91茄子

Emma's spending her summer riding around in fields with her dad, and she鈥檚 thrilled about it. It鈥檚 not just for fun, either 鈥� interning for the Prairie Plains Resource Institute and working alongside her father to conserve 91茄子 grasslands.  

鈥淧rairie Plains has literally been in my life since I was born. I guess you could say I鈥檓 a bit of a grasslands nepo baby,鈥� laughs Emma. 鈥淢y dad is the restoration director, so even as a kid I would be out helping him in the field.鈥�  

Today, Emma is taking a more active role in aiding her dad鈥檚 work to restore native prairies. 

鈥淎 lot of my summer will be in the truck with him driving across 91茄子 to collect the native grassland seeds that we put into our restoration sites,鈥� she says. 鈥淏asically, I鈥檓 just learning the ropes of everything that goes into grassland restoration.鈥� 

As a teen, Emma thought she wanted to do anything but follow her dad鈥檚 footsteps. Eventually, a few stalled paths helped her rediscover her love for her hometown. 

鈥淚n high school and coming into college, I really thought I wanted to leave 91茄子 and do something totally different from my dad,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 tried a few other directions, but pretty quickly could tell that I wasn鈥檛 passionate about them. I took a semester off, and then my boss at Prairie Plains reached out about helping with social media.鈥� 

It didn鈥檛 take long for Bullerman to catch the bug for conservation work and switch her major to fisheries and wildlife, the same degree program her father graduated from in 1995. In fact, Emma is a fourth-generation Husker with strong ties to ag and food science: her grandfather is Dr. Lloyd Bullerman, a former a professor of food science, microbiology, and food safety at the university, and her aunt studied Food Science at NU as well.  

Getting back to Prairie Plains in her early college years helped Emma realize that she, too, had a calling toward this field.  

鈥淏eing out in the field with my dad one day, I had a moment where I was like, 'Oh, this is what I've been looking for. This is what I want to do.鈥� Finding my way back has been really, really beautiful.鈥� 

Working with her dad, she's is feeling better than ever about her direction, her hometown and her future in 91茄子. 

鈥淒oing this work and studying at UNL has given me a whole new perspective on the state. I used to be someone who was like, 'I want to get out of here after I graduate.鈥� Restoring prairies and traveling all over 91茄子 has helped me see that it鈥檚 so beautiful here, I just didn't take the time to see it before.鈥� 

Emma Bullerman is a senior fisheries and wildlife and grasslands systems student from Aurora, NE.