- [Chelsea] Howdy from Texas A&M.

- [Speaker 1] It's really cutting edge in that we get to find out what works best, how it works best in Texas.

- [Speaker 2] They're very clean contrary to what some old wives tales will say.

- [Speaker 3] You never know exactly where life takes you.

So, I'm an advocate that students should get diverse experience because there's thousands of species on this planet.

- [Chelsea] Welcome to campus.

Welcome to Texas A&M Today.

- Howdy.

I'm your host, Chelsea Reber, at the iconic Century Tree on Texas A&M University's Campus.

In this series, we've been shining a spotlight on the best and brightest of Texas A&M.

Today that takes us outdoors as we visit a Wildlife Center, where students get hands on experience with animals from all over the world.

Plus an often misunderstood plant and how Aggies are trying to turn it into a cash crop for Texans.

And we'll learn about the campus greenspace, that's designed for learning and relaxing, but also serves as a backdrop for some of life's biggest moments.

But first, birds are an important part of our ecosystem.

Yet, we've lost nearly a third to habitat destruction in the last 50 years.

Here's why A&M is working hard to improve their lives and ours.

(gentle-music) (machine whirling) - [Sarah] This is the on-campus aviary that is operated by the Schubot Center.

There aren't many centers like ours across the nation.

We're a group of researchers, and clinicians, and students and staff members here that are all united by our interest in advancing avian health.

These can be pet birds that someone owns in their house.

These are communities of wild birds out in nature.

We're interested in trying to understand what makes birds healthy.

(gentle music) This aviary has opened the doors for all sorts of really cool research on bird health, as well as teaching and education on bird health.

- [Debra] It takes a lot of student power, cage building, enrichment building, caring for the birds.

They are our eyes and ears of what the birds are doing and how their health status is.

It's like their first stepping stone into the real world.

- [Sarah] In the case of vet students that come through and get a really unique opportunity to learn how to handle a bird, learn how to collect samples from a bird at this aviary, when otherwise they might not be able to get those enriching experiences as part of their curriculum.

(gentle music) (birds chirping) Part of our mission here at the Schubot Center is really rooted in this idea called one health.

The health of humans, the health of domestic animals, the health of wildlife is all really intertwined in a broader context of ecosystem health.

We can think about birds and as they're moving across the landscape and they're migrating from one area to another, they're not just moving themselves.

They might be moving pathogens with them.

They might be moving viruses, parasites, things that might not necessarily make those individual birds sick, but things that we might wanna know about from a public health perspective.

When we take a step back and we understand that these emerging pathogens actually have likely been cycling in wildlife decades before they've emerged.

We can really learn a lot if we understand the natural way that they're transmitted before they spill over and cause people to be sick.

By getting out into the field and meeting those birds where they're at and sampling them, I think we can learn a lot about how they responding to all those variations and fluctuations.

(indistinct) I know.

So pretty - [Meredith] One part of what we do is put bands on birds.

(gentle music) I've been doing that for about 5 years now.

You can do so much with that information, especially long term.

And the information, that data can be used to look at broad scale changes in bird population.

(gentle music) All stages of a bird's life cycle can really be informed by banding data.

(bird squeals) Birds I've banded in Michigan have been recaptured in Belize.

So what I'm looking at in the wing is different generations of feathers.

It's always exciting to get recaptured data back and just say like, "He made it down there," because it is really an amazing journey.

"Or multiple sizes would be best."

"You can see he's got a bit of room on the three now."

Specifically, I'm here to get blood samples from these birds and recently I've been looking to get fecal samples as well.

(gentle music) With those two samples, I hope to look for the presence of neonicotinoids which are a class of pesticides.

"Hold the wing like this between.." Birds eat a lot of insects.

"Two first fingers" Following up the food chain, we need to know the effects on birds.

"So we'll do, wait."

(gentle music) Having that long term dataset clues us into trends about climate change and how birds are adapting.

(indistinct murmurs) (gentle music) "Hi, bud."

