A college athlete with a rural upbringing becomes one of the key craftsmen in shaping animal science and agriculture. Join us in this riveting conversation with Dr. Ken White, a pioneer in animal medicine and a leader at Utah State University. Hear his journey from a football scholarship to carving new paths in the world of animal science. Discover how his tireless dedication and passion have led to the development of vital programs at Utah State University such as the 'two plus two' and the newly launched College of Veterinary Medicine.
Ever wondered how research can lead to groundbreaking discoveries in agriculture? In this episode, we journey through the fascinating world of cloning research with Dr. White. Revisiting his Eureka moment that led to the first successful cloning of a mule, underscoring the power of persistence, the beauty of unexpected outcomes, and the essential role of research.
Finally, we explore the immense value of life and shared experiences. Dr. White reflects on his upbringing, the support of his family, and how these factors played a pivotal role in his journey in research. We also delve into the transformative power of mentorship and research in agriculture. So, join us as we celebrate the undeniably significant role of farmers, ranchers, and all those who contribute to our society.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hey everybody, this is Ethan Gillum with Utah State
University Extension, down herein Seviere County, utah.
I'm your host on Echoes of theLand Tradition, agriculture,
livestock and Expertise.
This week we have the VP ofExtension for Utah State
University, dr Ken White, onwith us.
Stick around.
You are going to hear someawesome, interesting stories
(00:39):
from someone who has beenintegral in shaping our program
into what it is today.
All right, everybody.
So you know, the purpose ofthis podcast is to connect you
with experts, and not onlyexperts in ag, but also the
people that are kind of leadingthe charge and steering the ship
, and that's what we're doingtoday.
(00:59):
We've brought in someone prettyspecial for our program.
He's done a lot in our field,but I'll let him introduce
himself and then we telleveryone what you do for the
college and what you're incharge of, just so they can get
an idea.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Sure be happy to.
I'm Ken White.
I've been at Utah StateUniversity since 1991.
Prior to that I was on thefaculty at Louisiana State
University.
I currently am the vicepresident for USU Extension, so
I oversee all of the Extensionprograms throughout the state of
Utah.
I'm also the dean of theCollege of Agriculture and
(01:37):
Applied Sciences.
I oversee all the academicprograms in that college.
And then my third hat is thatI'm the director of the Utah
Agricultural Experiment Station,which means we receive federal
monies they oftentimes refer toas hatch dollars or
(02:00):
multi-regional project dollarsthat come in and those dollars
are committed to facultysalaries on faculty that do
research, and primarily inagriculture and natural
resources, but also family andcommunity.
We have dollars that impactevery college on campus except
(02:24):
two.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
I've been asked this a couple of times what's the
difference between the AgExperiment Station and what
Extension does?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, ag Experiment Station really focuses strictly
100% on research.
Research can be basic in natureor it could be applied in
nature.
It's not necessarily totallyindependent.
We have Extension faculty thatalso have research appointments
(02:55):
and so in some cases those areprimarily faculty that are in
academic units on campus thathave high Extension assignments.
So Extension is more thecommunity-based programs, the
non-degree education programs inthe state that are designed to
(03:20):
meet community needs.
And also, I think an importantthing to keep in mind with the
Experiment Station is that allof that research is supposed to
be applicable, to impact in apositive way or answer important
(03:40):
questions for agriculture,natural resources, relationships
, financial issues, all thosethings that really impact people
throughout the state of Utah.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
You're spread out, I'm spread out.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I put a lot of miles on my truck.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
So you, as I mean, where do you think most of your
time is demanded right now?
I mean, I know the collegeprobably sends you everywhere.
You send yourself everywhereoverseeing a lot, but as far as
needs of the college now we'vegone through a transition, kind
of in a new phase now, and theag industry is always changing.
(04:23):
Where do you see a lot of yourtime being spent?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, to be honest, it's really split probably the
most between Extension and thecollege efforts.
I have administrative dutieswith the Experiment Station but
once we make those commitmentsof research dollars they either
(04:46):
go to help fund facultypositions or a small operating
budgets or research budgets.
That mainly.
I respond to any issues thatneed to be problems that need to
be solved or fireman Fireman.
I'm not going to put things out,but with the college and an
(05:09):
extension, there are alwaysissues that are coming up,
emerging issues in the statethat need to be addressed within
communities, and we moveresources around a little bit,
but we're always trying to stayon top and ahead of what the
next emerging.
I'll give you an example.
When I first was appointed tothis position in 2013, one of
(05:33):
the things that I immediatelybegan to realize was that the
state of East job for no faultof anybody, but it appeared that
we were having some issues andproblems with opioids and the
dependency in the state.
I had set aside again becauseof some retirements and you'll
(05:59):
understand that when we havepeople retire, they have a
salary that's larger than whatwe need to bring on a new
faculty member.
Because of the difference insalary ranges, I had accumulated
some salary dollars.
I did an analysis with a personat the University of Utah who
(06:23):
was in public medicine at thetime he's since left along with
the health department andidentified the nine counties
that seem to have the biggestissues.
I redirected those dollars tocreate five new extension
positions that I assigned tothose nine counties throughout
(06:47):
the state of Utah.
We're not in a position to beable to do that often, but in
that case it was really animportant issue that we get in
front of.
Since that time, thosepositions have been responsible
(07:10):
for bringing millions andmillions of dollars into the
state of Utah to help developprogramming, help with programs
such as training people on howto use Naloxol and all those
types of things, and as well aspartnering some of the community
resources that are availablefor families and individuals
(07:32):
that have those issues.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Well, I've seen those .
Even with the short time thatI've been here, I've seen those
programs.
There's one coming up heredirectly in extension there's an
opioid rancher workshop.
I believe it's here in just aweek or two.
It's coming up directly.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Exactly.
I think.
The one thing that I think isimportant for people to
understand is USU Extension is agreat partner.
We don't necessarily alwayshave all the resources to be
able to meet every need, but wepartner with people who can help
us address some of these.
One of the things that's beenreally brought to the forefront
(08:15):
of my mind is mental healthissues.
We've partnered with the UtahDepartment of Agriculture and
Food on a mental health programthat has provided funding for
farmers and ranchers.
That's your background.
I have come from that area.
(08:38):
In my family as well.
There are people that have alot of pride and it's a very
difficult thing sometimes forthem to admit that they're
having problems.
Last I saw, this program iscommitted about, I think, close
(08:59):
to over $200,000 in getting someof the farmers and ranchers
access to therapists that canhelp, counselors that can visit
with them and talk through someof these issues and help give
them some tools to be able toaddress.
I tell people that I meet Idon't know that there's an
industry that has more risk andgamble than being a farmer.
(09:24):
Being a farmer or rancher, youcan't count on almost anything
and everything's variable andyou basically have no control
over the weather, the amount ofwater, nothing, prices, and so
it's understandable that that'sa high anxiety, high stress
(09:45):
career.
It obviously has some fantasticbenefits, but that's just a
couple of examples of areaswhere we've tried to partner
with people to address reallysome important problems.
It's not a group of peopleagain, this will ring true, I
think, when I say it but it'snot a group of people that will
(10:07):
sit around and complain topeople about some of the issues
that they face.
You respect that, but you alsounderstand that sometimes you've
got to reach out a littledifferently to be able to
provide a hand of help.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
I think we see the importance.
I mean, we obviously see theimportance of how much we depend
on those people as a nation andhow much we really rely on them
being able to get up everymorning and face whatever's
thrown their way to get thatcommodity pushed through the
system.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Absolutely.
They're really the unsungheroes.
I mean, covid brought that tothe forefront of most people.
Unfortunately, there's adeclining percentage of people
in the country that actuallyhave any relationship to
agriculture production.
There's a higher percentage,growing percentage, that really
(11:07):
don't understand everything thatgoes into providing that food
that's available in the shelvesof the local supermarket or
farmer's market or what have you.
And when COVID hit and packingfacilities, processing
facilities shut down, I mean,even this past summer when we
(11:28):
had avian influenza hit ourstate, how long did it take
before Oakdale and some of thoseplaces closed down?
Before you couldn't get anyeggs, or if you could, they were
$6 and $7 a dozen.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
They learn very quickly how short that is.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It's a very vulnerable supply chain and
those folks are dependent on alot of other people and
resources to be able to make ithappen.
Yeah, it's a very vulnerablesupply chain and that we need to
in some ways rethink and figureout local processing facilities
(12:09):
, make things a little moreavailable and even provide some
of our farmers and ranchers withthe opportunity to do a lot
more direct marketing to theirend customers.
Not only reinforces the publicthese days really wants to know
a lot more about where theirfood comes from and the
(12:30):
associated safety of it and also, I think, from our producer's
standpoint, it gives them anopportunity to capture more of
that total end of the roadrevenue for the products that,
frankly, they put in themajority the energy they take
the majority the risk andoftentimes, in the current model
(12:53):
, they get the least amount.
Yeah, so I think some of thethings as we move forward we
need to really rethink and buildsupply chains that allow a more
secure supply chain, as well asone that allows the person who
is invested the most to be ableto receive the largest
(13:16):
percentage of the compensation.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Well, that's how we would keep them alive, hopefully
Correct.
I mean, I think the dairies area perfect example of that,
where you talk about most of theprocessing, I mean they take it
almost to the end.
And if folks knew in the UnitedStates alone, you know how
short our milk supply is.
You know, um, and and milk'snot only in a jug.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
No, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
And if that shuts down for a day, that the what it
would do to the nation is justI don't think I mean.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I don't think you're absolutely right.
I don't think people realizethe fantastic protein source
that is for most Americans, andyou know you're talking not only
the liquid milk, but yogurts,cheese, cottage cheese, I mean
you name it, all of it.
It's all involved in that milkand um and it's a and.
(14:10):
As I said, there's very fewprotein sources there is
economical as milk and milkproducts, so it's very important
.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, aside of that, there's very well prepared
people in extension.
There's people that come fromthese backgrounds, that have
educated, themselves, beeneducated and now are trying to
pay it back.
And that's the way I seeextension is.
It's a really good job to beable to pay back absolutely
those communities, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I mean I tell potential uh extension
candidates uh for our positions,as well as um students that are
considering it that extensionis really a very rewarding, it's
very demanding and it's andit's a very it's a high energy
uh job.
(14:57):
It's one that takes a lot ofstamina because you know uh
being a faculty member out inthe community, oftentimes you're
on the job, whether you know itor not, every day and um, but
what the other side of that cointhat goes with that is that
(15:18):
it's it.
There are very few jobs whereyou can see an immediate return
on the investment of your timeand energy, and it's extremely
rewarding to be able to provideinformation to somebody who uses
it and and betters their lives,as well as their family, almost
immediately.
And so it's it's really atremendous uh career and it's um
(15:41):
a very rewarding career foranybody that's that's interested
in in being someone who reallyhas a life and a career of
public service and and making animpact in the community.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And I think you know the perfect example is last
night and I told you, I got, um,I got pulled over last night by
one of the county county copsand he, um, we got to talk in
because thankfully I wasn't intoo much trouble and and he said
, well, who are you?
Where are you from?
Are you from Logan?
I said, well, yeah, but I moveddown here and I, you know, I'm
the new ag extension agent.
(16:15):
He said, oh, really, so youtook over for for the previous
one?
And I said yeah, and he said man, he said him and his wife
worked their butts off for 30years down here, I mean, and he
knew exactly who they were.
He was a producer himself andhe's, and he just had nothing
but good things to say.
