Gone Off-Course: Rebuilding a College and Experiment Station.

The United States housing bubble, in which prices peaked in early 2006 then reached new lows in 2012, affected over half of U.S. states, but was most pronounced in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona. In Nevada, one in every seven homes was vacant. In Reno, the median home sale price peaked at $350,000 in late, but by the spring of 2010, it was $171,900, and still falling. State legislature cuts to the University of Nevada Reno (UNR) meant a 7% university budget shortfall. However, losses inflicted upon the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology, and Natural Resources (CABNR) were much heavier. The Department of Resource Economics and the Department of Animal Biotechnology were closed. Sixty-one positions were eliminated across CABNR/NAES, totaling $5,616,000 in salary. An additional approximately $450,000 was cut as remaining faculty were converted from 12 month to 9 month contracts. Five academic programs were eliminated. From 2009 to 2013, state contributions to NAES fell from $9.7 million to $3.7 million, and there were sustained attempts to sell off NAES assets. Faculty and staff morale was abysmal. Why did the college and experiment station suffer so disproportionately? A curricular review found CABNR to be underperforming on metrics, and cited a 2009 report indicating that agricultural contribution to state GDP was only 0.2%. The Department of Resource Economics faculty challenged the report for using incorrect or misleading data. A more circumspect view is that the college and experiment station had long ago broken ties with major constituents as part of internal university politics, and had lost much of their support by the time the deep cuts arrived. Since 2014, 23 faculty have been hired, many in disciplines that haven’t existed for decades, with a new wave of recruitments to start this fall. Structural changes are being made as well, with emphasis on collaborative work and outreach. We are rebuilding not only the college and experiment station, but our ties to constituents.