(bright engaging music) - [Announcer] This is a Nebraska Public Media Connects production, in partnership with the University of Nebraska Foundation.

- Nebraska hospitals are facing a staffing emergency.

- School districts across the state are facing shortages of teachers.

- Across the nation, and here in Nebraska, the education system is facing a problem of how to get students to become teachers and keep them there.

- A skilled labor shortage is impacting the construction industry across the nation and right here in Lincoln.

- [Narrator] Nebraska and the US are grappling with a shortage of healthcare workers, educators, and STEM workers.

We need to look at road clearances.

[Narrator] Census predictions show the US population is growing, becoming more diverse, and rapidly aging.

With unknowns like climate change and global pandemics, how do you predict and plan for the future?

- How might you interpret this that gives you something different?

- [Narrator] As the University of Nebraska plans for its own future, it also has a responsibility to the community.

- We have to make sure that we're pivoting our curriculum for the needs of the future workforce.

- The university in my opinion, needs to be responsive to those changing workforce demands.

- The next generation is going to face a series of problems that our generation has left them with and they're going to require engineering solutions.

- It's been a fantastic opportunity to think about agriculture 2.0.

What does the future of agriculture look like?

The opportunities for children growing up in rural communities are different.

The workforce needs and realities are different.

And really the future of our country depends on our profession.

[Narrator] Through research and workforce development, the university is looking outward, preparing Nebraska for the future and positioning us at an advantage.

When the future comes, Nebraska will be ready.

- The healthcare workforce is so important to the state of Nebraska, especially because our population is aging.

Actually in 2020, it was the first year that we had more population 75 and older than we did five and under.

- Well, the changes we're gonna face in the coming decade are gonna look a lot like the ones that we've got now.

I mean, every projection says that healthcare is gonna be a big item for the next 10 years.

- How do we deliver the same quality of healthcare in Arnold, Nebraska that we do in Omaha or Lincoln?

How do we make sure somebody who's living in Anselmo has access to great care, the same level of quality that you would get here.

We have 13 counties without a full-time primary care health provider, and it's not because there's not a need from the patient side and it's not because we're not producing enough physicians.

It really becomes an economic and geography problem.

So in those 13 counties that all have less than 1,200 total residents, there just aren't enough people to support practice.

So as you look across the state of Nebraska and say, how come in these small communities, there's not an obstetrician, there's not a pediatrician, there's not an orthopedic surgeon, there's not an ENT, its because there just aren't enough patients.

- [Narrator] So how many patients does it take to sustain a practice?

According to Dr. Harrison, about 1,500 for family medicine, 3,000 for general internal medicine, 8,000 for pediatrics, and as you move into more surgical specialties, that grows into the tens of thousands.

- [Harrison] Rural hospitals depending on their size face several problems.

The larger hospitals that are regional referral centers like Grand Island, and North Platte, and Scottsbluff do pretty well.

It's those critical access hospitals that I think face the real challenge.

- COVID-19 has really kind of shown how challenging healthcare is.

We do pretty well in the most populated areas here in our state, Omaha and Lincoln, but the rural aspects of Nebraska, we've where the chinks in our armor are.

- Whether it's physicians, non-physician providers, we have labs shortages, nursing shortages.

I mean, you could even say from the environmental services to dietary services all across the spectrum, healthcare, the workforce shortage is real.

Our facility is located in the central part of the panhandle, and we like to say, it's the gateway to everywhere.

Very few big hospitals in the panhandle but there's lots of little critical access hospitals and so we think that's just a positive thing for rural America.

- [Narrator] Critical access hospitals are hospitals that receive federal funding for providing care in areas where it's most needed, typically rural areas, without many healthcare options.

They have a maximum number of 25 inpatient beds.

and the length of a patient's state is limited.

Box Butte General Hospital has a 24 hour emergency department, provides a variety of outpatient services and operates three clinics, one in Alliance, and two satellite clinics in nearby Hemingford and Hyannis.

- We're the closest hospital on Highway 2.

When you go east, the next hospital is Broken Bow.

That's three hours away.

- Really it is since there there's no urgent care here in town, there is one in Scottsbluff, which is an hour away.

We are really it.

I think we should probably grab an x-ray today.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ott is from Henderson, Nebraska and understands the importance of rural healthcare access.

- Critical access hospitals are important because they serve not only the community they are in, but significant outlying areas.

So much of Nebraska is still very rural that you still have, especially out here in the panhandle, you have people who are scattered all over, and they're going to have to drive a distance no matter what.

So if you have a critical access hospital, you can put that in a place where they don't have to drive quite as far.

If it's calving season, they're not coming in.

If the weather's bad, they're not coming in.

You may not be able to get down your own driveway to get to see a doctor.

They can't come in for everything.

I can't be driving an hour 'cause I have a sore throat.

- [Narrator] A few years ago when the hospital lost an obstetrician, women in this area had to go elsewhere to give birth.

- [Dr. Ott] We just don't have the people out here.

You lose one provider and that's a huge deal.

- [Narrator] When Dr. Derek Shafer was hired, Box Butte General Hospital was able to restart their obstetrics program.

[Derek] Well let me have you lay back and I'll measure you and listen to the baby.