Awesome Cause, cause he saw,you know, and I guess that maybe
(16:37):
they don't realize that, butyou know, here's a guy I
wouldn't even know he was aproducer and he's, and he's
singing the accolades of whatthese people have done, because
it was their, their investmentin life, it was their reward,
and people noticed that.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Absolutely Very helpful in the community and
that's really rewarding to hearthose types of stories.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Where you're at right now is you know when, when you,
when you started your collegecareer and and maybe it'll help
if you give us just a little bitof background on on your
upbringing, um and so amultifaceted question.
But you know where you camefrom, how you started life and
and what you decided to study.
Is this where you saw yourselfwanting to be what you're doing
(17:21):
now?
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
I don't think.
No, I'm totally honest.
No, I never would have imaginedthat I'm in the position I'm in
today.
Um, yeah, I was.
I was born and raised in in theBay Area of California.
At that time, uh, the communityI was from was extremely rural.
(17:46):
Today it's, you know, you wouldconsider it urban.
Um, you know, my parents uh,wanted to live out and and have
that type of of lifestyle and wehad a very small dairy my, my,
actually my brother showedJersey cows and we had the
(18:06):
California grant at GrandChampion.
Uh, dairy Cow, yeah, jerseyDairy Cow, and um, and, and so I
was always grown up, raised andand grew up with animals.
Um, you know, it wasn't verylong in my lifetime when, um,
which is a kind of a familiarstory out in this part of
(18:29):
California where we kind of gotenclosed by a bunch of houses
and and my parents had to, hadto sell things off and and I
think from that early upbringingI felt really compelled to that
.
I, you know passion for raisinganimals and and and originally,
(18:49):
uh, I I went off to school.
I actually was a, uh,intercollegiate student athlete,
I played football, and that'show I was able to get my
undergraduate degree is I.
I went to school on a, on afootball scholarship and um, and
during that process I settledinto animal science as my, my
(19:12):
bachelor's degree and, you know,not too long into my college
football playing career, Irealized, you know, I probably
need to spend a little bit moretime in books and academics, um,
and and so I remember the lastcouple of years of my academic
program.
(19:32):
There was a new technology that, at that time, was like cutting
edge state of the art and, andit was uh embryo transfer.
And I thought it was so amazingthat you could take uh, a
really high quality uh femaleanimal, and uh treat her in a
(19:54):
way that uh, that cow wouldwould produce multiple embryos.
You could recover them from herand then you could transfer
each one of those embryos to asurrogate animal and thereby
produce a larger number of highquality offspring.
And so, based on thatconversation, I went to my uh,
(20:17):
my the faculty member, uh, whowas reproductive biologist, and
asked him you know where wouldbe the the best place to go to
cause, and I guess I should alsofeel feel in the gap that I had
applied uh to veterinary schooland and because I was still a
(20:39):
California resident, although Iwas living in Utah, uh, going to
school, uh, my inner graduatein Utah, the only school I could
apply to was university collegeat Fort New Davis and it it was
at the time, and continues tobe, a highly sought after that
school, highly competitive.
(20:59):
And you know, with my grades,having played football and I
still I had a pretty good uhgrade point average, but not
sufficient.
You know, you were you'relooking at 4.0s and 3.9s and
stuff and and I was a fewnotches below that, so I didn't
get accepted.
So I had this conversation withmy reproduction uh professor to
(21:21):
say, well, if I want to learnabout this, um, where was the
best place I could go to learnabout?
And and he, he mentioned aprogram at Colorado state and
but he also said, if you reallywant to the guy that I've heard
of the most and has really, uh,outstanding reputation and
(21:46):
embryology you want to go touniversity, california davis,
which was great place is thesame place.
So I applied, I was accepted,and I Want to davis and earn the
master's degree in animalscience, thinking that when I
finish my master's degree Iwould go ahead and apply to
veterinary school and I wouldhave a much better chance of
(22:07):
getting in the veterinary school.
Well, within that two yearswhile I was working master's
degree I got so enthused aboutthe research and you know, again
, it's one of those passions, Ithink, that students sometimes
they can't predict, but you getjust get Sucked in to the idea
(22:27):
and it was so remarkable to beable to look at those embryos
and and be able to realize thatthat time we were splitting
embryos and half to make twinsand everything was really so
cool and that would eventuallydevelop into a full groom Cav.
And so I decided I, you know I'dset the I and I also interacted
(22:53):
with Veterinarians that weregoing to school and stuff, and
and I thought, okay, I'mactually having a lot of fun
doing this research thing.
And so I decided.
Then I stayed at davis foranother four years and and and
and completed my, my doctorateand systemic physiology with a
(23:18):
focus in reproduction andembryology, and and I became
finished up and my first facultyposition was an assistant
professor professor at louisianastate university.
I got the job offer and I and Iwell, for before the interview
I had to go and look on a map tofigure out where was that yeah?
(23:39):
and and so we we got the jobmoved down there and Really had
a fantastic experience down inbaton Rouge and look, south east
louisiana in general was just.
We made some wonderful lifelongfriends that I still that's
saying and sending, I still keepin contact with.
(24:00):
But it also launched my careerin a big way and I started
getting federal grants to doresearch and and then A job
opening came open and keepopening at us, you and a couple
other places.
I applied for him, interviewedfor all three of those positions
(24:22):
and then, having been exposedto the beauty of utah state
university, when I got the offerfrom us you, I jumped on it,
immediately accepted it andMoved up there, but I never.
So that's how I got here and Ialways and I'm a researcher, lab
(24:44):
rat and I've always doneresearch.
I've done research in horses,I've done research in when I was
at lsu, some swine embryoresearch, sheep and goat
research and and certainly mightmy go to has always been cattle
research, but there and and andbeef cattle reproduction and
(25:10):
embryo embryology.
But I yeah, I kind of about Iguess was 2008 we had a
department had thatunfortunately Got pancreatic
cancer and the animal there inveterinary sciences department
at us.
You and he passed away and Iand the department, the college
(25:36):
did a national search for a newhead and I had three or four my
colleagues in the departmentthat said you know, you really
should Put your hat and we needsomebody that can, you know,
lead us and can take us where weneed to go.
And so I applied and wasSelected to be the department
(26:00):
head in 2008 and really I hadalways felt like that I would be
a researcher.
I didn't want and I neverlooked to be an administrator
and it's, you know, the joke oncampuses.
You know you make the decisionto go to the dark side yeah,
exactly when you do that yeahand and yet I guess, when I
(26:24):
couple, opportunities createdthemselves.
One was that I had the chance to.
You know, a lot of studentswent through my reproduction
class.
I taught the, the upperdivision, animal reproduction,
and it was a required course,and a lot of those kids were
planning on going to vet schooland they were, you tell,
(26:45):
residents and a lot of fantasticstudents I felt like, based on
my interaction with them in thein the class, would make
excellent veterinarians and theyeither wouldn't get accepted
because the low numbersavailable seats or, if they got
accepted, they had to go out ofstate and pay, you know, upwards
(27:08):
of $80,000 a year, you know, toget their education you do the
math for years of $80,000.
That's a huge oh yeah.
So the opportunity to presentit as itself, and I had a lot of
conversations with legislatorsin the state of Utah and we were
(27:29):
able to develop a model thatestablished a partnership
between ourselves and Washingtonstate university, and that's
when we created the school of.
At the time, and I think it wasabout 2011 week, we see we took
on our first class of studentsin the US you school of
(27:53):
veterinary medicine and thestudents would come to us.
You spend the first two years Atin in Logan, at us, you in the
in the veterinary DVM, drveterinary medicine curriculum,
and then, after those first twoyears, they would transfer up to
pulmon and finish their lasttwo years in pulmon, washington
(28:14):
and Washington state university,and it created 30 new slots.
That school of veterinarymedicine had 30 seats that were
available to students 20 fromUtah and at least 10 from, you
know, non resident students, and, and that was just an eye
(28:36):
opening experience for me thathelped me realize the type of an
impact that a goodadministrator could have, not
only on the department in theshort run, but in the whole
community, in almost ingenerational impacts on On
(29:01):
society.
And so you know that's one ofour person who held my position,
was appointed to be the provostand, like you know, the
positions opened up anothernational search and I was
Selected in 2013 to my currentposition.
So, and then since that time,we've created that two plus two
(29:25):
is now trans, is now in theprocess of transforming to a
Four year independent back inschool.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
That you know, there, you yeah, so yeah, chapter two
was to.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
We developed a program full brought, developed
a plan to be able to transitionto two plus two into a four year
and and the state legislaturewas gracious enough our
legislators realized that was animportant need for Utah to be
(30:01):
able to have access to thequality animal health care
that's necessary for agricultureto expand in Utah and I believe
it was in the.
The state legislature was verymuch in the process of creating
(30:25):
a four year independent.
So we're going to haveeventually we'll have 80 seats
in that college, veterinarymedicine.
It's now it, when it's whenit's fully functional, which
we're hoping, that the firststudents will come in and
That'll be spun out as an.
It's currently an independentcollege.
(30:46):
It's out from underneath mycollege and they have a new dean
of that college, doctor derkvan der Waal, who just by chance
, I've I've been Derk's apersonal friend.
I actually hired him as ohreally in the 80 vs department
from the University ofPennsylvania vet school when we
(31:07):
created the two plus two.
I had known him derk was one ofmy collaborators when we did
the mule cloning project in theearly 2000s and so he'll be a
fantastic I think he's going tobe a fantastic dean of the
college of veterinary medicineat USU.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I thought of a couple things while you were talking
about that development and youknow my and you know I'm
obviously, but my direct bosshas told me his experience
because he was in yourreproduction class and just so
the folks understand of thequality of personnel that are in
agriculture and working for thecollege my boss, the director
(31:49):
of ag and natural resources,said that was one of his hardest
classes he ever took at UtahState.
You know, but that's, that'squality and that's that's a good
thing.
When Utah State came upactually my wife is the one who
suggested Utah State for themaster's program Utah State
itself is extremely recognizedin the nation as an agricultural
(32:12):
.
It is it is.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
I'm not sure that I'm not sure that Utahns in general
understand the high qualityeducation and the respect that
some of the programs that UtahState have nationally and
worldwide.
And you're right, our, some ofour agriculture programs are
(32:37):
frankly right up there, the bestin the country.
And I think our they're justagain, people in Utah need to be
, you know, hold her head highbecause we're frankly second to
none.
And you know, the students thatcome up, I know, and the and
(33:00):
I'll just speak for my college,but I know this is true and most
, if not all, of the colleges onon USU campus.
But you know, I expect ourfaculty to give all of our just
as I did in that reproductionclass when I taught it I expect
them to give the students, ourstudents, that the top, best
(33:21):
quality education, give thosestudents everything that they
need as far as information andlearning to be successful in
their chosen careers.
And and we have faculty, they'recommitted to that and we'll
spend the time and energynecessary to be able to train
that and teach that nextgeneration of student that can.
(33:44):
You know, I think a facultymember, a good faculty member,
is always looking that everystudent that they teach has the
potential to be theirreplacement, and so I think it
brings it a little bit home andpersonalizes it.
If, when you're, when you havestudents in your class, and you
(34:06):
look at every one of thosestudents and you say sorry, I
think which one of you is goingto be my replacement, I make
darn sure you actually alreadyand actually better prepared
than what I was when I, when Istarted my career.
And and I think that's that wedeliver that to our students at
Utah State University and andthat's the expectation, and I
(34:29):
hope that people throughout thestate of Utah appreciate the
fact that they have that levelof quality access to that level
of quality education right herein Utah.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Some of this out to me in in the ad, vs and in the
ag program was talking toprofessors.
You know, before you go tocollege and my dad used to say
this you know, like they don'tcare.
You know, if you don't show upto class, they don't care.
If you know you're on, you'rein charge of your own ship.
