“What’s it cost you to AI a cow?” Mr. Merrill asked.

“Well, I hadn’t thought about that,” Mr. Cornelius said.

That was the question that began the relationship between Kerry L. Cornelius and TCU’s Ranch Management program.

Cornelius had not heard of the Ranch Management program at TCU, even though he grew up in Fort Worth and attended high school only a few miles away from campus. He now sits in his office with the title of “director” etched beneath his name. And now, if he’s ever asked again, he knows all about how much it costs to artificially inseminate (AI) a cow.

The white orb that Cornelius can point to from the west facing door of the Winthrop Rockefeller building is the water tower that marks where he went to high school—Western Hills. After high school, Cornelius’ father convinced him to go to college, so he chose to attend Tarleton State University to study agricultural business.

Both of Cornelius’ parents grew up on farms in Kansas. His father wanted to be a large animal veterinarian, but due to health problems in high school, he pursued engineering. Cornelius said his father always joked that his son “worked all his life to get off the farm and I worked all my life to get back on.”

Cornelius got married before he graduated from Tarleton and then went to work for Lee Campbell Herefords in Dublin, Texas. His father tried to convince Cornelius to go to veterinarian school, but Cornelius did not like school much and did not want to go back.

But his father wasn’t done pushing his son to further his education. Cornelius’ father asked if he’d heard of TCU’s Ranch Management program. Cornelius didn’t know much about it.

The man Cornelius worked for at Lee Campbell Herefords told him that if he got into the program and didn’t accept it, Cornelius would be fired. Cornelius respected his boss and looked into TCU.

Cornelius got in touch with the director of the program, Mr. John Merrill.

One question about the cost of an AI was all it took to pique Cornelius’ interest.

Cornelius said it got him interested in the Ranch Management program because, at Tarleton, he was taught how to do things like an AI, but not how to run a business.

“I wanted to come to school here right then because it was different. It was unique,” Cornelius said.

In 1986 Cornelius graduated from TCU’s Ranch Management program. He went to work for the 6666 Ranches as a foreman at the Brazos Division near Weatherford for about nine years.

When a professor in the Ranch Management program at TCU suddenly left, they asked Cornelius if he would be interested in teaching. But teaching meant talking in front of groups of people, which scared Cornelius quite a bit.

“Every time I ever had to give a speech, or recite a poem or anything in class, I would always make sure my grade was high enough so I could take a zero because I didn’t like doing that,” Cornelius said.

TCU kept this in mind and let Cornelius come speak about one topic to a class. He talked about wheat budgeting.

And in January 1995, Cornelius officially began teaching in the Ranch Management program at TCU.

Chris Farley, now the assistant director of the program, was one of the students in Cornelius’ first class. He remembers Cornelius being stern and always ready to take care of business.

“You could tell he was straight off the ranch and hadn’t done a lot of teaching, so it was all business,” Farley said.

Farley reminded Cornelius that while he was going through the program, one night Cornelius stayed late with him to help with some fertilizer problems. Cornelius said it was against his DNA to forgo helping someone who is genuinely interested and wants to learn.

About 10 years after Farley graduated from TCU, he said he was trotting across a pasture on his horse and Cornelius called to ask him if he wanted to teach. Like Cornelius, Farley never would have thought of becoming a teacher. Farley would end up teaching the classes that Cornelius had taught before him.

Working with Cornelius, Farley said, is different than being one of his students. But when Farley began, Cornelius was helpful to the new professor.

In 2005, the director’s position became available when former director, Jim Link, left to work for the USDA. After a nationwide search for his replacement, the program decided to stay on the home front and hired Cornelius in 2006.

Cornelius is also a professor in the program and said he still gets nervous when he has to speak in front of classes. One of his mentors actually told him never to lose that jittery feeling as long as he was teaching.

“I figured out that if people want to learn about what you do and ask questions, it’s pretty easy to talk about what you know,” Cornelius said.

Farley has the utmost respect for the knowledge and experience that Cornelius brings to his students. Cornelius’s time spent on ranches and his current cattle operations enhance his ability to bring real world information to his students. He said the passion Cornelius possesses for the ranching business is easy to see in his teaching.

“I don’t have a mirror,” Cornelius said. “I don’t ever get to see what I look like, but people tell me that I am passionate about what I do.”

A conversation with Cornelius for an extended period of time may turn into a tutorial on how to figure out the percent return on a group of cattle using an Excel spreadsheet. Farley said it is not out of character for Cornelius to personally show or explain something to one of his students.

“He will go shoulder to shoulder with anyone who is willing to learn the material,” said Maggie Hanna, a current Ranch Management student.

Mark Ryan, another current student in the program, describes Cornelius as energetic and excitable, which he says makes the learning process more fun. Ryan said Cornelius might first seem intimidating because of his knowledge, but it’s because he wants his students to learn and understand the material.

Cornelius never envisioned himself as a teacher. Even as a local boy he didn’t know about the place he one day would come to teach. Now, Cornelius has been at TCU for over 20 years doing what he loves: helping students transform during their nine months in the Ranch Management program.