look up, you don't see houses but you see prairie, because the prairie will go until the hilltop and then you'd look over the houses on the other side. Plus you would minimize any runoff and things into this area so the Glacier Creek project is to try to establish an entire watershed, a whole drainage area, that is within a grassland system and maintained as that. And then we would try to establish an environmental study center and environmental resource center, combined resource. This is the the goal for this, if we can, if we work down the road. Where anyone with interest in how do we manage land, what do we do, how do we take care of 00:39:00this, that or the other thing, this native property, would be a place that they could go to ask questions. We may not know the answers but we would act as a clearinghouse for sending them out to different people. So the hope would be that we can be an environmental resource center for the Omaha area. Already I work with the city and all their management of their native prairies. They have two native prairies, and work with them on burning and mowing and things that they do, but that's individualized. I want to institutionalize the process so that we have something to continue into the future. And so it's important to have an environmental resource center, and so--

- How large would you envision this becoming?

- Well if you get the whole watershed, it's 160 acres now, and the neighborhood of 500 acres would cover the whole watershed, all the way up to the Big Papillion Creek, so we'd have everything from a wetland all the way up through streams and seeps up into the upland prairie. It'd be a very unique site, nothing like it around here at all. Even though we have small native prairies they don't represent the topographic.

- Would that eventually, though, be surrounded by residential areas?

- Eventually, in fact not all that eventually, it's going to happen fairly quickly, it'll be surrounded by residential areas. But the idea is that it becomes independent of what goes on around the site because we're not affected by runoff. We don't see any significant amount of development next to us. That's the goal, that's the quick goal of Glacier Creek project. And we've been working with the city of Omaha. We actually have this site on the Omaha master park plan so we have the site identified. The city has been involved in trying to acquire funds for it through the federal proposals. They don't have money themselves but they've been working with us and the state senator, Senator Ben Nelson's office has been working with us, to try to acquire money to purchase land and to set it aside. And the developers who, you know, understandably have a goal of their own in mind, have been working with us as well. It's been kind of surprising. I shouldn't say surprising, We never pursued it, so in pursuing it we find that 00:41:00the developers are getting an interest and they understand the value of an environmentally friendly area. And I think that's an important thing that we need to be doing. Often, we forget that if we work together we get a lot further than if we work, butt heads with each other. And I think we're finding that that's going to be working fairly successfully. And we'll see in the end what we get.

- Now if someone, well let's say at another, or even another institution or even here at UNO had a research project that they thought might fit out there, how would they go about approaching? Would they approach you or how would they find out?

- Well, the easiest way would be to approach the department of biology. But if they got on the website, if they got on the biology's website, they'd probably end up with me because I have a separate website for Allwine Prairie that is available. And we have researchers too. In fact we have someone from UCLA who is putting in a geomagnetic facility out there. It's a region that's going from Canada to Texas. And one of the sites they're putting these in the ground sensors to look at magnetism above and below the ground, they're using the 00:42:00Allwine site. And we're trying to tie in with the weather system so that we provide a weather service from that site. Again just some examples of how we do use that site. It's mostly just contacting someone that eventually they get to the director of Allwine Prairie, which would be me, although, in the case of the geomagnetism, it actually started out coming through, I think, the chemistry department or something like that. So the routes vary, but in the end they get to talk to us, and we encourage that type of activity. In fact, that's exactly what we're for. We're not just a site to be set aside.

- [Jack] I presume there has to be some oversight so that people don't do things that interfere with other people.

- Right, and that's actually becoming a problem. We didn't think it would be, but now it's enough use that we're starting to do that. We're in the process of hiring a new manager, and one of that person's responsibilities will be to coordinate the research so we don't have everybody tripping over everybody else 00:43:00out there. It's one of those things you can love to death or research to death and we're going to try to avoid that.

- Well, maybe this is a question that's far too simplistic, but I'm sure that some of our listeners would be interested if you have anything that approaches an answer. Is a fire good or bad?

- Good, and you pretend, you could have predicted that answer.

- [Jack] I could.