Well, I didn't have thatexperience at Utah State.
They definitely.
(35:03):
You know, when you're in amaster's program, you're you
better get your work done andand you're expected to be able
to do homework and and getyourself dressed and all that
stuff.
But, um, one that stood out tome and I and I, like I said, all
of my professors were excellent, uh, but one of the classes I
enjoyed the most was with DrRickards and sitting in his
class, because it was a class ofsix and he put us in a little
(35:26):
conference room.
That's where we would meet andit was a discussion based class
and I've never felt like I gotsuch good one on one.
You know his office door wasalways open and you could just
tell that he didn't want to walkout of that room until he felt
like, do you actually understand?
Don't just tell me, yes, Do youunderstand?
(35:47):
And if you don't, let's comeback to it.
And and we didn't really moveon until he felt like um topics
were thoroughly covered andsometimes they were extremely
thoroughly covered, but therewas that's all learned very well
.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
That's particularly uh rewarding for me to hear that
Cause.
I don't know if you realizethis or not, but actually Dr
Rickards was a was a PhD, one ofmy PhD students when.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
I was at LSU.
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
He did come from LSU, that's right he finished his
PhD, I was his, I was his, hismentor at LSU.
He then went on to a facultyposition at a medical school in
Oklahoma, that's right, and Ithink, um, it was after uh, I
think I don't remember exactlywhat year he came to USU, but I
(36:35):
know he but we.
He applied for a position andand was, was selected and
probably came to USU in the inthe mid nine 1990s probably yeah
.
He's yeah, he's academicallyrelated to me.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, there you go, like, see and that, and that's
the beauty of, that's the beautyof the system, that's the
beauty of the especially, in myopinion, the ag world, because I
think you make friends on morethan just academic.
You know um, the academic level, you know you're, you're
working with these people,you're in the lab with these
people, you're in the field withthese people and then seeing
(37:13):
their success, I'm assuming, isyeah, I mean particularly in
research.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
I mean there's there's a lot of failures in
research.
I mean I've got a.
I got a, a sign in in one of myoffices that it's a quote from
Einstein and it and it I'llparaphrase.
It says something like you knowif, if, if research was easy,
everybody'd be doing it Exactly.
(37:38):
And and that's really true, andI think you know, whenever you
get uh in, whether you're amaster's student, a PhD, or
you're the the, the principalinvestigator of the research
project, you have to realizethat there's going to be a lot
of failures, and you're you'rebasically looking for the
successes and the experiments.
(38:00):
If they're designed uhcorrectly, they'll give you the
right outcome.
The outcome may not be what youhad expected or planned for,
but they give you the right ed.
There's an outcome and it's theright one.
And then you that leads thenext step in in in the research.
Yeah, and if you do it that way, then you, you can make
(38:23):
conclusions that will withstandthe test of time.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
And that is, that is the incredible part, especially
with the tools that people havethat we have at our disposal now
, being able to have just a pileof data and go well, that's not
what I expected, but wow.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
You know, if we got to have a little luck, you got
to have a whole lot ofperseverance and you got, and
you got to show up.
You know, and I think some ofthe at least for me, uh, what I
would consider breakthroughswere just due to, you know,
sticking in there.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Persistence, yeah, you know, persistence, yep.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
And and being able to notice something and and grab
onto that, I think, is reallywhat separates a lot of us who,
um have come through the Utahprogram, where we get a lot of
rain I think we get a lot offree rain At least I felt like
that in the program was, youknow, we're, we're expected to,
you know, think for ourselvesand, um, and through that, if
(39:19):
you persevere, you, you can makea lot of headway, um.
But but talking about the, youknow the perseverance, there was
a story you shared in myonboarding and I kind of wanted
you to tell that story of themule cloning.
You know, because that is, inmy mind, the perfect example of
over and over and over again andthen solution.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
And and people, I don't think, realize that we had
Dolly and then we had mulesright after that, exactly Not
too long after.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
No, you're absolutely right.
I mean, and it is kind of a Idon't tell the story too often
because it is such a, it's afavorite, I think in my career.
It was a, really a definingmilestone in my career and it
was because it was really thatclassical Eureka moment and it
(40:15):
and it was based on that, you rereek a moment was preceded by a
tremendous amount of work, atremendous amount of study, a
tremendous amount of persistenceand a little bit of luck.
Uh, huh, yeah, so Dolly was, uhwas reported in, if I remember
(40:41):
correctly, 1997.
And then shortly thereafter thefirst calves I think there were
dairy animals were produced.
That was probably in 99, 2000.
Well, I had a visit from agentleman from the university
(41:03):
who was a professor at theuniversity of Idaho, uh, his
name was Dr Gordon Wood.
Gordon knew me throughreputation.
I knew him.
Gordon had done some of theearly work in horses that really
(41:24):
defined um, uh, prostagland,and I think it was E, two or
prostagland, and E as the signalthat uh, the embryo generated
Uh to inform the reproductivetract that there was a
fertilized horse embryo thereand, you know, triggered some
(41:48):
other signals that wereimportant for subsequent
development.
So I knew of him through theliterature, but I'm not.
I don't remember.
I think that was the very firsttime we actually met and Gordon
called me up and asked if hecould come visit with me and
talk about cloning, because heknew we were doing a lot of it.
I mean, we'd been cloninganimals way before that.
(42:13):
I mean when I came to Utah Statein 1991, we had been cloning
sheep and goats down inLouisiana and using blastomers,
which is that's a term thatdescribes a single cell of a
develop, early developing embryo, and we were using those cells
as a nuclear donor cells.
(42:34):
And uniqueness of Dolly just tomake sure everybody's on the
same page is that Dolly was thefirst one, its first animal that
was produced from what'sreferred to as a somatic cell,
which means a totallydifferentiated cell, something
that is well beyond embryonic.
It came from an adult animalwhich that was the unique part
(42:58):
of it was completelydifferentiated.
So we were cloning cattle atthat time and doing research and
I actually at that point in mycareer I was actually the guy
that did all the nucleartransfers.
I sat at the microscope and Ienucleated the oocytes and I
(43:22):
transferred the nucleus, or thecellular, the somatic cell
nucleus into the oocyte and weactivated them and all that.
So I was actually at themicroscope where Gordon showed
up and I was in this little roomand one of the things we always
keep the room warm 29 degrees C, which you can people can
(43:43):
calculate how warm that is, it'spretty warm.
And I remember I was sitting atthe microscope and I was doing
the nuclear transfers on themicroscope and Gordon was
sitting behind me and we had aTV monitor so he could see what
I was seeing on the microscope.
And he was asking me all thesequestions about what would it
(44:04):
take to do this with horses andand I spent the whole time.
We probably those sessionswould go for about four or five
hours and I spent that wholetime essentially trying to talk
him out of this because of theproblems.
I mean there's a whole.
You know we have to have accessto large numbers of oocytes,
(44:26):
that's the donor recipient,that's the egg, okay, and horses
, that's really very difficultto get that.
And you know we nobody knew howto culture them, nobody knew
how to activate or what it tookto activate a horse.
I mean, when I say activate, innormal reproduction the sperm
(44:49):
comes in contact with the eggand then it's fertilized.
That egg has been kind of insuspended animation, developed
me, developed mentally, and it'sjust holding, waiting to be
activated and that sperm,through the process of
fertilization, activates it andthen it starts going through the
(45:09):
cell cycle and grows,multiplies, divides and the
embryo starts growing.
Well, you know, there's a kindof chemical process that goes on
and it can vary a little bit,although it's fairly well
conserved across species.
But nobody really knew any ofthat and it's certainly so.
(45:30):
Basically no one knew anythingthat that nobody knew how to
mature eggs in vitro, nobodyknew how to culture.
The state of the art for horseswas almost ground zero at that
point.
So I kept telling him, you know, trying to talk him out, and
this was 1999, okay is when thisconversation had, or, excuse me
(45:54):
, 1998.
Well, he was persistent and Isaid he convinced me and I said
okay, we'll come up, we'll bringour equipment.
We picked up, we took, movedour microscope, we moved the
little mechanical arms thatallow us to do the microsurgery
on the eggs, and we drove all ofthat up to Moscow, idaho, and
(46:20):
we did, I think, one session in1998, then we did it again and
again.
The reproduction time periodit's horses are seasonally
anesterous, so the breedingseason essentially is generally
from April till August.
(46:43):
And so we moved the equipmentup in April and we'd leave it up
there and then we'd spend aweek every month, april, may,
june, july and August and thenwe'd come.
You know, we'd put it on holdbecause the horses go anesterous
(47:04):
, and then we'd start it back upagain, driving from.
Logan to Moscow Moscow, yeah.
And so I knew, and I took acouple of students and a
technician and a postdoc with meand, of course, gordon had
recruited Dirk Vander Waal fromthe person that had the
(47:25):
expertise and assistedreproduction for horses, so he
knew how to ultrasound, he couldaspirate eggs directly from the
horses follicle, and then hewas the one that led the
transfers.
He and Gordon did the transfersinto the recipient animals.
And the piece of the story thatI should probably tell you is
(47:48):
that there was a gentleman whofunded this project.
His name was Don Jaclyn, nowDon.
If anybody's heard of JaclynSeed, you know Don Jaclyn was
the founder and owner of JaclynSeed and so he'd provided the
funding to do this project.
(48:10):
And Don, his hobby was racingmules.
Well, back then I had neverheard of mule racing.
I mean, I was very familiar.
You know California, guy Bay,meadows and several other horse
tracks.
I was pretty familiar withhorse racing but not mule racing
(48:33):
.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Sounds like an Idaho thing.
It's a.
It's a bit.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
It's a different beast but it's actually quite
fun to watch.
So, anyway, don owned racingmules and he wanted to actually
have the mule be the firstequine species that was cloned,
rather than the horse, and so weused the cell line from a
(48:58):
champion mule, and so that wasthe cell line we used.
Then we then we used horseoocytes that were aspirated from
donor mares and we would clonethose and work through the night
(49:19):
, clone those.
We held them in culture for, Ican't remember, I think it was
about 10 or 12 hours, and thenwe immediately transferred those
surgically to the overdux ofthese recipient mares.
Well, we went through.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, how many times.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Okay.
So we went through that April,through August in 1999.
2000.
2001.
And virtually we would getnothing we had.
I can't even remember it's beenso long ago whether we may have
(49:57):
gotten the hint of somepregnancies, but nothing that we
ever saw a heartbeat, and youknow that's like with ultrasound
, that's like between 25 and 29days of gestation.
So it's really really earlywhen it's still a.
What we were it was not really.
(50:18):
It's starting to attach, okay.
So I was pretty frustrating,after all that time and a huge
amount of work, to consider thatwe had not had a viable
pregnancy after all that timeand energy and effort.
(50:39):
And so I was kind of you knowwe had, I kind of was having a
heart to heart with Gordon andand saying, you know, I don't
know how much, how many more,how much more time you want to
devote to this is, and Ibasically said, is there
anything that haven't told me?
Because Gordon was going downanother pathway.
(51:00):
You know, cancer's really quiterare, and particularly prostate
cancer is almost unheard of inin stallions, and so he was
trying to investigate why, whatwas unique about stallions, that
that was different than thanmen, and he happened to tell me
(51:28):
that.
You know I found a reallyinteresting thing in these
studies on my cancer studies.
Intracellular calcium levels inthe in horse systems are
extremely different than otherspecies.
Really high levels ofintracellular calcium.
Okay and you're like well.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
I'm like ding ding ding.
Why couldn't you?
Speaker 2 (51:52):
have told me this earlier, three years ago.
Yeah, the part of the story.
The next what was it?