They're very clean contrary to what some old wives tales will say.

We know we've done so much damage to this planet and birds have suffered.

(gentle music) (birds chirping) Even though it can be a little bit dire when you're thinking about the totality of climate change and all the issues that biodiversity is facing right now, there are some really cool things happening in conservation and people do really wanna do what they can.

Our research certainly can shine a light on some of those issues.

Just seeing the abundances of what species I'm catching out here, and my rate of recapture, the age classes of different birds that I'm catching can really help inform other people's work as well know.

"I know, almost free."

(gentle music) We can use this data to just think about how we can ameliorate our presence on this Earth and try to not stop human development, but at least understand what it's doing to birds.

(gentle music) Sometimes they need a little puff of air to realize that they're free.

He's gonna come scream at us now so, (chuckles) yep.

(gentle music) - [Chelsea] The Schubot Center does not limit their work to College Station, they support international activities too.

Like studying Macaws in the Amazon Rainforest.

- [Chelsea] It's time for an Aggie Fact.

College Station used to have it's own Sesame Street, well sort of.

When KAMU celebrated it's 10th anniversary in February 1980, it requested an official Sesame Street sign from PBS, which was hung at the entrance of the parking lot.

The anniversary celebration also included a parade down Houston Street and a live broadcast.

It's not known when the famous green street sign was removed.

Nowadays the parking lot entrance is the driveway to the Bright Football Complex, which the A&M system named John David Crow Drive, after A&M's first Heisman trophy winner.

- [Chelsea] We may live in a farming and ranching region, but there's more than just cattle living in the Brazos Valley.

Check out the exotic animals students get to work with every day at one of the few on-campus Wildlife Centers in America.

(upbeat music) - [Dr. Blue] So we're right here on campus.

We're 12 acres of...

It's kinda a little animal paradise right here on F&B Road.

- [Cynthia] We have everything from whitetail deer to ostriches, emus, rheas, kangaroos.

The amount of species that we've acquired since I've been a new student, it feels like it has almost doubled.

- [Dr. Blue] We have some endangered wild horses called Przewalski's horses, also called P horses.

So more and more over the last few years, we have altered our mission a little bit to provide sanctuary for animals that need a lifelong home.

Especially animals that have medical needs because we're a vet school and because we can provide top notch veterinary care when it's needed.

There is nothing like this on any other university campus.

And actually nationally, there's very few Wildlife Centers that are actually on university campuses.

So from that perspective, we're very unique.

- Come on.

These are a fan favorite.

Oh my goodness, yes, you are.

- Now, look who has more.

- Cooper, and there you go, Tobias.

- The Wildlife Center has a few paid staff members and we have a huge group of students that come here.

Undergraduate students that either are usually they're wildlife and fisheries majors, they might be biomedical science majors, they might be animal science.

And a lot of our students wanna go to vet school.

And a lot of those students are looking for experience with animals, whether it's just basic husbandry, which means the basic day-to-day care.

And it's really good for students to get diversity of experience because you never know what you're really going to do as a veterinarian.

Students right now might think they're only gonna work on cats and dogs, but you never know exactly where life takes you.

So I'm an advocate that students should get diverse experience because there's thousands of species on this planet.

- [Matti] A typical day for a student at the Wildlife Center is first they come in, we have a log sheet where they log their hours.

From there, they look at their weekly assignments and their weekly tasks.

You come out to your habitat and you start your maintenance on your habitat.

Filling holes, checking on the animals, cleaning their water and food bowls, things like that.

And you spend most of your shifts taking care of your habitat and getting to know those animals and their specific exotic animal husbandry.

(upbeat music) - [Dr. Blue] So animal husbandry is really one of the most important things that students do.

And while they're doing those chores, they should be observing animals.

What's the animal behavior?

What's the interaction with the animals?

(upbeat music) - [Cynthia] Here, we teach our students about enrichment.

We also encourage our students to come and learn and see how we train the various animals.

We'll do different training techniques such as target training, which is really common at zoos.

