C. Oran Little
Dean and Director
University of Kentucky . College of Agriculture

When Oran Little came to the University of Kentucky in 1960, he was a freshly minted Ph.D. His credentials were impeccable: valedictorian of his high school class; state vice-president of the Texas FFA; Marshall Scholarship Foundation recipient; magna cum laude graduate of the University of Houston; and doctorate from the Mecca of animal nutrition research, Iowa State University. The only question that could be asked of the 25-year old was: could he continue to live up to his “whiz kid” promise?

The answer quickly became apparent. Yes! At UK, the lanky Texan would achieve stellar status as an animal science researcher. And it didn't take long. He quickly became renowned for his research in ruminant digestion, publishing as author or co-author 69 research articles in refereed national publications; 108 abstracts; and 121 Agricultural Experiment Station publications, in his rather brief career as a researcher. By 1967, Little had achieved full professor status. He would soon move on to a higher calling within the ranks of university work.

It wasn't simply that Little and his graduate students were prolific; rather, it was that his research was both pioneering and inspired. As a researcher, he developed the multifistula technique for measuring postruminal digestion. The technique Little used involved creating surgical “windows” (fistulae) into various parts of the animal's digestive tract, and then either feeding or adding into the fistula purified foodstuffs. He then withdrew the contents at subsequent windows to see how the foodstuffs had been digested.

Prior to Little's arrival at Kentucky, research in the department was characterized as “feed 'em and weigh 'em” experiments, said Don Ely, one of Little's early graduate students. (Ely now is professor of animal sciences at University of Kentucky.) Little's research was different in that it focused on what happened to feeds in the digestion process: the black box was illuminated.

Little's research techniques ushered in a spate of nutrition research topics, many that are still being investigated today, Ely said. And while his research was brilliant science, “he never forgot the reason for the research— the livestock industry,” Ely said.

Former graduate student Dan Loper, now a dairy farmer and dairy consultant in Texas,
said that Little's teaching was magnificent. “You could tell then that Oran Little was destined to do great things. He was an outstanding teacher and an outstanding people person. He was extremely well trained and was an all-around terrific man,” Loper said.
Loper, who finished his M.S. degree in animal sciences at University of Kentucky in 1963, later finished a doctorate in dairy nutrition at Kansas State University before working on the Apollo space program in feeding systems and waste management. He currently manages a 1,500 cow dairy near Stephensville, Texas.

When Dean Charles Barnhart retired from the dean's position in 1988, Little was selected as his replacement. As dean, Little worked diligently and effectively to increase the cooperation among commodity groups in Kentucky. Through Ag Project 2000, Little united the agricultural commodity groups into a plan to improve agricultural receipts in all commodities through improved research, Extension, and teaching activities and cooperation among commodity groups.

Little, in a 1993 interview, championed agriculture as the growth machine for Kentucky's economy, noting the potential for agriculture to lead Kentucky into the next century.“If we want Kentucky to develop economically, we must make agriculture the centerpiece of our development efforts.”
Bill Sprague, former president of Kentucky Farm Bureau Federation, who was also instrumental in Ag Project 2000, commented on Little's importance to the effort.
“Through Oran's efforts, farmers understood the potential of improving agriculture. Oran was a leader in bringing all commodities to see their full potential in Kentucky's economy. Kentucky owes Oran a great deal for elevating agriculture and always being there, working for every commodity,” Sprague said.

Undergraduate degree programs also prospered under Little's administration. Sensing that agriculture was undergoing very rapid change— the industry shifting from a heavy, almost exclusive, dependence on physical technology, such as machines and new crop varieties, to one that included an increasing dependence on social technologies, including global marketing, communications, and financial management— Little set the College's instructional program on a course he described as preparing society-ready graduates.
Little offered the rationale behind the society-ready concept in a 1999 interview: “In the next century, an educated person must function effectively in a global environment. Teaching just the facts won't do anymore. We must equip our students with the ability to gather and analyze data, challenge conventional thought, and fulfill their individual potential.”

The society-ready rubric included common courses for all agricultural students which addressed important issues facing agriculture at the state, national, and international levels. Also included in the enhanced instructional programs were opportunities for students to experience the global dimensions of agriculture first hand— through exchanges and tours in France, China, Israel, and Thailand.

Research during Little's administration, was invigorated through a broadened scope of topics and techniques to be investigated. Little's administration strengthened research into molecular genetic techniques in both plant and animal systems, increased research activity in the area of agriculture and the environment, and responded to the issue of tobacco-in-jeopardy by shoring up research into new and better crops that might supplement lost tobacco income. All of these research streams will advance Kentucky agriculture into the next decades.

During his tenure, researchers in the College embarked on an ambitious program to increase extramural funding of research through grants and contracts. During the past five years of his administration, extramural funding for research increased by 40 percent.
With agriculture changing rapidly during the last decades of the century, Little encouraged researchers not only to broaden their research topics and techniques, but also to reconsider how research was conducted.

Until Little's administration, the standard for research was primarily single approach research— a researcher and perhaps a graduate student or two conducting a rather narrow-gauged research project. Little helped usher in a different method, a new norm: research teams from several disciplines working jointly on a research project. This multidisciplinary research yielded more robust findings, since a variety of perspectives were involved.

Extension programs under Little continued to respond to local needs for information and education, but became modernized. Extension agents responsible for programming were able to use a host of new state-of-the-art communications devices to provide a “window” to the world for their constituents.

While computerization both on campus and in county offices was initiated during the early and middle-1980s, it was under Little that full electronic communications within the College was realized. All county offices were connected to the world via Internet access, and distance learning programs initiated in the College won national and international awards.

With the emphasis on modernizing Extension came the need for better, more accessible county Extension offices. During Little's administration 55 county programs built new, modern offices to accommodate clients. Little also organized the Kentucky Ag Advancement Council, made up of representatives from various commodity groups, to help keep the College informed of needs for research and Extension programs.

Endowments and gifts to the College of Agriculture continued to increase under Little's leadership. From 1988, when Little became dean of the College, endowments and gifts totaled more than $51 million. Little was instrumental in procuring funding for several new facilities including a $12 million agricultural engineering building; a $4 million regulatory services building; a $3.75 million animal disease diagnostic center; an $11.5 million new farm purchase; $12.6 million Phase I animal research center; and $18 million for the first phase of the Plant Science Building.

The two newest of these facilities— the Animal Research Center (ARC) in Woodford County (top) and the Plant Science Building (right)— will serve the Commonwealth for the next generation. The modern research facilities of the first phase of the ARC incorporate standard facilities for livestock management, as well as an innovative research system that will allow scientists to better understand nutrient management. The farm will retrieve all nutrients from animal waste and recycle them within the confines of the farm. And the Plant Science Building will feature state-of-the-art laboratories so that College of Agriculture scientists will be able to conduct plant science research that involves genetic manipulation of plant material.

Oran Little leaves the post of Dean of the College of Agriculture as the seventh dean in the College's history. His predecessors— Scovell, Kastle, Cooper, Welch, Seay, and Barnhart— all have names familiar to the agricultural community in Kentucky, the nation, and the world. And Little leaves a strong College, as evidenced by the College of Agriculture Review, completed in Spring 2000. The executive summary reads, “The College of Agriculture is a recognized leader in the University and Commonwealth and is held in high respect in the national and international arena.”

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