Paul Harvey?
The rest of the story the restof the story is that calcium.
Going back to that process ofactivation of the egg, guess
what the key component is thatactivates the egg?
(52:12):
It's intracellular calcium andit spikes inside the egg.
And so I said, okay, well, haveyou looked at follicular fluid?
Yes, yes, is it elevated?
Yeah, like 30 fold higher.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
That's not a simple.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
I said look at it over ductal fluid.
Yeah, it's about 40.
Okay, all right.
So I made arrangements.
So that was the end of theseason in 2001.
I made arrangements that fallto get horse suicides and one of
(52:51):
the areas of research that mylab had been known for
internationally was we didbecause of all the cloning and
because of how important thatactivation phenomena is to
successful cloning and it canimpact subsequent development.
I had done a lot of research onwhat was involved in activating
(53:15):
catalytic sites.
So we'd characterized it, we'dlooked at multiple calcium
interest of the calciumreceptors, we had defined
receptors.
We define what they respondedto, how the calcium transients
occurred, and it was verydistinct.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
So you already had a frame.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
I had all of that research done in cattle.
So I got these equine oocytesand we looked at the treatment
that we had been using toactivate these cloned embryos
horse embryos or mule embryosrather and I looked at what the
(54:01):
interest of the calcium lookedlike when we did that.
Well, nothing Flatline, nointerest cellular calcium.
So I got the idea to let'sincrease the concentration of
calcium that we keep the egg in,so the medium that was holding
the egg Okay.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
Is this for your 10 or 12 hours?
Speaker 2 (54:25):
No, this is well yes for that.
But for right after you'dactually put the nucleus into
the enucleated egg, you exposethem, the eggs, to the clone,
the zygote, clone, zygote, tothe specific treatment that is
supposed to take and stimulateintrasced cellular calcium spike
(54:50):
inside the egg.
Well, when we did that, whatwe'd been treating these eggs,
we saw nothing.
So I elevated I think it was 10fold, increasing the calcium
that we held the eggs in.
We ran the same protocol and,lo and behold, we saw a
(55:11):
diagnostic spike ofintrascellular calcium in these
horse oocytes or horse eggs.
And that was the eureka moment.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
I don't know how you didn't run out of the building.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
Well, I did, and I was like screaming and thinking
and I got on the phoneimmediately and called Gordon.
I said I think I figured thisout.
We have figured out, I know whywe're having a problem.
So the very first run which Ithink for some reason we did it
(55:43):
in no, it was April, I can'tremember was April or May,
anyway, I think it may have beenMay the first session we did
our first transfers and we wenthome and 25 days later I got a
call from Gordon.
He said guess what?
We've got a pregnancy with aheartbeat.
Speaker 1 (56:07):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (56:08):
I said you're kidding .
Speaker 1 (56:09):
We're sitting on eggshells for that month.
Speaker 2 (56:11):
And so then we went back up in June.
We did another session.
25 days later I got anothercall from Gordon.
He said we've got another onewith a heartbeat, went and did
another session in July.
Lo and behold, 25 days laterhad another heartbeat.
Well, the other thing that'sinteresting about the story is
(56:32):
quite often one of the thingsthat's characteristic with
somatic cell, nuclear transferor clone pregnancies is you'll
lose them.
In cattle, you know, 45 days,you'll lose them.
90 days you'll lose them.
You'll even lose some after 120days of pregnancy or almost
halfway through the pregnancy.
(56:53):
So, lo and behold, they keptsitting on eggshells thinking,
okay, when are we gonna startlosing them?
Every month they held, theyheld.
You know, the one from May held, the one from June held, the
one from July held.
Yeah, 2002 is when we had thesepregnancies established, so 11
(57:14):
months.
So then, yeah, and it actuallyand again I may have the months
off, but I know that for a factwhen they were born, the first
was Idaho Gem.
He was born in May of 2003.
2003, we had a Utah pioneerthat was born in June and then
(57:38):
Idaho Star that was born in Julyof 03.
We did a science article and weannounced it, I think on, and
had press from everywhere thatshowed up Moscow, a little old
Moscow, idaho, to film the firstequine fold from somatic cell
(58:00):
nuclear transfer.
There was this Idaho Gem.
They took film, we interviewedby the BBC, I mean everybody.
It was the biggest thing thatyou can even imagine.
And again then we had all threeof these.
They had no, we didn't need toinduce them which again is
(58:21):
fairly unique.
They were three spectacularlyhealthy, strong foals that were
all born and again for a first.
It's almost unheard of to havethree Go to term, go to term
right and then be fine and befine.
And we were the first in theworld to report that.
(58:42):
It put Utah State University onthe map internationally in that
research field.
And we've really stayed thatway.
We've really stayed that wayever since.
Speaker 1 (58:56):
And we talked about a true Eureka moment.
I mean and I don't think I wantto emphasize for everyone who's
listening it is the cloning ofthe mule and the success of
having an embryo was enormous.
But when he says it's unheardof to have it go to term the
(59:17):
first time and then to do thatthree times, yeah, three out of
the three and then have threehealthy foals, that's the
chances of that wereastronomical, exactly.
You can't, that would neverhappen.
Speaker 2 (59:31):
Exactly.
I mean I think if you look atswine sheep, goats, cattle, you
know it's never been thatsuccessful right out of the gate
, particularly with a specieswhere you don't know many of the
(59:52):
biologically importantparameters, that would make it
successful so yeah, it was a lotof work.
It was extremely rewarding, itwas very exciting, and it'll be
something I'll be able to tellmy grandkids of.
What it feels like to, at onemoment in time, be the only
(01:00:14):
person in the world thatunderstands why something hasn't
been working and what thesolution is.
That's the true Eureka, trueEureka moment.
Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Yeah, that's absolutely just fascinating and
experience that only one personcan have.
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
But the key to that and that's what I hope people
get from this interview isperseverance.
Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Exactly.
And really just sticking it out, and a lot of you know it
wasn't just me.
There were a lot of people thatdedicated a lot of time, a lot
of energy, a lot ofcontributions to making that
happen.
And I think when you mixperseverance, hard work and
(01:01:07):
maybe a little bit of luck orinsight, you know there's almost
nothing you can't solve.
Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Well, you know, I applaud you for that, because it
seems like every person that Italk to that's really I don't
know how to say it done thingsthey wanted to do from start to
end successfully.
It's almost always that formula.
It's that formula of I'm gonnabe here, I'm gonna show up, I'm
(01:01:39):
gonna get a little bit lucky,but really I'm gonna keep coming
back to it.
And I would say another part ofgood science is, even if it
turns out to be a total flop,you don't let it be a flop until
it's a total flop and you'veexplored all those avenues, then
you leave it.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Yeah, well, and again .
I've told graduate studentsbefore that have been
disappointed because they viewtheir results as negative or you
know it didn't work out.
I always tell them that youknow what oftentimes the
failures are more important, orthe negative results are almost
(01:02:22):
more important to publish and tolet people know about, because
that'll save other people fromgoing down that same path and
it'll be able to inform peopleon things that it's always new
knowledge and all data isimportant to get out in the
(01:02:44):
community so everybodyunderstands something a lot more
clearly.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yep well.
So I know time is short and Ijust wanted to.
I wanna wrap up with two quickquestions.
First one is right now, andthis is Ethan Doctrine.
I believe that a lot of people,that most everyone, has really
(01:03:15):
one thing that they're workingon at a time.
You know one thing, that atnight they're thinking about
that thing.
For you, right now, what's yourthing?
You know what's driving you, orwhat's the thing that you're
worried about or thinking aboutor excited about.
What's the thing?
Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Yeah, I think I guess on the worry side, I guess I
worry that, through some of thethings that have happened in the
last two, three years, thatthere's a lack of trust in
(01:03:56):
science and fact-based researchand that, to me, is very
concerning because we've madeenormous breakthroughs and
(01:04:16):
impacts as a society based ontrusting, honest research and
data and, as a society, if wemove away from using that
information to help inform usabout decisions moving forward,
(01:04:42):
then I think it's almost likesomebody in the wilderness
without a map.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
And we'll have lots of.
We'll go down a lot of wrongpaths.
We'll go down a lot of pathsthat won't be fruitful and
create new opportunities.
So I hope that we don't getstuck in a place where we stop
(01:05:16):
trusting research.
And I mean, I think one of thethings that we should expect
when we send our children off togo to college is we should
expect that they learn how to,how to evaluate things and how
(01:05:41):
to look at things objectively,and how to take in different
pieces of information, be ableto analyze them and then make a
decision.
And so I hope that as a society, we continue to do that and we
look for good sources of realinformation and real data, and
(01:06:08):
we still use that as a valuabletool to help us make good
decisions.
Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
I think that's great advice.
There's a lot of quickdecisions made.
Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Yeah, if you want to, and I guess on the other side
of the coin, if you want to.
What are some of the things I'mmost excited?
about we live in just aspectacular time.
I mean, I've been on this earthfor several years and I've
never been so excited about theopportunities that are in front
(01:06:39):
of us.
I mean, think about it.
I mean, in my area, research,we can now sequence almost
anything we want to know.
The sequence of, and having thesequence of, genes or proteins
opens unbelievable doors ofopportunity for being out what
(01:07:01):
it's almost inconceivable of thethings that we can accomplish
in the short amount of time ascompared to ten, five, twenty
years ago.
And so I see, and in the amountof information that people have
access to, I think it just isan exciting time to be alive and
(01:07:26):
to be able to see how quicklythings are progressing and the
positive impact some of thosethings can have on people's
lives.
Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
It's exciting to be alive and to see so my very last
question, and you know it's asimple and it's a complex
question Are you happy?
Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
I'm happy right now.
Yeah, very happy.
You know I've got a lot ofthings to be grateful for.
I mean we live in a greatcommunity.
I think we live in a state thatmakes great decisions.
(01:08:12):
The quality of life I mean I,because of my extension job, I
have the fortune to be able to.
I mean I've been in everycounty in the state of Utah.
I've traveled in every countyand truly there's not a place in
(01:08:34):
the state that isn't awonderful place to live.
I think we have moreopportunities today than we've
ever had, regardless of whereyou live.
Yeah, I've got a great family.
I've got, you know, a wifethat's been by my side for many,
(01:08:57):
many years, through good times,difficult times.
You know I've got five kids andthey've got great spouses, 15
grandkids.
Life's great.
You know.
It's not to say I mean you knowyou always have the
(01:09:21):
disappointments, you always havethe challenges, you always.
But you also have to look atthose, as those challenges are
also simultaneouslyopportunities, right?
I?
mean they may not look like anopportunity at the time because
they're a challenge.
But you know, I mentioned I'm a, I'm an old athlete and I and
(01:09:46):
because of my experiences there,you never get stronger, you
never get in a better placewithout having to do some work,
without having to experiencesome pain, having to hurt a
little bit, have to hurt alittle bit before you can, you
can get stronger.
And so I see you know lots ofopportunities.
(01:10:11):
Yeah, I'm super happy.
Well, that's good.
I mean I, I work with greatpeople.
Yeah, I mean I work for a greatassociation institution and I'm
not sure what more I could askfor.
Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
I mean the, the insights that you've shared with
everyone, the life that you'velived.
I always, at the end of this, Iencourage the folks that I
interview and I want to keepdoing this is to to share that.
To summarize that, one of themost valuable things I ever had
or I found through my family,was my grandma.
She made it to 107 and diedthis year.
(01:10:47):
One of the best things that wehave is her journals.
She got a daily journal.
So folks like you that that thata lot of us, you know, aspire
to, to persevere and become like, share that.
I mean that those are the kindof things that help, that helped
me want to pursue science,seeing people make breakthroughs
(01:11:12):
, seeing people in the agindustry.