I really like obstetrics, bringing new life into the world that's the most rewarding because you're building up that relationship, and anticipation, and getting to see how life-changing that is.

- [Narrator] There's a different way of thinking when you practice medicine in a rural area.

When you lack specialists, there's much more emphasis on prevention and with limited capacity, they're forced to think ahead.

- When you get about 20 patients in the hospital, people start getting real nervous because we need to start moving people around, discharge, transfer, start talking to the other outlying hospitals.

- Sometimes you have to practice a little more defensively, where in a critical access hospital you're trying to predict what happens if this person gets worse, not necessarily what am I doing for this person right now?

If you need to transfer them, are they gonna make the helicopter ride or the ambulance ride, or what's the weather doing?

Can we get a plane here from Denver or from Scottsbluff?

So there's a lot more trying to think ahead in some of these scenarios.

- [Narrator] UNMC is also thinking ahead.

Their student programs include a primary care program and a rural training track aimed at getting students into small communities.

- It isn't just about producing doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, it's about where you produce them.

And what we've learned over the years is we can have it all done educationally in Omaha at our medical center, but where do they intern and how do we get them to those places?

- So you said that you diabetes, any other chronic medical conditions?

- [Patient] No.

- [Harrison] So, we have residents, come in, family medicine is a three-year training program.

They spend their year in Omaha at the main campus and then they spend two years out in a smaller rural community.

- [Derek] Medical school is structured in four years and then typically you do residency after that.

In the primary care program, you start your residency a year earlier, essentially and then you're also guaranteed a spot in the primary care of residency, either family medicine or internal medicine at UNMC, which is really beneficial because then instead of spending your fourth year of medical school, either relaxing or trying to impress people to get a spot in residency, you can really focus on how to be a good doctor.

- The whole theory was you've spend your last two years in one of those rural communities, you're much more likely to stay.

You set down roots and become established.

You know the doctors there, the hospital systems know you, and over our time about 70% of our graduates actually end up staying out at a rural Nebraska community.

- [Narrator] UNMC's rural track has centers in Grand Island, Kearney, North Platte, and Scottsbluff, where Shafer spent the last two years in residence.

Having worked nearby during his residency meant he made important connections with future colleagues early on.

- It's really nice for me because all of the specialists or the people I need to call or consult if I have a question, they're already in my cell phone.

So I can just call them directly.

They know who I'm talking to, who they're talking to.

They know how I practice already.

So I don't have to start that relationship from square one.

- [Narrator] Schafer is a self-described poster child for UNMC's rural programs, but Harrison isn't convinced most Nebraskans realize just how many of their students are already in rural areas.

- I think there's a little, maybe this global perception that we spend most of our time training them right here in Omaha and Lincoln and never leave the campuses.

But our medical students spend 1,400 weeks a year, globally out across the state, outside of Lincoln and Omaha.

I'm not sure it always registers with everybody really what a footprint we have out there.

- [Narrator] At a time when many critical access hospitals struggle to attract and retain a qualified workforce, Box Butte General has succeeded.

- [Derek] I plan on staying.

I don't have any plans to leave.

I really think that there's a difference in work-life balance in a smaller town, which is a big draw because I live two minutes from the hospital, and so I get to go home for lunch every day.

If I forget something, I can run back and get it in between patients.

I get to see my kids and my family much more often than I did.

It's a very rewarding field to be in and you get a little more benefit from that really close connection that you can have with your patients and your community.

- The Bureau of Labor Statistics does projections about occupation demand from 2020 to 2030.

Healthcare support, so not our doctors and nurses necessarily, but those aides that make healthcare run, 23% growth.

That's a big change compared to every other occupation.

So, we really expect that there is gonna be high demand for these and I think it's up to the University of Nebraska to help support that.

(bell tolls) - [Narrator] On the University of Nebraska at Kearney campus, they're partnering with UNMC to recruit healthcare workers even earlier.

- [Peggy] KHOP is the Kearney Health Opportunities Program.

That program is a pipeline program that was designed to bring students from rural Nebraska, provide them the support, and education, and training they need to become healthcare professionals, and in exchange for that, those students commit to practicing in rural Nebraska upon completion of their training.

The students from rural Nebraska understand the need for healthcare providers in rural areas.

They really wanna go back to those communities and be part of the solution I would say.

They want to be able to provide care for community members in need and they like the idea of working and living in a small community where they know their patients and they feel like they can really make an impact.

(water splashes) - [Narrator] Students accepted into the program have guaranteed admission to UNMC and a full tuition scholarship at UNK.

The catch, because of a limited amount of seats per year, they're asked to commit to a career path as a high school senior.

- [Peggy] We're asking 18 year olds to make a really big commitment, but in exchange for that commitment, they're receiving a really high quality education and a really early collaboration with UNMC and networking and opportunities to be out in rural facilities that they wouldn't receive otherwise.

KHOP started in 2010 with five pre-med students in our initial year, we now have 116 students in the program.

- My name is Koeby and I'm Pre-Physical therapy.

- I'm Sam and I'm Pre-Pharmacy.

- I'm Nicole and I'm Pre-Med.

My high school had an ambassador from KHOP come and speak to our classes.

So that's how I learned about the program.