"Maddie!"

(upbeat music) Animals need enrichment or mental engagement in order to help make sure that they're still living a happy, healthy life.

- I think the animals and the program attracts students that wanna come here and stay here for a long time.

And we benefit greatly by that.

And the animals benefit greatly.

And the whole educational program benefits because a lot of it is peer assisted learning.

(upbeat music) - [Matti] The number one thing that the Winnie Carter Wildlife Center taught me was to do things for someone that's not myself.

I personally did a lot of growing up here, I got more mature, I got more dependable, I built a lot of leadership skills 'cause we do give the students a lot of opportunities to step up and lead projects.

- I've never imagined that I could get so much experience out here at the Wildlife Center.

Not only that I could carry over to my major, but I've also gained a lot of the people skills, social skills, and leadership skills that's really required and needed of vet students.

And not even just of vet students, but that's helpful in any career field whatsoever.

I've learned so much here and I owe so much to here.

I never anticipated me being here four years later, but I don't think I ever wanna leave.

- [Chelsea] Every animal at the center is given a name such as Kesa the Linx and Milburn the Lemur.

Next we're headed to West Campus to find a beautiful backdrop for teaching and relaxing and sharing some of life's biggest moments.

- [Chelsea] Texas A&M's campus is in one word, busy, with more than 67,000 students traversing it each day.

Despite the hustle and bustle, there are still places to relax and unwind, like the gardens on West Campus.

(gentle music) - Well, it's the most beautiful classroom in Texas, right?

Well, being a little facetious there, but I think what we are is we're a hidden gem here on campus.

- [Chelsea] Dr. Mike Arnold is a horticulture professor at Texas A&M and Director of the Gardens.

He took us on a tour of his favorite spots.

- It provides us with a place to study the interactions between the built environment and the natural ecosystems.

- [Chelsea] The Gardens mission centers on teaching, especially in its first phase, the seven acre Leach Teaching Gardens.

- Many of our actual classrooms will on occasion come out and meet when the weather is good, and they'll come out and be able to relate some of their lectures directly to outdoor activities.

But more frequently we see laboratory groups.

Like the plant materials and some of the landscape design courses, things like that, that will meet every week out in the gardens.

- [Chelsea] Another key purpose for Dr. Arnold and his staff is community outreach, which became even more important when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

- [Dr. Arnold] What could you do with your family?

Where could you go?

Everything was closed down and all of a sudden The Gardens were an opportunity where people could come, receive some normalcy in their day, get a little break from being cooped up.

- [Chelsea] Soon the gardens became one of the go-to spots for some of life's biggest moments.

- It turns out that we've become one of the places to come and get your prom pictures, your wedding pictures.

We had a five or six week window where every Friday and Saturday it was standing room only in the garden, which was great.

We literally had lines three and four deep at some of the prime locations to get pictures.

- [Chelsea] They've also seen several proposals and even a few weddings.

All thanks to the beauty of the gardens.

For that, Dr. Arnold credits the caretakers, which includes several horticulture students, eager to improve their skills.

- [Osaze] I've always liked plants, so for me it was just having so many beautiful plants just in one place is what drew me to it.

- [William] I grew up growing lots of different types of ornamental trees, fruit trees, peaches, specifically.

I've always liked that.

I've always had a thing for biology in life.

It's just always been my interest.

- [Osaze] I really enjoy just having the ability to take ownership of something on campus that I've been coming to The Gardens for my whole time at A&M.

- [Chelsea] Students will soon have a lot more to work on with a 20 acre second phase of the gardens in the works.

- [Dr. Arnold] As we go forward, we've got several venues that are lumped under children's gardens, an amphitheater that's being developed.

We've got plans for a canopy walk.

So as you can tell, I'm kind of excited.

- [Chelsea] As we wrapped up our visit, I asked Dr. Arnold about his favorite time of year to visit the gardens.

And his answer all comes down to building relationships.

- [Dr. Arnold] I think my favorite time is in the fall, we have football games going on and all sorts of students coming back.