Sometimes we think you knowwe're, we're cow guys and you
know that's, that's what it is.
Well, that's not what it is.
There's more you can do andyou're you're a living example
of that.
And anyway, thank you forcoming, thank you for sharing
all that.
I know you know your time isvaluable.
You have to travel everywhere,but I think this will be a
(01:11:35):
wonderful thing for people tolisten to.
Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
So thanks, ethan here .
Thank you appreciate theopportunity.
Thanks.
Hey everybody, this is Ethan Gillum with Utah State
University Extension, down herein Seviere County, utah.
I'm your host on Echoes of theLand Tradition, agriculture,
livestock and Expertise.
This week we have the VP ofExtension for Utah State
University, dr Ken White, onwith us.
Stick around.
You are going to hear someawesome, interesting stories
(00:39):
from someone who has beenintegral in shaping our program
into what it is today.
All right, everybody.
So you know, the purpose ofthis podcast is to connect you
with experts, and not onlyexperts in ag, but also the
people that are kind of leadingthe charge and steering the ship
, and that's what we're doingtoday.
(00:59):
We've brought in someone prettyspecial for our program.
He's done a lot in our field,but I'll let him introduce
himself and then we telleveryone what you do for the
college and what you're incharge of, just so they can get
an idea.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Sure be happy to.
I'm Ken White.
I've been at Utah StateUniversity since 1991.
Prior to that I was on thefaculty at Louisiana State
University.
I currently am the vicepresident for USU Extension, so
I oversee all of the Extensionprograms throughout the state of
Utah.
I'm also the dean of theCollege of Agriculture and
(01:37):
Applied Sciences.
I oversee all the academicprograms in that college.
And then my third hat is thatI'm the director of the Utah
Agricultural Experiment Station,which means we receive federal
monies they oftentimes refer toas hatch dollars or
(02:00):
multi-regional project dollarsthat come in and those dollars
are committed to facultysalaries on faculty that do
research, and primarily inagriculture and natural
resources, but also family andcommunity.
We have dollars that impactevery college on campus except
(02:24):
two.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
I've been asked this a couple of times what's the
difference between the AgExperiment Station and what
Extension does?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, ag Experiment Station really focuses strictly
100% on research.
Research can be basic in natureor it could be applied in
nature.
It's not necessarily totallyindependent.
We have Extension faculty thatalso have research appointments
(02:55):
and so in some cases those areprimarily faculty that are in
academic units on campus thathave high Extension assignments.
So Extension is more thecommunity-based programs, the
non-degree education programs inthe state that are designed to
(03:20):
meet community needs.
And also, I think an importantthing to keep in mind with the
Experiment Station is that allof that research is supposed to
be applicable, to impact in apositive way or answer important
(03:40):
questions for agriculture,natural resources, relationships
, financial issues, all thosethings that really impact people
throughout the state of Utah.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
You're spread out, I'm spread out.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I put a lot of miles on my truck.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
So you, as I mean, where do you think most of your
time is demanded right now?
I mean, I know the collegeprobably sends you everywhere.
You send yourself everywhereoverseeing a lot, but as far as
needs of the college now we'vegone through a transition, kind
of in a new phase now, and theag industry is always changing.
(04:23):
Where do you see a lot of yourtime being spent?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, to be honest, it's really split probably the
most between Extension and thecollege efforts.
I have administrative dutieswith the Experiment Station but
once we make those commitmentsof research dollars they either
(04:46):
go to help fund facultypositions or a small operating
budgets or research budgets.
That mainly.
I respond to any issues thatneed to be problems that need to
be solved or fireman Fireman.
I'm not going to put things out,but with the college and an
(05:09):
extension, there are alwaysissues that are coming up,
emerging issues in the statethat need to be addressed within
communities, and we moveresources around a little bit,
but we're always trying to stayon top and ahead of what the
next emerging.
I'll give you an example.
When I first was appointed tothis position in 2013, one of
(05:33):
the things that I immediatelybegan to realize was that the
state of East job for no faultof anybody, but it appeared that
we were having some issues andproblems with opioids and the
dependency in the state.
I had set aside again becauseof some retirements and you'll
(05:59):
understand that when we havepeople retire, they have a
salary that's larger than whatwe need to bring on a new
faculty member.
Because of the difference insalary ranges, I had accumulated
some salary dollars.
I did an analysis with a personat the University of Utah who
(06:23):
was in public medicine at thetime he's since left along with
the health department andidentified the nine counties
that seem to have the biggestissues.
I redirected those dollars tocreate five new extension
positions that I assigned tothose nine counties throughout
(06:47):
the state of Utah.
We're not in a position to beable to do that often, but in
that case it was really animportant issue that we get in
front of.
Since that time, thosepositions have been responsible
(07:10):
for bringing millions andmillions of dollars into the
state of Utah to help developprogramming, help with programs
such as training people on howto use Naloxol and all those
types of things, and as well aspartnering some of the community
resources that are availablefor families and individuals
(07:32):
that have those issues.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Well, I've seen those .
Even with the short time thatI've been here, I've seen those
programs.
There's one coming up heredirectly in extension there's an
opioid rancher workshop.
I believe it's here in just aweek or two.
It's coming up directly.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Exactly.
I think.
The one thing that I think isimportant for people to
understand is USU Extension is agreat partner.
We don't necessarily alwayshave all the resources to be
able to meet every need, but wepartner with people who can help
us address some of these.
One of the things that's beenreally brought to the forefront
(08:15):
of my mind is mental healthissues.
We've partnered with the UtahDepartment of Agriculture and
Food on a mental health programthat has provided funding for
farmers and ranchers.
That's your background.
I have come from that area.
(08:38):
In my family as well.
There are people that have alot of pride and it's a very
difficult thing sometimes forthem to admit that they're
having problems.
Last I saw, this program iscommitted about, I think, close
(08:59):
to over $200,000 in getting someof the farmers and ranchers
access to therapists that canhelp, counselors that can visit
with them and talk through someof these issues and help give
them some tools to be able toaddress.
I tell people that I meet Idon't know that there's an
industry that has more risk andgamble than being a farmer.
(09:24):
Being a farmer or rancher, youcan't count on almost anything
and everything's variable andyou basically have no control
over the weather, the amount ofwater, nothing, prices, and so
it's understandable that that'sa high anxiety, high stress
(09:45):
career.
It obviously has some fantasticbenefits, but that's just a
couple of examples of areaswhere we've tried to partner
with people to address reallysome important problems.
It's not a group of peopleagain, this will ring true, I
think, when I say it but it'snot a group of people that will
(10:07):
sit around and complain topeople about some of the issues
that they face.
You respect that, but you alsounderstand that sometimes you've
got to reach out a littledifferently to be able to
provide a hand of help.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
I think we see the importance.
I mean, we obviously see theimportance of how much we depend
on those people as a nation andhow much we really rely on them
being able to get up everymorning and face whatever's
thrown their way to get thatcommodity pushed through the
system.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Absolutely.
They're really the unsungheroes.
I mean, covid brought that tothe forefront of most people.
Unfortunately, there's adeclining percentage of people
in the country that actuallyhave any relationship to
agriculture production.
There's a higher percentage,growing percentage, that really
(11:07):
don't understand everything thatgoes into providing that food
that's available in the shelvesof the local supermarket or
farmer's market or what have you.
And when COVID hit and packingfacilities, processing
facilities shut down, I mean,even this past summer when we
(11:28):
had avian influenza hit ourstate, how long did it take
before Oakdale and some of thoseplaces closed down?
Before you couldn't get anyeggs, or if you could, they were
$6 and $7 a dozen.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
They learn very quickly how short that is.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It's a very vulnerable supply chain and
those folks are dependent on alot of other people and
resources to be able to make ithappen.
Yeah, it's a very vulnerablesupply chain and that we need to
in some ways rethink and figureout local processing facilities
(12:09):
, make things a little moreavailable and even provide some
of our farmers and ranchers withthe opportunity to do a lot
more direct marketing to theirend customers.
Not only reinforces the publicthese days really wants to know
a lot more about where theirfood comes from and the
(12:30):
associated safety of it and also, I think, from our producer's
standpoint, it gives them anopportunity to capture more of
that total end of the roadrevenue for the products that,
frankly, they put in themajority the energy they take
the majority the risk andoftentimes, in the current model
(12:53):
, they get the least amount.
Yeah, so I think some of thethings as we move forward we
need to really rethink and buildsupply chains that allow a more
secure supply chain, as well asone that allows the person who
is invested the most to be ableto receive the largest
(13:16):
percentage of the compensation.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Well, that's how we would keep them alive, hopefully
Correct.
I mean, I think the dairies area perfect example of that,
where you talk about most of theprocessing, I mean they take it
almost to the end.
And if folks knew in the UnitedStates alone, you know how
short our milk supply is.
You know, um, and and milk'snot only in a jug.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
No, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
And if that shuts down for a day, that the what it
would do to the nation is justI don't think I mean.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I don't think you're absolutely right.
I don't think people realizethe fantastic protein source
that is for most Americans, andyou know you're talking not only
the liquid milk, but yogurts,cheese, cottage cheese, I mean
you name it, all of it.
It's all involved in that milkand um and it's a and.
(14:10):
As I said, there's very fewprotein sources there is
economical as milk and milkproducts, so it's very important
.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, aside of that, there's very well prepared
people in extension.
There's people that come fromthese backgrounds, that have
educated, themselves, beeneducated and now are trying to
pay it back.
And that's the way I seeextension is.
It's a really good job to beable to pay back absolutely
those communities, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I mean I tell potential uh extension
candidates uh for our positions,as well as um students that are
considering it that extensionis really a very rewarding, it's
very demanding and it's andit's a very it's a high energy
uh job.
(14:57):
It's one that takes a lot ofstamina because you know uh
being a faculty member out inthe community, oftentimes you're
on the job, whether you know itor not, every day and um, but
what the other side of that cointhat goes with that is that
(15:18):
it's it.
There are very few jobs whereyou can see an immediate return
on the investment of your timeand energy, and it's extremely
rewarding to be able to provideinformation to somebody who uses
it and and betters their lives,as well as their family, almost
immediately.
And so it's it's really atremendous uh career and it's um
(15:41):
a very rewarding career foranybody that's that's interested
in in being someone who reallyhas a life and a career of
public service and and making animpact in the community.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And I think you know the perfect example is last
night and I told you, I got, um,I got pulled over last night by
one of the county county copsand he, um, we got to talk in
because thankfully I wasn't intoo much trouble and and he said
, well, who are you?
Where are you from?
Are you from Logan?
I said, well, yeah, but I moveddown here and I, you know, I'm
the new ag extension agent.
(16:15):
He said, oh, really, so youtook over for for the previous
one?
And I said yeah, and he said man, he said him and his wife
worked their butts off for 30years down here, I mean, and he
knew exactly who they were.
He was a producer himself andhe's, and he just had nothing
but good things to say.
Awesome Cause, cause he saw,you know, and I guess that maybe
(16:37):
they don't realize that, butyou know, here's a guy I
wouldn't even know he was aproducer and he's, and he's
singing the accolades of whatthese people have done, because
it was their, their investmentin life, it was their reward,
and people noticed that.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Absolutely Very helpful in the community and
that's really rewarding to hearthose types of stories.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Where you're at right now is you know when, when you,
when you started your collegecareer and and maybe it'll help
if you give us just a little bitof background on on your
upbringing, um and so amultifaceted question.
But you know where you camefrom, how you started life and
and what you decided to study.
Is this where you saw yourselfwanting to be what you're doing
(17:21):
now?