- It's good in the context of how it fits in a historical perspective. We use fire because it's a natural tool. It keeps the woody plants out and invigorates the native prairie plants. It's just a natural part of the system. Now, it's obviously bad when it comes to a house, so there are different conditions. Fire is good when used appropriately. It is not a tool that needs to be taken, that can be taken lightly. It's not something you just go out and light a match and hope it burns right. We do a lot of careful work with our fire. I've had many 00:44:00years of experience burning, but also had a lot of training through the Nature Conservancy and some of the federal programs. So it's, fire is a great tool, but it needs to be used properly and with caution. But it's good in the context of managing our particular site.

- How about the natural fires that occur in places like national parks and woodlands of various sorts?

- Again they're natural. They occurred historically. They're good for the system. They may not be good from the perspective of somebody looking at it. Keep in mind, people look at a forest and they see a forest. What they have forgotten is it's taken 100-200 years for that forest to get there, and it got there from the burned area, and if you let it go too long that forest degenerates and looks really bad. But we don't like to burn it down because we don't, we're not around 200 years to see the progress. So the idea of burning is 00:45:00burning in patchy areas so you always have forests somewhere, but you also have forests recovering and looking better elsewhere. It's certainly much better for the wildlife, but obviously I'm going to take a skewed view of this, because fire I think is a natural part of an environment. It's just, when we put people in the picture, it becomes a problem that has to be dealt with.

- Well, it's fascinating stuff anyway.

- [Tom] Oh, yeah, it is.

- Are there a lot of researchers in the country doing this kind of work?

- Yes, there are a lot, particularly in the western states. The coniferous, or there's a lot in the grasslands as well. The grass has been in the tall grass period, for example. Konza prairies has been involved with fire for, since I was down there in the 70s. That was part of the reason for getting the site was to manage it with fire. And fire, of course, is something that is a concern across the globe. You know, I have research in Australia that I work in the Gibson Desert.

- Yeah I was going to get to that next. I would like to get back to you and the work you've done here, but let's talk about that first, briefly, anyhow.

- Well, I sort of weaseled my way into this study. I wanted to go to Australia, 00:46:00and I went enough times until I found someone that had a research project, and they didn't have anyone that was interested in doing the fire work in the vegetation. And so I said, "Well I'll be glad to come out and help." And what it's worked into is they will pay my way over and back, and I work with them in a research project. It's in the Western Australia, which is one of the states in Australia, and it's sort of in what you would call the Outback. It's a really interesting area, very diverse flora, and fauna for that matter. The big picture is they're trying to reintroduce native fauna, and to do that they have to reintroduce the natural fire regime, and they have to get rid of the cats and foxes, which are not native to the site. And so I don't deal with the getting rid of cat and fox problems, but I do deal with the reintroduction of the natural fire regime, what plants do after fire. Which is the same thing I do here.

- [Jack] Sure.

- And because it's a very important, that process is important, because, in 00:47:00recovery from a fire there's one or two years that are good for plant, animals, and after that it's not quite as good, so it needs to reburn again.

- Let's for a minute come back to Omaha.

- [Tom] Sure, if I have to.

- Your move to your current position is fairly recent.

- [Tom] Right.

- And we've talked a little bit about your job as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, but we haven't said anything about your job as Dean for Graduate Studies. And I don't think many people know what that is. What does the Dean for Graduate Studies do?

- Well, first of all, I got into this whole project by accepting the opportunity to be Dean for Graduate Studies which they felt they needed. The research thing happened by coincidence, unplanned by me, and I didn't really think that was going to happen. So in both cases I'm learning. In the Dean for Graduate Studies, the office handles kind of two major areas. One of them is facilitating 00:48:00the process of graduate students applying, going through their coursework, and graduating, and meeting all the criteria, and keeping track that they meet the criteria, because we are accredited and we have to maintain standards, and that's the vehicle that we have to do it. We make sure that each department, you know, does the process right. Of course each department have their own graduate program committees that deal with that. The other part of it has to do with, sort of, the technical part where we have a website where we encourage, you know, it's a recruiting tool, where we have rules that dictate how the Graduate Council that makes the rules and laws, if you will, how they facilitate that. The budget part of it that handles things such as University Committee on Research, such as the, what they call, research triangles, both of which are vehicles to encourage faculty to do research. Those have to be administered somewhere, so the separate section deals with the administrative part of it. The dean just fights fires in between all that stuff, basically.