I know like some people, they are very indecisive of what they wanna do in the future, but I've known since like probably junior year in high school, I wanted to go into pharmacy.

Once I've kind of got my mind on what I wanna do I stick with it, but I understand how early of an age you're deciding what you wanna do.

After I complete my four years of pharmacy school in Omaha, I'm looking at either I'm going back to maybe Broken Bow or just somewhere in Nebraska elsewhere.

So as a freshmen in the KHOP program, you get to live in these learning commons, and in the learning commons you get to meet all the other KHOP students, not just in physical therapy.

So, some of my best friends I met were pre-pharmacy, pre-med, pre-nursing and you're taking similar classes since you're taking pre-health classes, so you get to study with those guys and just build connections with everybody.

I think this program gives back a lot to the students, not just academically, but outside of school, they have a lot of events and activities where you can go and actually see your profession and learn more about it.

I actually get to meet a lot of the UNMC' professors through KHOP.

We have activities there where we visit the campus.

I've noticed that a lot of professors will actually recognize me and come up and talk to me and have sort of conversations.

- As freshmen, we met weekly and we got to talk to different professionals in the area, interviews, and we also got to discuss rural problems that medical professionals face, because that's what we'll be facing in the future.

My friends who are pursuing similar things at other universities, like they have the same classwork, but they just don't have the connections that we get, the networking that we get to establish even in our undergrad years, which is so important, and then we can just carry that on as we continue.

- As a rural health care professional, I hope to give back to the community that sort of raised me and help keep that population healthy.

It's really cool to be a part of something that I know is gonna give back to the communities.

- [Lance] Fundamentally, what engineering is about is about improving the human condition.

People don't really think about it that way a lot, but it really is, when you think about how are you gonna feed the world?

How are you gonna provide clean water?

How are you going to address climate change?

Those are engineering problems.

- How do we help communities solve a problem and then how do we bring those communities together throught that?

We may not realize that all the time, but when we design a road or create a park or something like that, I mean, it's where people gathered, they interact, they interface.

And so I trace that back to the University of Nebraska and specifically the College of Engineering has a huge responsibility to provide that expertise, that knowledge, that mindset, to go help do that.

- The STEM workforce is in high demand in Nebraska.

We only have about 30,000 working in computer and math, and even lesser working life and physical sciences.

But the projected growth between 2020 and 2030 in that occupation is rather large.

It's probably upwards of 15%.

- So there's obviously gonna be great growth for all levels of technology, from the very basic stuff, the help desk type of stuff, all the way up to the people who are actually writing code and developing new programs.

I think within the construction industry, you're gonna see a shortage for a good period of time to come, and it's everything from the entry-level framers to the plumbers and the electricians.

I think every construction company right now would tell you they can build a lot more if they have the workers, and again, that's not a Nebraska unique situation, that's everywhere.

- If we had less constraints on how many people we could find and fill the roles that we need, a business like ours in, in the industry that we're in in today's world, it's really unlimited in the types of projects and clients that we could work for.

So there is a limit to the growth in our business because we can't find enough qualified people to do the technical jobs that we have available.

[Narrator] The demand for science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM workers is growing.

And that may be because the industry itself is expanding into new areas.

- In the nation and in Nebraska, the STEM workforce needs are probably the fastest growing need and it's because of the progression of technology.

It used to be that technology was only found in narrow fields, things that you would associate with technology like computers and things like that.

But now, it's everywhere.

Everybody's lives has technology in it, from your cell phone, to all the technology in your car, to all the materials and everything that you buy that's manufactured, all that has engineering underlying it.

The agricultural sector is increasingly technology-driven both on the biological side, but also on the device side.

So everybody is trying to hire engineers, and computing, and construction professionals.

In addition, engineering is the basis of the economy in the United States, quite frankly.

We are a first-world, technology-driven economy.

So engineers play a really prominent role across the nation but of course in the state of Nebraska.

- [Narrator] Brad Strittmatter is the CEO of Olsson, a civil engineering firm.

- We do really all sorts of infrastructure projects and so our bread and butter has always been civil engineering, so transportation work, and land development work, utilities, water, sewer, that sort of thing.

- [Narrator] The company began in Lincoln in 1956 as a one man operation.

Today, they employ 1600 people with offices in nine states.

Their growth is largely dependent on finding enough qualified STEM employees.

- We've been very fortunate that the industry that we're in has been in high demand over the last several years and finding people is obviously the hardest part.

- [Narrator] To meet workforce demands, they're starting to recruit from outside their industry.

- We have a broad range of STEM based individuals inside of Olsson, obviously a lot of traditional engineering fields, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and pretty much the gamut of the engineering disciplines that we have here, and certainly those are in high demand and continue to be, and will continue to grow.

But we also have other technical fields inside of Olsson that people may not realize.

We hire a lot of geologists.

We hire a lot of biologists, environmental scientists, that come from different backgrounds.

They may have been in different fields, but related, and then come into our business and work on infrastructure.

- [Narrator] They also depend heavily on universities for recent graduates and student interns.

- Today, we have about 80 or 90 interns on staff all the time and that number is growing.

We count on that intern workforce.

I mean, it's a part of our business.

It's not just something we're doing to recruit or give students an opportunity to learn about a profession.