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
I don't think.
No, I'm totally honest.
No, I never would have imaginedthat I'm in the position I'm in
today.
Um, yeah, I was.
I was born and raised in in theBay Area of California.
At that time, uh, the communityI was from was extremely rural.
(17:46):
Today it's, you know, you wouldconsider it urban.
Um, you know, my parents uh,wanted to live out and and have
that type of of lifestyle and wehad a very small dairy my, my,
actually my brother showedJersey cows and we had the
(18:06):
California grant at GrandChampion.
Uh, dairy Cow, yeah, jerseyDairy Cow, and um, and, and so I
was always grown up, raised andand grew up with animals.
Um, you know, it wasn't verylong in my lifetime when, um,
which is a kind of a familiarstory out in this part of
(18:29):
California where we kind of gotenclosed by a bunch of houses
and and my parents had to, hadto sell things off and and I
think from that early upbringingI felt really compelled to that
.
I, you know passion for raisinganimals and and and originally,
(18:49):
uh, I I went off to school.
I actually was a, uh,intercollegiate student athlete,
I played football, and that'show I was able to get my
undergraduate degree is I.
I went to school on a, on afootball scholarship and um, and
during that process I settledinto animal science as my, my
(19:12):
bachelor's degree and, you know,not too long into my college
football playing career, Irealized, you know, I probably
need to spend a little bit moretime in books and academics, um,
and and so I remember the lastcouple of years of my academic
program.
(19:32):
There was a new technology that, at that time, was like cutting
edge state of the art and, andit was uh embryo transfer.
And I thought it was so amazingthat you could take uh, a
really high quality uh femaleanimal, and uh treat her in a
(19:54):
way that uh, that cow wouldwould produce multiple embryos.
You could recover them from herand then you could transfer
each one of those embryos to asurrogate animal and thereby
produce a larger number of highquality offspring.
And so, based on thatconversation, I went to my uh,
(20:17):
my the faculty member, uh, whowas reproductive biologist, and
asked him you know where wouldbe the the best place to go to
cause, and I guess I should alsofeel feel in the gap that I had
applied uh to veterinary schooland and because I was still a
(20:39):
California resident, although Iwas living in Utah, uh, going to
school, uh, my inner graduatein Utah, the only school I could
apply to was university collegeat Fort New Davis and it it was
at the time, and continues tobe, a highly sought after that
school, highly competitive.
(20:59):
And you know, with my grades,having played football and I
still I had a pretty good uhgrade point average, but not
sufficient.
You know, you were you'relooking at 4.0s and 3.9s and
stuff and and I was a fewnotches below that, so I didn't
get accepted.
So I had this conversation withmy reproduction uh professor to
(21:21):
say, well, if I want to learnabout this, um, where was the
best place I could go to learnabout?
And and he, he mentioned aprogram at Colorado state and
but he also said, if you reallywant to the guy that I've heard
of the most and has really, uh,outstanding reputation and
(21:46):
embryology you want to go touniversity, california davis,
which was great place is thesame place.
So I applied, I was accepted,and I Want to davis and earn the
master's degree in animalscience, thinking that when I
finish my master's degree Iwould go ahead and apply to
veterinary school and I wouldhave a much better chance of
(22:07):
getting in the veterinary school.
Well, within that two yearswhile I was working master's
degree I got so enthused aboutthe research and you know, again
, it's one of those passions, Ithink, that students sometimes
they can't predict, but you getjust get Sucked in to the idea
(22:27):
and it was so remarkable to beable to look at those embryos
and and be able to realize thatthat time we were splitting
embryos and half to make twinsand everything was really so
cool and that would eventuallydevelop into a full groom Cav.
And so I decided I, you know I'dset the I and I also interacted
(22:53):
with Veterinarians that weregoing to school and stuff, and
and I thought, okay, I'mactually having a lot of fun
doing this research thing.
And so I decided.
Then I stayed at davis foranother four years and and and
and completed my, my doctorateand systemic physiology with a
(23:18):
focus in reproduction andembryology, and and I became
finished up and my first facultyposition was an assistant
professor professor at louisianastate university.
I got the job offer and I and Iwell, for before the interview
I had to go and look on a map tofigure out where was that yeah?
(23:39):
and and so we we got the jobmoved down there and Really had
a fantastic experience down inbaton Rouge and look, south east
louisiana in general was just.
We made some wonderful lifelongfriends that I still that's
saying and sending, I still keepin contact with.
(24:00):
But it also launched my careerin a big way and I started
getting federal grants to doresearch and and then A job
opening came open and keepopening at us, you and a couple
other places.
I applied for him, interviewedfor all three of those positions
(24:22):
and then, having been exposedto the beauty of utah state
university, when I got the offerfrom us you, I jumped on it,
immediately accepted it andMoved up there, but I never.
So that's how I got here and Ialways and I'm a researcher, lab
(24:44):
rat and I've always doneresearch.
I've done research in horses,I've done research in when I was
at lsu, some swine embryoresearch, sheep and goat
research and and certainly mightmy go to has always been cattle
research, but there and and andbeef cattle reproduction and
(25:10):
embryo embryology.
But I yeah, I kind of about Iguess was 2008 we had a
department had thatunfortunately Got pancreatic
cancer and the animal there inveterinary sciences department
at us.
You and he passed away and Iand the department, the college
(25:36):
did a national search for a newhead and I had three or four my
colleagues in the departmentthat said you know, you really
should Put your hat and we needsomebody that can, you know,
lead us and can take us where weneed to go.
And so I applied and wasSelected to be the department
(26:00):
head in 2008 and really I hadalways felt like that I would be
a researcher.
I didn't want and I neverlooked to be an administrator
and it's, you know, the joke oncampuses.
You know you make the decisionto go to the dark side yeah,
exactly when you do that yeahand and yet I guess, when I
(26:24):
couple, opportunities createdthemselves.
One was that I had the chance to.
You know, a lot of studentswent through my reproduction
class.
I taught the, the upperdivision, animal reproduction,
and it was a required course,and a lot of those kids were
planning on going to vet schooland they were, you tell,
(26:45):
residents and a lot of fantasticstudents I felt like, based on
my interaction with them in thein the class, would make
excellent veterinarians and theyeither wouldn't get accepted
because the low numbersavailable seats or, if they got
accepted, they had to go out ofstate and pay, you know, upwards
(27:08):
of $80,000 a year, you know, toget their education you do the
math for years of $80,000.
That's a huge oh yeah.
So the opportunity to presentit as itself, and I had a lot of
conversations with legislatorsin the state of Utah and we were
(27:29):
able to develop a model thatestablished a partnership
between ourselves and Washingtonstate university, and that's
when we created the school of.
At the time, and I think it wasabout 2011 week, we see we took
on our first class of studentsin the US you school of
(27:53):
veterinary medicine and thestudents would come to us.
You spend the first two years Atin in Logan, at us, you in the
in the veterinary DVM, drveterinary medicine curriculum,
and then, after those first twoyears, they would transfer up to
pulmon and finish their lasttwo years in pulmon, washington
(28:14):
and Washington state university,and it created 30 new slots.
That school of veterinarymedicine had 30 seats that were
available to students 20 fromUtah and at least 10 from, you
know, non resident students, and, and that was just an eye
(28:36):
opening experience for me thathelped me realize the type of an
impact that a goodadministrator could have, not
only on the department in theshort run, but in the whole
community, in almost ingenerational impacts on On
(29:01):
society.
And so you know that's one ofour person who held my position,
was appointed to be the provostand, like you know, the
positions opened up anothernational search and I was
Selected in 2013 to my currentposition.
So, and then since that time,we've created that two plus two
(29:25):
is now trans, is now in theprocess of transforming to a
Four year independent back inschool.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
That you know, there, you yeah, so yeah, chapter two
was to.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
We developed a program full brought, developed
a plan to be able to transitionto two plus two into a four year
and and the state legislaturewas gracious enough our
legislators realized that was animportant need for Utah to be
(30:01):
able to have access to thequality animal health care
that's necessary for agricultureto expand in Utah and I believe
it was in the.
The state legislature was verymuch in the process of creating
(30:25):
a four year independent.
So we're going to haveeventually we'll have 80 seats
in that college, veterinarymedicine.
It's now it, when it's whenit's fully functional, which
we're hoping, that the firststudents will come in and
That'll be spun out as an.
It's currently an independentcollege.
(30:46):
It's out from underneath mycollege and they have a new dean
of that college, doctor derkvan der Waal, who just by chance
, I've I've been Derk's apersonal friend.
I actually hired him as ohreally in the 80 vs department
from the University ofPennsylvania vet school when we
(31:07):
created the two plus two.
I had known him derk was one ofmy collaborators when we did
the mule cloning project in theearly 2000s and so he'll be a
fantastic I think he's going tobe a fantastic dean of the
college of veterinary medicineat USU.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I thought of a couple things while you were talking
about that development and youknow my and you know I'm
obviously, but my direct bosshas told me his experience
because he was in yourreproduction class and just so
the folks understand of thequality of personnel that are in
agriculture and working for thecollege my boss, the director
(31:49):
of ag and natural resources,said that was one of his hardest
classes he ever took at UtahState.
You know, but that's, that'squality and that's that's a good
thing.
When Utah State came upactually my wife is the one who
suggested Utah State for themaster's program Utah State
itself is extremely recognizedin the nation as an agricultural
(32:12):
.
It is it is.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
I'm not sure that I'm not sure that Utahns in general
understand the high qualityeducation and the respect that
some of the programs that UtahState have nationally and
worldwide.
And you're right, our, some ofour agriculture programs are
(32:37):
frankly right up there, the bestin the country.
And I think our they're justagain, people in Utah need to be
, you know, hold her head highbecause we're frankly second to
none.
And you know, the students thatcome up, I know, and the and
(33:00):
I'll just speak for my college,but I know this is true and most
, if not all, of the colleges onon USU campus.
But you know, I expect ourfaculty to give all of our just
as I did in that reproductionclass when I taught it I expect
them to give the students, ourstudents, that the top, best
(33:21):
quality education, give thosestudents everything that they
need as far as information andlearning to be successful in
their chosen careers.
And and we have faculty, they'recommitted to that and we'll
spend the time and energynecessary to be able to train
that and teach that nextgeneration of student that can.
(33:44):
You know, I think a facultymember, a good faculty member,
is always looking that everystudent that they teach has the
potential to be theirreplacement, and so I think it
brings it a little bit home andpersonalizes it.
If, when you're, when you havestudents in your class, and you
(34:06):
look at every one of thosestudents and you say sorry, I
think which one of you is goingto be my replacement, I make
darn sure you actually alreadyand actually better prepared
than what I was when I, when Istarted my career.
And and I think that's that wedeliver that to our students at
Utah State University and andthat's the expectation, and I
(34:29):
hope that people throughout thestate of Utah appreciate the
fact that they have that levelof quality access to that level
of quality education right herein Utah.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Some of this out to me in in the ad, vs and in the
ag program was talking toprofessors.
You know, before you go tocollege and my dad used to say
this you know, like they don'tcare.
You know, if you don't show upto class, they don't care.
If you know you're on, you'rein charge of your own ship.
Well, I didn't have thatexperience at Utah State.
They definitely.
(35:03):
You know, when you're in amaster's program, you're you
better get your work done andand you're expected to be able
to do homework and and getyourself dressed and all that
stuff.
But, um, one that stood out tome and I and I, like I said, all
of my professors were excellent, uh, but one of the classes I
enjoyed the most was with DrRickards and sitting in his
class, because it was a class ofsix and he put us in a little
(35:26):
conference room.
That's where we would meet andit was a discussion based class
and I've never felt like I gotsuch good one on one.
