Dale Van Vleck Agricultural Research Service Hall of Fame 2010 Inductee

Dale Van Vleck, animal research geneticist, and also professor of animal breeding and animal science at University of Nebraska, Lincoln. I grew up in Nebraska on a mixed farm during the Depression and the Great Drought. Went to University of Nebraska in technical science and agriculture. I went into the ROTC program had a year off from that so I got a Master's went into the chemical corp wound up at Cornell University and was there until 1988.

Talk About Your Principal Area of Research During Your Career

The easy answer to that question is quantitative genetics which involves a lot of statistics but what it really involved is thoughts of computations. I was very lucky I came along at the time I did because computers where just starting to be used the xx record system had lots of records available and new statistical techniques were evolving or invented at that time so I'm very lucky. So I just followed that path. 

What our goals were is to figure out how to select better animals and that has not changed we just have more information. 

What Was the Most Exciting Discovery of Your Research Career? 

The most exciting discovery probably that I could actually do some of these things. I can compute things that nobody else had ever computed before of course now everybody can compute them. But when I first started the computer that we used was one that IBM said it needed 15 of those for the whole country and it's not any where as powerful as the smallest  calculator that you can buy today. But I really didn't make a discover I just applied a lot of things that were coming together at the same time and I probably never knew at the time how important it was.

Reflect on Your Choice to Spend a Career with ARS

I think that's a big question now because universities are becoming very focused on little things that maybe important but they are not seeing the big things and ARS has basically that responsibility to spread that information to their clients who are really the people in the country. And the emphasis on funding is such that you are forced almost to go to what I call little things and important things but they're  just a part of the whole and you have to have somebody to put together the whole. An example of the US Meat Animal Research Center why it exists it is unique in the world. You don't have a place that can evaluate say 40 or 50 different breeds of animals and then apply what you learn there to the whole industry. There is no other place in the world like that. 

What Should Scientists of the Future Be Focusing On?

Where does this research go on from here? I think it is fairly obvious that genomic information is going to overwhelm us. We have to somehow put that together. But the basic principal of putting together is the same as what we have been using for the last 50 or 60 years. People just don't realize that but there is a real need for people to handle those computations using the same basic statistical selection principals that we have in the past. I think one thing that will be important, that probably people don't see, is working together working across disciplines. A kind of systems approach to things rather than just one part,  where does it go?', you have to put all of the parts together and that's going to be difficult to do cause you need a generalist as well as specialty people.

Any Final Thought on Being Inducted into the ARS Hall of Fame?

What are my thoughts? It's an honor but there are probably dozens of other people that qualify maybe better than I do. Talk about recognition you are actually talking about the recognition of a whole group of people, one may get the so called honor but there are a lot of people that are a part of that and I've worked with so many people that's probably the most enjoyable thing that I've done. I think I've had something like over 100 graduate students I've worked with and I worked with people from probably over 70 countries. 

I guess I feel I've been very, very lucky to have come along when I have. I've been very fortunate to work with so many excellent people and to get to know really much more about the world then when you grow up on a little farm in Nebraska.