I mean, we count on them for part of our business and delivering to our clients.

- [Narrator] Anna Cole designs power delivery systems for Olsson.

She began as an intern.

- I grew up right here in Lincoln and growing up I always knew that I liked math and science.

So I wanted to combine those into something that I could have an impactful career.

I went to school for civil engineering and I honestly didn't even know that I could design people's power lines as a civil engineer.

And I kind of thought, "Don't "they need an electrical engineer for that?"

But that kind of opened up the engineering world to me.

It's not just electrical engineers that are needed on the power delivery team.

You need civil engineers and people that understand the soil, the water, the strength of the poles to have a successful team together.

The types of problems I'm solving in my day-to-day work are typically dealing with lines that are aging infrastructure.

So they might be 60 years old at this point.

I know I did a good job on my projects when I have provided a customer with more reliable power.

Sometimes they have power that frequently has problems or interruptions and I know that I can help them run their businesses more efficiently when I've provided them good power.

- [Narrator] Jacob DeLone is a recent UNL graduate who works at Olsson as a structural engineer.

- I had always had an interest in transportation and infrastructure.

I thought in high school, maybe I wanted to be like a roadway or a traffic engineer.

As I started taking classes, I found that I had a knack for structural engineering.

I found it to be the most intellectually stimulating and kind of combined that love of transportation with structures, and land, and bridges that way.

I'm designing concrete, I'm designing steel, designing slabs that stuff sits on.

I'm designing retaining walls as well as culverts, pipes, things like that.

The favorite part of my job is honestly probably putting together plans.

At the end of the day, we're constructing something that we hand to a contractor, and then they go and build.

So how do we communicate to the client and then the contractor, how do we build our structures?

I think that's really cool.

So if people are unsure with what they want to do or what field they want to get in in their careers, I would definitely encourage STEM and specifically engineering.

I would encourage everyone to take a deep look into what they're passionate about and how they can apply those skills as an engineer.

I was out on a bridge last fall actually that I did some calculations for near the end and standing on it as we were pouring the concrete, seeing, "Oh, cool, I did these calcs "for where this rebar needs to go," it was really cool.

It's a phenomenal feeling and I'm really enjoying seeing more of that as I move on.

- [Narrator] Anna and Jacob are just two examples of how the university system is critical to a community's workforce.

- When you think that the College of Engineering right now has about 3500 undergraduate students, which means we graduate about 600 students a year, you can see there's a big gap between the number of engineers and computing professionals that we're producing and what the workforce demands and that's part of why the university is making investments in the college to grow and strengthen it.

- At the University of Nebraska Lincoln, we're looking to nearly double the amount of engineers that we will have seats for.

- [Lance] We're in the process of making nearly $200 million worth of investments in facilities.

That's really important because A, it attract students to the college because they care about the quality of the facilities they're learning in.

But also this will be the first time in at least a generation that we have facilities that are really built to support engineering education.

- [Narrator] Phase I of the improvement project more than triples the space of the engineering building known as The Link to house research labs, electrical and computer engineering, and civil and environmental engineering.

The Scott Engineering Center will also be renovated with state-of-the-art classrooms and teaching labs.

Most importantly, this facility will foster research.

- And we've talked a lot about how engineering is about problem solving and it's that research enterprise of our faculty that really leads the effort to solve those problems.

You know, some simple examples, we have faculty who are working on tissue engineering, so that maybe in the future when we have a burn victim, we can harvest some T-cells or some cells from that person and 3D print some replacement tissue.

We have people that are working on wind energy and how to make sure that that's truly sustainable and can meet the energy needs of the country.

- [Narrator] Phase II is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2023.

Kiewit Hall will be home to the construction management program, student maker-spaces, classrooms, and student services.

While Phase I one provides a space for cutting-edge engineering research, Phase II is aimed at providing the best possible education and highly skilled future workers.

More than engineering, they're teaching essential skills like leadership, communication, and inclusivity to prepare them for a hungry workforce.

- They started a program a few years ago, The Complete Engineer, which was helping their students understand more than just the technical side of the business.

- No longer are we gonna be producing engineers that can just do math equations, and do physics, and thermodynamics.

You're gonna have to also have a rounded education in liberal arts.

You have to be able to communicate and you have to be able to write it.

- [Narrator] As they work to increase the number of engineering graduates, the college also hopes to attract an even broader range of students.

- Diversifying our student body is also about improving the quality of engineering education and the quality of our engineering professionals, because having a more diverse set of opinions creates better solutions.

This has been well studied and documented by both business consultants and by engineering educators.

So by diversifying our student body, we're gonna actually better serve Nebraska, and Nebraska industry, and the industry in the region.

- [Strittmatter] The changes is going on at the University of Nebraska and specifically the Colleges of Engineering campus locations.

I mean, they're amazing, and this has happened I think largely due to that move to the Big 10 and understanding that, and then the leadership here in Nebraska saying this is important to us.

We're gonna get more and even better graduates than we've got and so I'm excited for our future because we lean so much on them to help support our business going forward.

- [Narrator] If the new facilities and workforce readiness programs aren't enough to persuade a prospective engineering student, perhaps the money will be.