You know his office door wasalways open and you could just
tell that he didn't want to walkout of that room until he felt
like, do you actually understand?
Don't just tell me, yes, Do youunderstand?
(35:47):
And if you don't, let's comeback to it.
And and we didn't really moveon until he felt like um topics
were thoroughly covered andsometimes they were extremely
thoroughly covered, but therewas that's all learned very well
.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
That's particularly uh rewarding for me to hear that
Cause.
I don't know if you realizethis or not, but actually Dr
Rickards was a was a PhD, one ofmy PhD students when.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
I was at LSU.
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
He did come from LSU, that's right he finished his
PhD, I was his, I was his, hismentor at LSU.
He then went on to a facultyposition at a medical school in
Oklahoma, that's right, and Ithink, um, it was after uh, I
think I don't remember exactlywhat year he came to USU, but I
(36:35):
know he but we.
He applied for a position andand was, was selected and
probably came to USU in the inthe mid nine 1990s probably yeah
.
He's yeah, he's academicallyrelated to me.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, there you go, like, see and that, and that's
the beauty of, that's the beautyof the system, that's the
beauty of the especially, in myopinion, the ag world, because I
think you make friends on morethan just academic.
You know um, the academic level, you know you're, you're
working with these people,you're in the lab with these
people, you're in the field withthese people and then seeing
(37:13):
their success, I'm assuming, isyeah, I mean particularly in
research.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
I mean there's there's a lot of failures in
research.
I mean I've got a.
I got a, a sign in in one of myoffices that it's a quote from
Einstein and it and it I'llparaphrase.
It says something like you knowif, if, if research was easy,
everybody'd be doing it Exactly.
(37:38):
And and that's really true, andI think you know, whenever you
get uh in, whether you're amaster's student, a PhD, or
you're the the, the principalinvestigator of the research
project, you have to realizethat there's going to be a lot
of failures, and you're you'rebasically looking for the
successes and the experiments.
(38:00):
If they're designed uhcorrectly, they'll give you the
right outcome.
The outcome may not be what youhad expected or planned for,
but they give you the right ed.
There's an outcome and it's theright one.
And then you that leads thenext step in in in the research.
Yeah, and if you do it that way, then you, you can make
(38:23):
conclusions that will withstandthe test of time.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
And that is, that is the incredible part, especially
with the tools that people havethat we have at our disposal now
, being able to have just a pileof data and go well, that's not
what I expected, but wow.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
You know, if we got to have a little luck, you got
to have a whole lot ofperseverance and you got, and
you got to show up.
You know, and I think some ofthe at least for me, uh, what I
would consider breakthroughswere just due to, you know,
sticking in there.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Persistence, yeah, you know, persistence, yep.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
And and being able to notice something and and grab
onto that, I think, is reallywhat separates a lot of us who,
um have come through the Utahprogram, where we get a lot of
rain I think we get a lot offree rain At least I felt like
that in the program was, youknow, we're, we're expected to,
you know, think for ourselvesand, um, and through that, if
(39:19):
you persevere, you, you can makea lot of headway, um.
But but talking about the, youknow the perseverance, there was
a story you shared in myonboarding and I kind of wanted
you to tell that story of themule cloning.
You know, because that is, inmy mind, the perfect example of
over and over and over again andthen solution.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
And and people, I don't think, realize that we had
Dolly and then we had mulesright after that, exactly Not
too long after.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
No, you're absolutely right.
I mean, and it is kind of a Idon't tell the story too often
because it is such a, it's afavorite, I think in my career.
It was a, really a definingmilestone in my career and it
was because it was really thatclassical Eureka moment and it
(40:15):
and it was based on that, you rereek a moment was preceded by a
tremendous amount of work, atremendous amount of study, a
tremendous amount of persistenceand a little bit of luck.
Uh, huh, yeah, so Dolly was, uhwas reported in, if I remember
(40:41):
correctly, 1997.
And then shortly thereafter thefirst calves I think there were
dairy animals were produced.
That was probably in 99, 2000.
Well, I had a visit from agentleman from the university
(41:03):
who was a professor at theuniversity of Idaho, uh, his
name was Dr Gordon Wood.
Gordon knew me throughreputation.
I knew him.
Gordon had done some of theearly work in horses that really
(41:24):
defined um, uh, prostagland,and I think it was E, two or
prostagland, and E as the signalthat uh, the embryo generated
Uh to inform the reproductivetract that there was a
fertilized horse embryo thereand, you know, triggered some
(41:48):
other signals that wereimportant for subsequent
development.
So I knew of him through theliterature, but I'm not.
I don't remember.
I think that was the very firsttime we actually met and Gordon
called me up and asked if hecould come visit with me and
talk about cloning, because heknew we were doing a lot of it.
I mean, we'd been cloninganimals way before that.
(42:13):
I mean when I came to Utah Statein 1991, we had been cloning
sheep and goats down inLouisiana and using blastomers,
which is that's a term thatdescribes a single cell of a
develop, early developing embryo, and we were using those cells
as a nuclear donor cells.
(42:34):
And uniqueness of Dolly just tomake sure everybody's on the
same page is that Dolly was thefirst one, its first animal that
was produced from what'sreferred to as a somatic cell,
which means a totallydifferentiated cell, something
that is well beyond embryonic.
It came from an adult animalwhich that was the unique part
(42:58):
of it was completelydifferentiated.
So we were cloning cattle atthat time and doing research and
I actually at that point in mycareer I was actually the guy
that did all the nucleartransfers.
I sat at the microscope and Ienucleated the oocytes and I
(43:22):
transferred the nucleus, or thecellular, the somatic cell
nucleus into the oocyte and weactivated them and all that.
So I was actually at themicroscope where Gordon showed
up and I was in this little roomand one of the things we always
keep the room warm 29 degrees C, which you can people can
(43:43):
calculate how warm that is, it'spretty warm.
And I remember I was sitting atthe microscope and I was doing
the nuclear transfers on themicroscope and Gordon was
sitting behind me and we had aTV monitor so he could see what
I was seeing on the microscope.
And he was asking me all thesequestions about what would it
(44:04):
take to do this with horses andand I spent the whole time.
We probably those sessionswould go for about four or five
hours and I spent that wholetime essentially trying to talk
him out of this because of theproblems.
I mean there's a whole.
You know we have to have accessto large numbers of oocytes,
(44:26):
that's the donor recipient,that's the egg, okay, and horses
, that's really very difficultto get that.
And you know we nobody knew howto culture them, nobody knew
how to activate or what it tookto activate a horse.
I mean, when I say activate, innormal reproduction the sperm
(44:49):
comes in contact with the eggand then it's fertilized.
That egg has been kind of insuspended animation, developed
me, developed mentally, and it'sjust holding, waiting to be
activated and that sperm,through the process of
fertilization, activates it andthen it starts going through the
(45:09):
cell cycle and grows,multiplies, divides and the
embryo starts growing.
Well, you know, there's a kindof chemical process that goes on
and it can vary a little bit,although it's fairly well
conserved across species.
But nobody really knew any ofthat and it's certainly so.
(45:30):
Basically no one knew anythingthat that nobody knew how to
mature eggs in vitro, nobodyknew how to culture.
The state of the art for horseswas almost ground zero at that
point.
So I kept telling him, you know, trying to talk him out, and
this was 1999, okay is when thisconversation had, or, excuse me
(45:54):
, 1998.
Well, he was persistent and Isaid he convinced me and I said
okay, we'll come up, we'll bringour equipment.
We picked up, we took, movedour microscope, we moved the
little mechanical arms thatallow us to do the microsurgery
on the eggs, and we drove all ofthat up to Moscow, idaho, and
(46:20):
we did, I think, one session in1998, then we did it again and
again.
The reproduction time periodit's horses are seasonally
anesterous, so the breedingseason essentially is generally
from April till August.
(46:43):
And so we moved the equipmentup in April and we'd leave it up
there and then we'd spend aweek every month, april, may,
june, july and August and thenwe'd come.
You know, we'd put it on holdbecause the horses go anesterous
(47:04):
, and then we'd start it back upagain, driving from.
Logan to Moscow Moscow, yeah.
And so I knew, and I took acouple of students and a
technician and a postdoc with meand, of course, gordon had
recruited Dirk Vander Waal fromthe person that had the
(47:25):
expertise and assistedreproduction for horses, so he
knew how to ultrasound, he couldaspirate eggs directly from the
horses follicle, and then hewas the one that led the
transfers.
He and Gordon did the transfersinto the recipient animals.
And the piece of the story thatI should probably tell you is
(47:48):
that there was a gentleman whofunded this project.
His name was Don Jaclyn, nowDon.
If anybody's heard of JaclynSeed, you know Don Jaclyn was
the founder and owner of JaclynSeed and so he'd provided the
funding to do this project.
(48:10):
And Don, his hobby was racingmules.
Well, back then I had neverheard of mule racing.
I mean, I was very familiar.
You know California, guy Bay,meadows and several other horse
tracks.
I was pretty familiar withhorse racing but not mule racing
(48:33):
.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Sounds like an Idaho thing.
It's a.
It's a bit.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
It's a different beast but it's actually quite
fun to watch.
So, anyway, don owned racingmules and he wanted to actually
have the mule be the firstequine species that was cloned,
rather than the horse, and so weused the cell line from a
(48:58):
champion mule, and so that wasthe cell line we used.
Then we then we used horseoocytes that were aspirated from
donor mares and we would clonethose and work through the night
(49:19):
, clone those.
We held them in culture for, Ican't remember, I think it was
about 10 or 12 hours, and thenwe immediately transferred those
surgically to the overdux ofthese recipient mares.
Well, we went through.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, how many times.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Okay.
So we went through that April,through August in 1999.
2000.
2001.
And virtually we would getnothing we had.
I can't even remember it's beenso long ago whether we may have
(49:57):
gotten the hint of somepregnancies, but nothing that we
ever saw a heartbeat, and youknow that's like with ultrasound
, that's like between 25 and 29days of gestation.
So it's really really earlywhen it's still a.
What we were it was not really.
(50:18):
It's starting to attach, okay.
So I was pretty frustrating,after all that time and a huge
amount of work, to consider thatwe had not had a viable
pregnancy after all that timeand energy and effort.
(50:39):
And so I was kind of you knowwe had, I kind of was having a
heart to heart with Gordon andand saying, you know, I don't
know how much, how many more,how much more time you want to
devote to this is, and Ibasically said, is there
anything that haven't told me?
Because Gordon was going downanother pathway.
(51:00):
You know, cancer's really quiterare, and particularly prostate
cancer is almost unheard of inin stallions, and so he was
trying to investigate why, whatwas unique about stallions, that
that was different than thanmen, and he happened to tell me
(51:28):
that.
You know I found a reallyinteresting thing in these
studies on my cancer studies.
Intracellular calcium levels inthe in horse systems are
extremely different than otherspecies.
Really high levels ofintracellular calcium.
Okay and you're like well.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
I'm like ding ding ding.
Why couldn't you?
Speaker 2 (51:52):
have told me this earlier, three years ago.
Yeah, the part of the story.
The next what was it?
Paul Harvey?
The rest of the story the restof the story is that calcium.
Going back to that process ofactivation of the egg, guess
what the key component is thatactivates the egg?
(52:12):
It's intracellular calcium andit spikes inside the egg.
And so I said, okay, well, haveyou looked at follicular fluid?
Yes, yes, is it elevated?
Yeah, like 30 fold higher.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
That's not a simple.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
I said look at it over ductal fluid.
Yeah, it's about 40.
Okay, all right.
So I made arrangements.
So that was the end of theseason in 2001.
