From the Dean – Spring 2019

I have been entrusted with something very special — this world-class College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. It’s truly an awesome responsibility. I pledge to honor that trust and to work every day to enable the fullest success of our students, faculty and staff.

It’s about no less than continuing to excel in the more than 161-year-old land-grant tradition of this college — to enliven the human spirit through education; to better our communities and industries through research-based extension; to sustain and improve the natural resources from which we draw agricultural productivity — our food, feed, fiber and energy; to discover what remains hidden in the underlying life and social sciences that explain how our world works; and, through insightful science, to develop the technologies that draw value from those resources.

We accomplish that by continuing to deploy something I’ve begun to call the “CALS advantage,” which is true for our faculty and staff but especially to our students. The CALS advantage inspires them to:

• Advocate, finding their voice for what they know to be important;
• Innovate, having an entrepreneurial mindset in all things;
• Master their chosen discipline, so they also can be effective contributors to multidisciplinary work; and
• Become a leader. Because when CALS people do all these things, they lead!

I am humbled by this great opportunity and full of hope that the CALS advantage will enable us to act boldly and to reach farther. Please let me know what you’re thinking or hearing about our college.

As Nobel Prize laureate and Iowan Norman Borlaug once said: “Reach for the stars. And although you will never touch them, if you reach hard enough, you will find that you get a little star dust on your hands in the process.”

Daniel J. Robison

Endowed Dean’s Chair, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Director, Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station