- [Perez] Our students, typically in any given year, leave the university with the highest starting salary and the least amount of student debt of any college at the university.

So it's very attractive from that perspective.

- [Narrator] Both Strittmatter and Perez say they recognize the enormous impact a university has on a community and its future.

We are the only college of engineering in the state of Nebraska, so everybody, every Nebraskan who comes to the university and wants an engineering degree comes to us and our graduates go all over the state.

Pick a town in Nebraska and more than likely there's at least one engineer employed there.

- Their responsibility, I think is greater than most people understand and realize because when you walk around Lincoln, Omaha, Grand Island, North Platte, there are so many University of Nebraska alum and people who've had an experience there.

They shape the world around us here in Nebraska.

- [Jack] I don't want to sound like Henny-Penny, "The sky is falling," but there's a crisis, and we're just touching on it right now.

- [Narrator] As a principal, Jack Bangert knows firsthand about the need for teachers.

People are retiring left and right.

COVID has sped this up.

We're seeing people leave the profession.

The Midwest work ethic is amazing, but Nebraskans in particular, when we compare to many regional states, our labor force participation rates are off the charts.

In fact, we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country right now.

That means kids have to be somewhere while we're all at work, so our teachers are critical to this economic system.

- Frankly, there are a lot of teacher vacancies across the country in all sectors, but what's really driving the high numbers of teacher shortages, if you just look at the statistics right now, it's really in rural communities and under-resourced communities that we see the greatest discrepancies.

It's not just teachers in classrooms, it's all specialists in the educational sector that we find much more limited in rural schools.

So specialists like special education teachers, early childhood education providers, anything associated with special needs students are going to be in dire need within rural schools.

- [Narrator] Further complicating the issue, the increased need for mental health providers in these areas, when school psychologists and social workers aren't available, the burden falls on teachers.

- Schools are being asked to do more than they've ever been asked to do.

We are mental health providers.

We are family counselors and there's many times that teachers are the only positive adult that a child will ever come across.

Not only do you have all this going on, the government and society as a whole has decided to really raise the standards on teaching.

So, now we're, we're measured all the time.

When you look at those challenges mixed with the mental health challenges, mixed with societal challenges, you can see why people are timid about coming into this profession and really the future of our country depends on our profession.

- [Narrator] Recruiting and retaining qualified educators can be particularly difficult in rural areas where they wear many hats.

- [Susan] They serve recess duty.

They do all kinds of after-school programs.

They're the coach.

And it just reminded me of how committed these educators are to do whatever it takes to make sure that their students are in a position where they're going to be best able to learn.

They're just not resourced the same way that urban schools are.

There are a lot of strengths in rural settings.

Nebraska certainly is comprised largely of rural education areas.

I mean the largest school districts, you can count on one hand.

Everything else in the state of Nebraska is considered rural and some are very remote, rural communities.

We know that it's harder to get teachers to come to rural communities and stay in rural communities for the long haul.

- I think the key really in retaining teachers is growing your own and getting them to come back, with this caveat, I feel I'm better because I left.

I left, I spent time doing something else and I came back.

Some sort of experience outside of your comfort bubble, whether that comfort bubble was in South Omaha and you go back to Omaha South, or in Falls City and you go back to Falls City Public Schools.

It's the same thing.

And so, especially in teaching you need that.

In high school, if you would've asked me, I wanted to live in New York city.

I wanted to be anywhere but Falls City.

- [Narrator] Tayten O'Brien is a new teacher at Falls City Middle School, a school that she wants attended as a student.

This was not her original plan.

I wanted to do medical sales.

So I wanted to travel around from hospitals and like sit in on surgeries and sell knee replacements, or sell anything because I really like the hospital setting because I liked people.

- [Narrator] But business school soon led her to becoming a business teacher, and though she wants dreamed of life in the Big Apple, her heart kept bringing her back home.

- There was a lot of business teacher openings up in the whole state and so I did apply for some of those and I got interviews, but then I was like, this is six hours away from home.

Like my mom's here, my sister's here, my cousins are here.

Like my best friends from high school moved back here.

What can I do that I will enjoy being in Falls City because I know I wanna be here.

I knew coming back here I wouldn't find a job as the business teacher.

Here's Rosie.

I came back here and subbed and I think that was kind of getting my foot in the door because I was in like the school system.

They knew I was wanting to be a teacher.

He sat me down him and Mr. Bangert and said, "There's 20 job openings for science teachers "in Nebraska," secondary science, so six through 12.

And he says, "And I know your degree is six through 12.

"Would you want to get a science endorsement?"

- We had to have her switch her endorsement, but we were willing to invest in that because we know the chances of retaining her and her being a career teacher for us are very high.

So we feel like that's a good investment.

These are the outside of the box kind of things.

(car drives by) The cost of living in a place like Falls City is really low.

You may make a little more money and I'm not talking a lot more money, just a little more money in the city, but your cost of living is so low that you're coming out way ahead in terms of financial resources.

- We'll do a lot of like projects and experiments and stuff until the- - [Narrator] Recruiting locally and allowing teachers to switch endorsements are tactics that seem to be paying off.

- My four fish.

I'm happy with being in Falls City.

I love being here.

No matter where I am, I know somebody and that just feels like home.