We've had them all away for the summer, long enough that we miss them.

And so they all come flowing back in.

We're here to serve people and to create a connection between them and the environment.

But I think when we look back 40, 50 years from now, we're gonna say, "Oh man, that was a magical time."

And it's all about people.

- [Chelsea] The Board of Regents has earmarked $40 million to support The Gardens' second phase.

Fundraising for additional donations starts this fall.

Next, a group of researchers who are busting myths and challenging misconceptions and why they're confident hemp is the next big business for Texas.

(gentle music) - I really like that hemp isn't necessarily a new crop, but it is a new crop.

(gentle music) [Heather] It hasn't been studied scientifically in like an exaggerated amount of time.

It can be used for food, it can be used for fiber.

It has the potential to be more economically viable for farmers, especially as a multi-use crop.

I definitely think that people are not understanding hemp versus marijuana.

Marijuana has high THC content and hemp has a low THC content.

- [Dr. Jessup] The hemp program started in 2020 when it was legalized in Texas and we basically repurposed this entire facility, greenhouse and building.

Got a lot of motivated students and we wanted to find things first that grew well in Texas, most of the hemp from Europe and Oregon doesn't do well here.

And we knew cannabis had been an illicit crop for 70 years in the United States.

So it had not been keeping up with corn, other major crops.

So our top priority was trying to modernize the crop.

I'm highly motivated to work on this crop because it brings it back out of the shadows and it lets us capture the value of the crop.

And for me, it helps capture the value of things that we have not done with plants in a long time.

(gentle music) - [Ezekiel] We are planting the 1600 F2 population.

We are gonna let them mature out in the field and about, I wanna say four to six weeks, we'll be evaluating them for their fiber quality and grain quality.

(upbeat music) - [Heather] You are always finding journal articles to kind of follow methodologies, right?

That's how science works.

You can repeat something over and over - but there isn't anything within a 10 year span.

We're finding stuff from the '40s, the '60s, or everything is really old or it's from another country.

And so it is really the wild west in that the research that we are doing is new for this area and this time.

(upbeat music) - [Dr. Jessup] We absolutely have to find things that are heat and drought tolerant.

That's very poignant this year, in particular in 2022 drought is extreme, temperatures are extreme.

Both of those cause hemp, even from Asia to flower very early, flower very small.

So you end up with almost no yield.

So finding things that are heat and drought tolerant is key.

Beyond that, finding things that are uniform.

If you look at cotton, corn, major crops, it's uniform across a thousand acres.

Cannabis, you can put 10 plants out there and you have five different appearances.

So trying to make things that are uniform is also extremely important for performance and value of the crop.

- [Heather] Farmers don't know what herbicides or pesticides they can use with the crop because that hasn't been studied.

So it's really cutting edge in that we get to find out what works best, how it works best in Texas.

(upbeat music) - We believe that if we could find a way to breed for longer herd, it could make for many more products.

You could use hemp fiber for like paper and more plastics, and hempcrete.

- [David] The ship that Christopher Columbus sailed on, the boards were water tight because of a hemp resin.

The sails were made out of hemp.

The ropes used to moor and hold the sail in place were all hemp ropes.

But it also provided seed so that when they landed someplace, they could start their own hemp industry because they needed to repair sails.

They needed to have new ropes, they needed to have building materials.

Anytime we grow something, we want to have a way to sell what we produce.

There are not many market channels that have developed that carry the hemp through any type of processing to turn it into fiber or to process it to put it into oil.

There's a huge demand today for lightweight, sturdy products.

The aerospace industry has a demand for those, and the automotive industry.

There's huge opportunity being explored for the utilization of hemp.

Students are interested in it.

It's a new exciting crop.

They have background, they're interested to see all the things that can be made and developed out of it.

(upbeat guitar music) - [Dr. Jessup] The hemp industry is abound with possibilities, but it's very small.

It's very young in Texas but there are lots of people interested, lots of people that would be willing to adopt it if we can improve it sufficiently.