I made arrangements that fallto get horse suicides and one of
(52:51):
the areas of research that mylab had been known for
internationally was we didbecause of all the cloning and
because of how important thatactivation phenomena is to
successful cloning and it canimpact subsequent development.
I had done a lot of research onwhat was involved in activating
(53:15):
catalytic sites.
So we'd characterized it, we'dlooked at multiple calcium
interest of the calciumreceptors, we had defined
receptors.
We define what they respondedto, how the calcium transients
occurred, and it was verydistinct.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
So you already had a frame.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
I had all of that research done in cattle.
So I got these equine oocytesand we looked at the treatment
that we had been using toactivate these cloned embryos
horse embryos or mule embryosrather and I looked at what the
(54:01):
interest of the calcium lookedlike when we did that.
Well, nothing Flatline, nointerest cellular calcium.
So I got the idea to let'sincrease the concentration of
calcium that we keep the egg in,so the medium that was holding
the egg Okay.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
Is this for your 10 or 12 hours?
Speaker 2 (54:25):
No, this is well yes for that.
But for right after you'dactually put the nucleus into
the enucleated egg, you exposethem, the eggs, to the clone,
the zygote, clone, zygote, tothe specific treatment that is
supposed to take and stimulateintrasced cellular calcium spike
(54:50):
inside the egg.
Well, when we did that, whatwe'd been treating these eggs,
we saw nothing.
So I elevated I think it was 10fold, increasing the calcium
that we held the eggs in.
We ran the same protocol and,lo and behold, we saw a
(55:11):
diagnostic spike ofintrascellular calcium in these
horse oocytes or horse eggs.
And that was the eureka moment.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
I don't know how you didn't run out of the building.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
Well, I did, and I was like screaming and thinking
and I got on the phoneimmediately and called Gordon.
I said I think I figured thisout.
We have figured out, I know whywe're having a problem.
So the very first run which Ithink for some reason we did it
(55:43):
in no, it was April, I can'tremember was April or May,
anyway, I think it may have beenMay the first session we did
our first transfers and we wenthome and 25 days later I got a
call from Gordon.
He said guess what?
We've got a pregnancy with aheartbeat.
Speaker 1 (56:07):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (56:08):
I said you're kidding .
Speaker 1 (56:09):
We're sitting on eggshells for that month.
Speaker 2 (56:11):
And so then we went back up in June.
We did another session.
25 days later I got anothercall from Gordon.
He said we've got another onewith a heartbeat, went and did
another session in July.
Lo and behold, 25 days laterhad another heartbeat.
Well, the other thing that'sinteresting about the story is
(56:32):
quite often one of the thingsthat's characteristic with
somatic cell, nuclear transferor clone pregnancies is you'll
lose them.
In cattle, you know, 45 days,you'll lose them.
90 days you'll lose them.
You'll even lose some after 120days of pregnancy or almost
halfway through the pregnancy.
(56:53):
So, lo and behold, they keptsitting on eggshells thinking,
okay, when are we gonna startlosing them?
Every month they held, theyheld.
You know, the one from May held, the one from June held, the
one from July held.
Yeah, 2002 is when we had thesepregnancies established, so 11
(57:14):
months.
So then, yeah, and it actuallyand again I may have the months
off, but I know that for a factwhen they were born, the first
was Idaho Gem.
He was born in May of 2003.
2003, we had a Utah pioneerthat was born in June and then
(57:38):
Idaho Star that was born in Julyof 03.
We did a science article and weannounced it, I think on, and
had press from everywhere thatshowed up Moscow, a little old
Moscow, idaho, to film the firstequine fold from somatic cell
(58:00):
nuclear transfer.
There was this Idaho Gem.
They took film, we interviewedby the BBC, I mean everybody.
It was the biggest thing thatyou can even imagine.
And again then we had all threeof these.
They had no, we didn't need toinduce them which again is
(58:21):
fairly unique.
They were three spectacularlyhealthy, strong foals that were
all born and again for a first.
It's almost unheard of to havethree Go to term, go to term
right and then be fine and befine.
And we were the first in theworld to report that.
(58:42):
It put Utah State University onthe map internationally in that
research field.
And we've really stayed thatway.
We've really stayed that wayever since.
Speaker 1 (58:56):
And we talked about a true Eureka moment.
I mean and I don't think I wantto emphasize for everyone who's
listening it is the cloning ofthe mule and the success of
having an embryo was enormous.
But when he says it's unheardof to have it go to term the
(59:17):
first time and then to do thatthree times, yeah, three out of
the three and then have threehealthy foals, that's the
chances of that wereastronomical, exactly.
You can't, that would neverhappen.
Speaker 2 (59:31):
Exactly.
I mean I think if you look atswine sheep, goats, cattle, you
know it's never been thatsuccessful right out of the gate
, particularly with a specieswhere you don't know many of the
(59:52):
biologically importantparameters, that would make it
successful so yeah, it was a lotof work.
It was extremely rewarding, itwas very exciting, and it'll be
something I'll be able to tellmy grandkids of.
What it feels like to, at onemoment in time, be the only
(01:00:14):
person in the world thatunderstands why something hasn't
been working and what thesolution is.
That's the true Eureka, trueEureka moment.
Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Yeah, that's absolutely just fascinating and
experience that only one personcan have.
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
But the key to that and that's what I hope people
get from this interview isperseverance.
Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Exactly.
And really just sticking it out, and a lot of you know it
wasn't just me.
There were a lot of people thatdedicated a lot of time, a lot
of energy, a lot ofcontributions to making that
happen.
And I think when you mixperseverance, hard work and
(01:01:07):
maybe a little bit of luck orinsight, you know there's almost
nothing you can't solve.
Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Well, you know, I applaud you for that, because it
seems like every person that Italk to that's really I don't
know how to say it done thingsthey wanted to do from start to
end successfully.
It's almost always that formula.
It's that formula of I'm gonnabe here, I'm gonna show up, I'm
(01:01:39):
gonna get a little bit lucky,but really I'm gonna keep coming
back to it.
And I would say another part ofgood science is, even if it
turns out to be a total flop,you don't let it be a flop until
it's a total flop and you'veexplored all those avenues, then
you leave it.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Yeah, well, and again .
I've told graduate studentsbefore that have been
disappointed because they viewtheir results as negative or you
know it didn't work out.
I always tell them that youknow what oftentimes the
failures are more important, orthe negative results are almost
(01:02:22):
more important to publish and tolet people know about, because
that'll save other people fromgoing down that same path and
it'll be able to inform peopleon things that it's always new
knowledge and all data isimportant to get out in the
(01:02:44):
community so everybodyunderstands something a lot more
clearly.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yep well.
So I know time is short and Ijust wanted to.
I wanna wrap up with two quickquestions.
First one is right now, andthis is Ethan Doctrine.
I believe that a lot of people,that most everyone, has really
(01:03:15):
one thing that they're workingon at a time.
You know one thing, that atnight they're thinking about
that thing.
For you, right now, what's yourthing?
You know what's driving you, orwhat's the thing that you're
worried about or thinking aboutor excited about.
What's the thing?
Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Yeah, I think I guess on the worry side, I guess I
worry that, through some of thethings that have happened in the
last two, three years, thatthere's a lack of trust in
(01:03:56):
science and fact-based researchand that, to me, is very
concerning because we've madeenormous breakthroughs and
(01:04:16):
impacts as a society based ontrusting, honest research and
data and, as a society, if wemove away from using that
information to help inform usabout decisions moving forward,
(01:04:42):
then I think it's almost likesomebody in the wilderness
without a map.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
And we'll have lots of.
We'll go down a lot of wrongpaths.
We'll go down a lot of pathsthat won't be fruitful and
create new opportunities.
So I hope that we don't getstuck in a place where we stop
(01:05:16):
trusting research.
And I mean, I think one of thethings that we should expect
when we send our children off togo to college is we should
expect that they learn how to,how to evaluate things and how
(01:05:41):
to look at things objectively,and how to take in different
pieces of information, be ableto analyze them and then make a
decision.
And so I hope that as a society, we continue to do that and we
look for good sources of realinformation and real data, and
(01:06:08):
we still use that as a valuabletool to help us make good
decisions.
Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
I think that's great advice.
There's a lot of quickdecisions made.
Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Yeah, if you want to, and I guess on the other side
of the coin, if you want to.
What are some of the things I'mmost excited?
about we live in just aspectacular time.
I mean, I've been on this earthfor several years and I've
never been so excited about theopportunities that are in front
(01:06:39):
of us.
I mean, think about it.
I mean, in my area, research,we can now sequence almost
anything we want to know.
The sequence of, and having thesequence of, genes or proteins
opens unbelievable doors ofopportunity for being out what
(01:07:01):
it's almost inconceivable of thethings that we can accomplish
in the short amount of time ascompared to ten, five, twenty
years ago.
And so I see, and in the amountof information that people have
access to, I think it just isan exciting time to be alive and
(01:07:26):
to be able to see how quicklythings are progressing and the
positive impact some of thosethings can have on people's
lives.
Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
It's exciting to be alive and to see so my very last
question, and you know it's asimple and it's a complex
question Are you happy?
Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
I'm happy right now.
Yeah, very happy.
You know I've got a lot ofthings to be grateful for.
I mean we live in a greatcommunity.
I think we live in a state thatmakes great decisions.
(01:08:12):
The quality of life I mean I,because of my extension job, I
have the fortune to be able to.
I mean I've been in everycounty in the state of Utah.
I've traveled in every countyand truly there's not a place in
(01:08:34):
the state that isn't awonderful place to live.
I think we have moreopportunities today than we've
ever had, regardless of whereyou live.
Yeah, I've got a great family.
I've got, you know, a wifethat's been by my side for many,
(01:08:57):
many years, through good times,difficult times.
You know I've got five kids andthey've got great spouses, 15
grandkids.
Life's great.
You know.
It's not to say I mean you knowyou always have the
(01:09:21):
disappointments, you always havethe challenges, you always.
But you also have to look atthose, as those challenges are
also simultaneouslyopportunities, right?
I?
mean they may not look like anopportunity at the time because
they're a challenge.
But you know, I mentioned I'm a, I'm an old athlete and I and
(01:09:46):
because of my experiences there,you never get stronger, you
never get in a better placewithout having to do some work,
without having to experiencesome pain, having to hurt a
little bit, have to hurt alittle bit before you can, you
can get stronger.
And so I see you know lots ofopportunities.
(01:10:11):
Yeah, I'm super happy.
Well, that's good.
I mean I, I work with greatpeople.
Yeah, I mean I work for a greatassociation institution and I'm
not sure what more I could askfor.
Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
I mean the, the insights that you've shared with
everyone, the life that you'velived.
I always, at the end of this, Iencourage the folks that I
interview and I want to keepdoing this is to to share that.
To summarize that, one of themost valuable things I ever had
or I found through my family,was my grandma.
She made it to 107 and diedthis year.
(01:10:47):
One of the best things that wehave is her journals.
She got a daily journal.
So folks like you that that thata lot of us, you know, aspire
to, to persevere and become like, share that.
I mean that those are the kindof things that help, that helped
me want to pursue science,seeing people make breakthroughs
(01:11:12):
, seeing people in the agindustry.
Sometimes we think you knowwe're, we're cow guys and you
know that's, that's what it is.
Well, that's not what it is.
There's more you can do andyou're you're a living example
of that.
And anyway, thank you forcoming, thank you for sharing
all that.
I know you know your time isvaluable.
You have to travel everywhere,but I think this will be a
(01:11:35):
wonderful thing for people tolisten to.
Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
So thanks, ethan here .
Thank you appreciate theopportunity.
Thanks.
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