Like no matter where I'm at, I just feel, I feel welcome.

- [Narrator] Schools have been forced to find creative solutions to fill positions like Tayten's, but a new pilot program at the University of Nebraska is working to prevent the problem in the first place.

- COVID-19 changed the dynamics of teaching.

Those that were on the edge of retiring, probably made decisions that maybe this is the right time for me to go ahead and retire.

So now we have a deficit, we need young talent to come in and be the teachers of the future.

- I want to be the best teacher.

- If it's help with homework or it's just, they need somebody to talk to about what's going on in their life, I wanna be able to be that person.

- And then you come here for the Math Multi-Work Program.

- Teacher Scholars Academy is a cohort of 40 future teachers of all different kinds of content areas and age ranges, and we're all just super passionate about education.

- [Narrator] The program began in 2019 and includes a full tuition scholarship and $8,000 annually for room and board, books, and fees.

- The Teacher Scholars Academy is a donor-funded scholarship program for future teachers or as we call them pre-service teachers, and this donation was really set up to address a potential teacher shortage in the future, and to really attract high-level, talented students to the field of education.

We've had students who either wanna go into education or are fearful because they're not gonna make a lot of money coming out of college.

Money is a huge deal, especially if you're from a family that isn't able to support you financially through college, a tuition scholarship could be your make or break to go to college in the first place, or just go into a field where you're gonna make a little bit of money afterwards.

- Actually on my college visit, I was a little concerned, obviously about the financial aspect of going out of state.

So, on my college visit my mom and I talked to the person leading me around and I was like, "Do you know of any scholarship "opportunities for teachers and stuff?"

And she was like, "Oh my gosh, "I have just a person for you to talk to."

- Right here, so you'll be in that group and you'll be in this one.

- Once I heard more about the program and everything that the program stands for and so much like beyond that, I was like, this is something I wanna be involved in.

- So, how might you interpret this that gives you something different?

- [Narrator] They're learning together and living together.

- [Braden] In the first year of study, they all live together on the same floor of a residence hall.

So students who are elementary education, they're taking adolescent development as one of their courses, not only get to take a couple of classes together, but then they get to study with their partners on the same floor, really build the community of other teachers to kind of build those lasting relationships for the future.

- Living as a cohort was really nice, especially this first year because of the pandemic and because we're entering college, so we were all experiencing firsts like all year.

So that cohort was really good because we could all talk to each other of like any nervousness or insecurities that we had about college, and then we were holding each other accountable.

- I'm able to be like, "Hey, do we have the same class?

"Do you wanna study like an hour in the study room "on our floor like five steps away from your room?"

- Most of the perimeter is 40 inches.

- [Narrator] They hope to produce adaptive, community-minded teachers through a new approach centered on volunteer service and diversity.

In addition to their regular classes, Teacher Scholars students across all three campuses dedicate hundreds of hours of volunteer educational service in their communities and they meet twice a week for lessons and discussion.

- We meet every Tuesday and Thursday and we just talk about education and for like an hour and 15 minutes, and it's probably the best part of my week.

- Growing up, I didn't have very many teachers that looked like me and we also talk about the fact that students are going to connect a lot better with teachers who can connect with them as well.

- I think what really sets us apart is in today's world, we're not scared to talk about the things that nobody wanted to talk about before, and we want to talk about those things and address them so that whenever they come up for us years down the road from now, we know how to handle them.

- [Narrator] Through diversity, community, and a strong sense of purpose, the university is training these students to use critical thinking and adapt to whatever challenges the future may bring, while they themselves are part of the solution to an educator shortage.

- I think this is such a great community of faculty, of staff, of students that really wanna engage in and really make the teaching profession more impactful, and so this is just a great community to really provide that for all of our students in Nebraska.

- [Narrator] In a few years, when these students become teachers, how do we make sure they continue to learn?

By developing mentoring programs and ensuring access to professional development no matter where they teach.

- When there's professional development opportunities for teachers, they're usually in larger cities, nearby universities, and that's not the case in rural communities, so even when we get excellent teachers to take a job in a rural setting, the opportunity for their own professional growth tends to be limited.

We're targeting areas that we know are going to have the most bang for their buck so to speak and really provide the supports and services in areas that where they're most needed.

So, that if a teacher is questioning whether or not to go back to a rural school or not, they can be confident that they're gonna have the supports that they need and be able to practice in the kind of school that they grew up in themselves, and that they want their own children to grow up in.

- [Narrator] The Nebraska STEM Project is an example of one of those support programs.

Teachers from high needs, rural schools are positioned as peer leaders.

- There's a combination of campus based training, for example, and then field-based, sort of every day, real life kind of experiences where there's online classes, there's coaching that happens virtually, there's professional development webinars and communities of rural teachers coming together and supporting one another through this program.

- [Narrator] Nebraska is no stranger to being a national leader for rural education.

In fact, the federally funded National Center for Research on Rural Education was based here at the University of Nebraska.

- We had teachers all over the state who are working with us, largely using distance technology, even back then, that was well before the days of Zoom even.

Hard to believe.

Using even some technology like little bugs in the ear, kind of Bluetooth-enabled support, where we had folks here at the university observing live what was happening in a rural classroom and really coaching a teacher, and helping him or her in the moment use effective strategies for literacy and for science education.

