From the time that the discussions began about creating a collaborative dairy research program between UW–Madison, UW–Platteville and UW–River Falls, Heather White could see the benefits of the three schools working together to focus on Wisconsin’s most important agricultural industry.
White met with stakeholders to talk about the bottlenecks facing the dairy industry and testified at legislative hearings on the Dairy Innovation Hub. Shortly after the Legislature gave the program the green light, former College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Dean Kate VandenBosch asked White if she would consider serving as the program’s first director.
“I was honored to accept,” White says. “To date we’ve funded more than 200 projects across the three campuses, and a lot of the projects have been really impactful already, which is remarkable considering the time it usually takes a project to yield practical impacts. We’ve only been doing this now into our fourth year.”
For her efforts in leading the Hub and her other research and outreach programs, White was recently honored with the Vilas Faculty Mid-Career Investigator Award. The award recognizes research and teaching excellence in faculty who are mid-career. The award is for UW–Madison faculty members approximately 10 to 20 years into their career.
White is a professor in area of dairy cattle nutritional physiology. Her research program focuses on the health and nutrition of dairy cows during the transition period and is centered on hepatic and whole-animal nutrient partitioning and metabolism. White is also a hands-on researcher and mentor at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
But perhaps her greatest impact is now as the faculty director of the Hub, which focuses on dairy-related research that can improve animal health and welfare, enhance human nutrition, steward land and water resources, and grow farm businesses and communities.
The Hub has hired 17 faculty across the three campuses so far, and organizers are in the last round of faculty hires.
While faculty salaries will use a portion of the $7.8 million annual budget, the goal is to use a good percentage of the money to fund short- and long-term research projects that can make a difference for Wisconsin dairy farmers.
Sometimes it can be difficult to see the economic benefits of research, White says, but at the end of the day, she knows the research has to make a difference if the program is going to continue to be of value to the state.
“Our farmers in Wisconsin, just because we have the Hub, are not going to be immune to the challenges that are out there,” she says. “They are not going to be immune to decreasing farm numbers and low milk prices. We’re not going to be able to insulate our farms from that with our research. But if we’re doing our jobs right, all of those farms will have access to the tools and resources they need to be successful.
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Categories: Wisconsin, Crops, Rural Lifestyle