If you look at what they are making on major crops today, there's definitely opportunity.

The net margin per acre is not that high for major crops.

And particularly when you think about hemp having a seed crop and a fiber crop, you're gonna have multiple commodities you can sell that helps with the value in the net that farmers can make from it.

- [Heather] I think what's really cool about A&M doing it is because we're a public university and then we give back directly.

We're not trying to make a profit from it.

We're trying to give back to the farmers and the public and make it accessible to everybody.

- [Dr. Jessup] We have 150 years of agricultural research experience and we love working with novel crops, potential specialty crops.

And we have a broad coverage of discipline.

So we can talk about chemistry, biology, physiology, genetics, agronomics, and then you can think of all the way to engineering is all here in this college.

- [Heather] I have not worked in a lab or seen another lab with such heavy undergrad student involvement.

They're excited about it.

They're excited about the research.

They're excited to do undergraduate student research and find where their passions lie.

Which is exciting as somebody who's going to college to go in and actually find a niche where you fit and you love what you do already.

That's pretty exciting.

- [Chelsea] America does have a lot of catching up to do.

More than 30 countries grow hemp, including China, which produces the most, and France, which never outlawed production.

Next I caught up with a Texas A&M difference maker for a one-on-one conversation.

Today, that's Dr. Jennifer Mercieca, a communication professor who specializes in political rhetoric.

She's one of the most widely quoted commentators from Texas A&M and has been interviewed hundreds of times.

She's also highly respected for her research and teaching.

- [Chelsea] Your 2020 book on former President Trump, "Demagogue for President" got a lot of attention.

What was the research and the writing process like for that book?

- [Dr. Mercieca] So I had initially started writing just an essay on demagogues, not anything to do with Donald Trump 10 years ago.

And I couldn't finish it because I didn't have an example of someone being called a demagogue.

And that was what I was really interested in.

And then Donald Trump started his campaign and within a month Lindsay Graham accused him of being a demagogue on national television.

Then I thought, "Yay, I can finally finish this essay that I've been trying to finish forever."

And so I paid a lot of attention to his campaign really from the beginning.

- [Chelsea] And define demagogue for our audience, please.

- [Dr. Mercieca] Yeah.

So the technical definition is a leader of the people.

- [Chelsea] Okay.

- [Dr. Mercieca] Just a neutral term actually.

But the way that it is used typically is that it's very negative, a misleader of the people.

So his supporters absolutely saw him and still see him as this heroic figure who is defending their interests against the rest of the state that they see as corrupt.

And, of course, the people who don't support him see him as the dangerous demagogue.

- [Chelsea] And then in 2021, you published an article called, "We Are All Propagandists Now."

What does that title mean and how is it significant to the state of our political union?

- [Dr. Mercieca] Yeah, I'm really fascinated with the way that we have all learned to use social media and the platform that we all have on social media in similar ways to how propaganda works.

So I'm really fascinated with the horizontal spread of propaganda through social media.

It used to be that propaganda was primarily vertical, that it came from some elite, or government, or a political party, or a political figure and spread down.

But today, propaganda can come from anywhere and it does.

- [Chelsea] What are your ideas on how to foster better political discourse?

'Cause we know we need it to get better.

- [Dr. Mercieca] We do.

We absolutely need to recognize that we have more in common than we think even on the most polarizing topics.

If you look at research about how we think about issues, we have a very distorted view of what our political opposition thinks compared to what they actually think.

And so really the best thing that we can all do is we can learn to listen to each other.

We can rebuild trust by talking to people who we think might have different political views and recognize that the most important thing is the relationship that we have.

Politics is not war.

You cheapen more when you make it seem like it's war.

War is war.

- Thank you so much for joining us today.

I appreciate it.

You can watch an extended version of this interview on our website.

Thanks for watching this episode of Texas A&M Today.

We hope you'll join us again as we continue to meet more Aggies moving our university forward.

(upbeat guitar music)