- [Narrator] And while the research and coaching came from the university, make no mistake, developing new education strategies is a two way street.

We can't say what's the most important thing for a teacher in Broken Bow to be doing tomorrow because we don't know her reality.

We don't know her students.

We don't know the kinds of things that they're grappling with on a day-to-day basis, but we listen, and we ask, and we learn from them as much as they're learning from us.

It helps sort of break down some of those silos that have traditionally been so prominent between rural and urban communities.

I mean, this university is a beautiful bridge, really, between those kinds of settings.

- [Narrator] Sometimes facing a future challenge isn't about solving a shortage, it's about improving quality of life.

- [Andrew] The problem that we're really looking at is how we can use food to help prevent and or maybe even treat human diseases.

- [Narrator] Andrew Benson is the Director of the Nebraska Food for Health Center, located on Innovation Campus in Lincoln.

The center's mission is to improve human health by linking agriculture and food production to wellness and disease prevention.

It all started with an idea from Benson and his colleague, Bob Hutkins.

- [Bob] About 15 or 20 years ago, Andy and I realized that, he was working on food safety microbes.

and I was working on these bacteria that are in fermented foods that keep us healthy and we realized that the intersection of those microbes is in the gut, and we should start focusing on the gut.

We've known about this gut microbiome for 200 years, but we did not have the tools to study it until 2006.

- [Narrator] That's when next generation DNA sequencing technology became commercialized, allowing them to dive deeper into their research.

- There was going to be tremendous opportunity to now study this complex gut ecosystem in a way that we'd never been able to do before.

- Food for Health Center brings together scientists from a whole range of different disciplines, microbiology, molecular biology, immunology, chemistry, biochemistry, bioinformatics, and food science.

And that's what I am, I'm a food microbiologist or a food scientist, and the Food for Health Center has all those people together working with one common goal, to improve human health.

- [Andrew] Most institutions study of the gut microbiome evolved in a medical center, this is one of the few places, really only about five places in the world where the study of the gut microbiome evolved in within the context of a food science dependent.

- Our focus is food and production of food.

So we take a little bit of a different view.

- [Narrator] The center has a state-of-the-art facility, which can process everything from soup to nuts, literally.

And when they say they're making recipes from scratch, they mean it.

- [James] So we are standing at the Havelock Research Farm which is operated by the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture here at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.

Behind me are three big experiments, one using about 1000 different varieties of sorghum growing on 2,800 plots, a second using about 750 varieties of corn growing on 1700 plots.

The thing that people are always struck by when they walk into one of our fields is that corn can actually look really, really different.

I love taking people out to the field because they can see within a single field, there is not genetic diversity, but corn is an incredibly genetically diverse crop.

This is a good example of something that's gonna produce a lot more grain.

So there are really two approaches to breeding.

One is for quantity traits, right?

We want more grain, either more grain per acre, more grain per unit of nitrogen we put down on the soil, more grain per inch of the irrigation.

The second way to approach plant breeding is breeding for quality traits.

They're not gonna get higher yield, what they're gonna get is a premium for their crop and an extra 50 cents, dollar a bushel for somebody producing corn, that makes a big difference.

- [Narrator] While the sheer variety of crops grown here is impressive, it's difficult to test.

- Let's say I have 300 different varieties of corn, and I wanna see how your microbiome responds to that.

That's a pretty difficult experiment to do because you're gonna get tired of eating different varieties of corn every day, and me sampling your microbiome.

So literally it's an impossible experiment to do.

- [Narrator] So instead of putting corn into human guts, they found a way to put the human gut into the corn.

- What I can do is I can take your microbiome and I can put it in a test tube, and I can put it in 300 different test tubes, and now I can feed your microbiome in the test tube 300 different varieties of corn.

- [Narrator] Robots mimic the human digestive system.

- We have to mill it up, which means make a flour out of it.

We have to make it look like it's gone through your oral cavity, through your stomach and all the way down into your colons.

We have to digest it, we have to treat it with acid and make it look like your stomach, right?

We have to do all of those things.

We have to pull the small molecules out that your body would absorb and then feed the rest of it to the microbiome.

That's that process and we've automated most of those steps.

- [Narrator] Hutkins says you can't change your genetics, but what you eat makes a big difference in your digestion.

- [Bob] We're born with a particular gut microbiome and from age about two to three, depending on how we're nursed and what we're eating, that microbiome is pretty stable and there's not much we can do about it in general, but we do know that diet is one of those things that can influence the microbiome in a positive way or a negative way, and if you eat a healthy diet with lots of fiber and fermented foods, you'll improve your gut microbiota.

- [Narrator] Why?

Because fiber and fermented foods contain prebiotics and probiotics, you've probably heard of probiotics.

They're live microbes often found in yogurt and they're the good kind of bacteria you want in your gut.

Prebiotics are what those microbes feed on, the non-digestible parts of food like fiber, and when you fuel those probiotics with the right prebiotics, you get synbiotics.

Hutkins' team has been so successful at matching them, they've even started a company.

- [Bob] What really distinguishes our company from the competition is the strategic way that we've matched the probiotic and the prebiotic.