- [Jack] Well, as a firefighter, it should come naturally to you.

- Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was not an unintentional take on my part, but there's just a lot of things that come up with faculty issues that have concerns and they want to come visit with you about them, and you try to work with them on it. We're all here to do the same thing. We're here to support the faculty who are here to teach students. Because our product are students, and good students help us out in the long run. And so we're all here to facilitate the same thing, so as dean I find myself doing, it's a very diffuse array of jobs. It's just, you don't know what's going to come up next, but you deal with it as best you can. In reality, the staff I have is so good I don't have to worry about most of that. Which is good, because, between the staff of the Graduate College and the staff with the sponsored programs, I have a lot of my time is taken up with doing meetings and things like that that are related to both of them. But with good staff you don't have to worry about not being there all the time. You can rely on them to do the work, and so it's really critical to have 00:50:00that. But the Graduate Studies serves a function that's a little bit difficult to explain, but it's, it has to do with making sure our students meet the criteria so, when they graduate, they have a degree that means something.

- Mm-hmm, and I presume that your coordination with the rest of the university is very strong, then.

- [Tom] In what?

- Well, in the sense that those graduate programs, are University of Nebraska degree programs, not UNO degree or UNL degree programs.

- Right, no. We, yes, that's what the catalog and all the rules lay out exactly what the criteria are, and that's the role of this section is to make sure that they meet those criteria, both in enrollment, in being admitted, because they have to meet certain criteria to be admitted, and then to stay in and to take the right courses, and to meet and graduate.

- So you get together every now and then with your colleagues on other campuses who also have the title Dean for Graduate Studies.

- [Tom] Yes, often more often than we--

- And then there's the Executive Graduate Council.

- [Tom] Right.

- And you meet with that?

- I'm on the Executive Graduate Council, which is kind of, when things are approved at the university level, they go to the Executive Graduate Council as part of the process of getting a final approval, looking at it from the overall, from all the campuses view. Not everything goes the Executive Graduate Council, but those things that are relevant to all the campuses do. And so we've had a few issues. Probably the biggest issue we had most recently is going from the graduate fellow and graduate member, two different statuses of graduate faculty, to one.

- [Jack] I invented that, incidentally, but that's alright.

- It's been a very difficult process. Even in its solution it's not being really resolved. We have a lot of issues. We still haven't quite separated ourselves from it. Well, we've gone full circle, then, because we've done away with it, but in the process--

- Well, it had a very specific purpose back years ago, and that purpose has long since disappeared.

- Right, I think that's the issue, and in fact you--

- And probably nobody even remembers what the purpose was.

- Well, Kearney may reflect that purpose. They still want to retain something like that, because they don't think all their faculty should be considered graduate faculty. They should handle graduate students, so they're part of the reason why we have, kind of, created a two-tiered one tier system, if that makes any sense.

- [Jack] Now as in your role as a faculty member over the years, have you been involved with this, too? Where you, did you serve in graduate councils, or--

- [Tom] Right.

- Go ahead.

- Well, I was just, part of the reason why graduate dean was sort of a natural fit for me was simply because I had been in graduate council many times. I've been graduate program pair, chair, in the department many times. I have a lot of graduate students myself. I've had many over the years. I don't remember how many. So I was involved with that over many years, and so I had some experience in that. And I think that was part of the reason why I was, why this job fit me in particular.

- Yeah, we talk very frequently about a faculty member's role being teaching, research, and service, and oftentimes people, particularly people outside the university, don't realize what that service component is. But there's a lot of legislation and other things that go on within something like the Graduate Council that determines how you govern yourself.

- And it makes a big difference what they do, and so it's important that it be done properly. Because once it gets, you know, put in concrete in a rule somewhere, it takes a little bigger effort to get rid of it. But, yeah, there's this, the teaching, research, and service. When you, this is kind of, I'm just seeing this, when you first come in, research is kind of the biggest thing you do as a new faculty member. And then you start adding a little bit of service to that, and of course I should say research and teaching. The two things together--

- [Jack] Right, teaching is a given.