So many other companies that have such products, they kind of pick one from column A and one from column B with no real strategy for why they should even work together.

And so that's what we're all about, is we developed a pipeline, a research pipeline that pairs the probiotic and the prebiotic perfectly matched so that they will work together better than they would work separately.

- [Narrator] When researchers at the food lab find promising results, that particular strain of corn or sorghum moves on to the next phase.

- [Amanda] Today, we are at the new Nebraska Gnotobiotic Mouse Facility.

The term gnotobiotic comes from the Greek words, gnotos for known and bios for life.

So if a mouse is gnotobiotic, you know exactly what life is associated with that mouse.

So many of our gnotobiotic mice in the facility are germ-free.

That means there are no bacteria, viruses, or fungi in or on their bodies.

We are able to also give them human gut microbes.

Those mice literally become an avatar for a human donor so that we can study that particular gut microbial community.

- [Narrator] That's right, a human gut inside a mouse.

It's an important step between the cornfields and actual human trials, labs like this are rare.

- There are very few gnotobiotic mouse programs in the world, most of these gnotobiotic mouse programs are found at medical schools across the country.

There are very few of them associated with an agriculture research program and specifically even a food science department.

So we are unique from that perspective and one of the reasons that this program is so important for us at the University of Nebraska and the Institute of Ag and Natural Resources and our Food Science Department is because it's a fantastic resource for being able to study diet, microbiome interactions.

I grew up on my family's farm and we raised beef cattle.

We raised crops and that was where I realized I had a sincere interest in studying health and disease.

With my background in agriculture, I understood what plant breeding could contribute to agriculture and the value it brought to breeding new crops for disease and drought resistance.

Here, it's been a fantastic opportunity to think about agriculture 2.0, if you will.

What does the future of agriculture look like?

Can we raise crops that are bred for health benefits as opposed to disease resistance or drought resistance?

And so here I have a chance to work with amazing scientists across multiple disciplines, to be able to realize that vision, that we can breed crops for health benefits for humans.

- [Narrator] Those human benefits are where Dr. Peter Mannon comes in, he's the Director of the Paustian Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

- [Mannon] What I do is what we call translational research.

We approach the research and experiments we do in a basic way, but instead of using cell or animal models, we go right to the source and we engage with humans.

- [Researcher] So these are the cells that are inside your kidney.

- [Mannon] I'm focused on the care of inflammatory bowel disease patients, patients who have Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.

- [Narrator] Inflammatory bowel diseases are a big problem, we're talking about 1.5 million people in North America alone.

Crohn's disease can wreak havoc on the digestive system, abdominal cramps, and pain, constipation, and diarrhea, weight loss, and low energy.

- So these are pT2 cells.

- [Narrator] Current treatments can help control symptoms, but there's no known cure.

- A little different from the others.

- We're very good about putting people into remission with our medications.

That is, we turn a normal bowel pattern, no bleeding, good energy, no belly pain, but we're not so good at maintaining that for long periods of time.

- [Narrator] When flare-ups happen, they can cause embarrassing situations and affect a patient's quality of life.

- One of the things that really sort of affected me about taking care of patients with inflammatory bowel disease are their stories.

Patients tell me, they know every bathroom from here to the supermarket.

When I ask them about vacation plans, they can't take a plane ride because what if they have to sit in the middle seat or there's someone standing at the bathroom.

So, when I can help them in a way that gives them their life back, it's a big deal.

- [Narrator] A university approaching health through a food science angle, pretty unusual, a gnotobiotic mouse lab at their disposal, even more unusual.

But one of the coolest things about the Food for Health Center is the way that they work together across disciplines, combining their expertise to solve this problem.

- I'm not an expert in molecular biology, but Andy is, and I'm not an expert in gastroenterology, but Dr. Mannon is, and so by putting all those teams together, we create synergy, we create knowledge across the disciplines, and it makes Nebraska and the Food for Health Center unique compared to many of the other centers.

- To be able to get researchers to work together and work across disciplines, it's really been an interesting thing to watch that evolve.

Administration, looking at a big idea that we said, "Hey, what if we did this and connected plants to health" and really listening to us, and helping us to invest in that idea in ways that literally required philanthropy, it was the only way to fund it and being willing to take that risk and do that.

I think that's a really amazing thing that happened here over the last almost couple of decades.

And so I think it's good for the for the public to know that, for them to appreciate that all of that has happened within their institution.

- In addition to improving people's lives, is we're also working to train the next generation of scientists to make even more exciting advancements in gut health research.

- We are the breadbasket here and we are responsible for producing so much of the food.

We should be producing healthy food.

So I think Nebraska definitely has a role in this next decade and beyond in producing healthy food for all of America, not just for Nebraska.

- [Carter] I think the biggest thing a university can do is provide the critical thinkers of the future.

They're gonna be the people that will run our nation and run the world.

So we have a responsibility to make sure we're producing with the right skill sets those future leaders.

- [Narrator] Our future will be full of challenges, but the researchers... - But I wanna change my concentration.

- [Narrator] The caregivers... - Let's get x-rays today to be sure.

- [Narrator] The educators... - My biggest class is 18.

- [Narrator] And the problem solvers that face them will be created right here in Nebraska.

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