- Teaching kind of goes throughout,

- Everybody does it.- Right. But research is important, and then you start adding service. And as you get to be more senior, I think it's the 00:54:00responsibility, and, again, this is my own personal view of this, senior faculty to do a lot of the service so that the new faculty can focus on the research. Not everybody agrees with that, of course, but the service is a major component, as you said. It has to be done for things to function properly, and I think there's some benefit for giving this young faculty, the newer faculty anyway, relieving them of having to do that Because it needs to be done by somebody, and the people have been around longer probably the better ones to do it.

- Well, before we quit here, we're talking about service, and we're talking about university service. Serving on committees and legislative procedures and so on, but you've done a good bit of other kinds of service to your profession, haven't you? Serving on various boards and so on. Could you mention a little bit about that?

- Well, being a person that can't say no, I get involved with a lot of things. So I've been on the board of directors at Fontenelle Forest, which is a local 00:55:00nature preserve. I've been on the board of directors of the Nature Conservancy.

- [Jack] What's the--

- The nature conservancy--

- [Jack] I know what it is, but I'm asking you so the other people--

- The Nature Conservancy is an international organization that essentially is designed to protect, to save natural places. They have changed over the years with their focuses, but each state has their own board of directors and has their own organization. And so I was involved, because I've been involved with a lot of work that is directly relevant to managing--

- They do things like buying up land and giving it to the state.

- They buy land, or they get... Yeah, they try not to own a lot of land that they take care of, because that diverts a lot of the resources. But again that really gets in the technical part of what they're doing.

- So you buy it and give it away, essentially.

- They're protecting land in one way or another.

- Buy rights to and various--

- Right. Somehow they own it so they don't have to worry about it.

- Right.

- And then the Great Plains, the Center for Great Plains Studies is another one I've been involved with. A lot of different things that I've had the opportunity to work on. I just have a lot of interests. I kind of retired when I got my job 00:56:00here, so I, you know, I just don't know when to say no. And it's been a problem at times, but I love what I do and I plan to keep doing it forever. I'm gonna, in my father's words, I'm gonna die with my boots on.

- Well, I guess along with that I should ask you a question. Your hair's a little grayer than I remember it being when you first came here.

- [Tom] Funny thing, isn't it.

- Have you got a, have you thought of somebody who would be maintaining the Allwine Prairie Preserve after you do retire?

- Well, I don't plan to retire, but I have thought of not doing that forever. Yeah, we're actually kind of grooming different people to do it now. We have a couple people that are, have worked their way in. John McCarty is one but Larissa Wolfinbarger is one that is probably more actively involved. She was manager at the preserve. She took a job with the department now, so she had to drop the management job. But she still has an interest in it, and I think we need to groom someone to do that. I think, in the end, we're going to have to 00:57:00have a manager that deals with the fire, and then a director that deals with the administration of it. I do both and it's tough to do both to keep trained with fire and do the administrative.

- [Jack] It's a big job, yeah.

- Although, it's a lot of fun to be a pyro ecologist.

- [Jack] It gets pretty exciting.

- Oh, yeah. Yeah, we burn three times a year.

- [Jack] And you sure get a lot of students who are interested.

- Yep, well I teach a fire ecology course and that's part of it. And so we do get a lot of student interest in it. Plus we work with volunteers, though we work very cautiously with them.

- Well I think we're just about at the end of our time, so I want to thank you for taking time with us this afternoon.

- [Tom] Thanks for the opportunity.

- We've enjoyed it very much. And to our audience, thank you for joining us today in the visit with dr. Tom Bragg, who's a longtime member of the faculty of biology at UN Omaha and the new Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean for Graduate Studies. We've been taking a look at some of the history of the university as seen through the eyes of the people that make the history. This is 00:58:00Jack Newton inviting you to join us again in the series we call Reflections in Time.

- [Announcer] Reflections in Time is made possible in part by support from the UNO Alumni Association, fostering a legacy of Alumni giving since 1913.