UNO MAGAZINE, Summer 2010

Global Impact

UNO’s

m ag a z i n e

summer 2010

Growing families at 192nd & Dodge.

M E T H O D I S T W O M E N ’ S H O S P I TA L Our mothers. Our daughters. Our sisters. Our babies.

Soon, there’ll be a special place that cares for them all— Methodist Women’s Hospital. A place that’s breaking new ground in women’s health services from the people who’ve cared for you for more than a century and who are leading the way in women’s health today. The best environment for expectant moms and their families. A full range of gynecological services. Specialized care for sexual assault survivors. All these and more at our new hospital and medical campus. methodistforwomen.org

Growing services at 84th & Dodge.

M E T H O D I S T H O S P I TA L As our footprint is growing, so is our commitment to the community. We’re enhancing our 84th Street campus with expanded cardiac, vascular, cancer and surgical services, as well as all-private patient rooms and our new pathology center. We’re excited about all our changes and what it will mean for our growing community. bestcare.org

Birth and women’s services move to Methodist Women’s Hospital and medical campus starting June 21.

Proud to be a member of

©2010 Methodist Hospital, an affiliate of Methodist Health System

devoted to helping women lead healthier lives.

vol. 1, no. 2, UNO Magazine

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Letters to/ from the Editor

summer 2010 www.unoalumni.org/unomag

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Letter from the Chancellor

Alumni Association

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CREDITS Managing Editor

Anthony Flott

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associate Editors

Jennifer Arnold, Tim Kaldahl art direction

Athletics

Emspace Group Greg Paprocki Contributors

Dave Ahlers, Mike Bell, Becky Bohan Brown, Jeff Cutting Photographic Image Resource, John Fey, Tim Fitzgerald, Eric Francis Photography, Christine Kasel, Mary Kenny, Tom Kerr, Glen McCurtayne /Fairfaxphotos, Tom McMahon, Beverly Newsam, Eric Olson, Sean Owens, Jodi Penn, Lori Rice, Kalani Simpson, Scott Stewart, Terry Stickels, Wendy Townley, Kevin Warneke, Jenna Zeorian UNO Magazine is published three times a year by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the UNO Alumni Association and the NU Foundation.

Direct editorial inquiries to Managing Editor UNO Alumni Association 6705 Dodge St., Omaha, NE 68182-0010 Phone: (402) 554-2444 toll-free: UNO-MAV-ALUM Fax: (402) 554-3787 Email: aflott@unoalumni.org Send all changes of address to attention of Records or visit www.unoalumni.org/records

19 Sun Rises on

Little Italy

One student goes to great lengths to explore Omaha’s ties to Carlentini, Italy.

Views expressed within this magazine do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the UNO Alumni Association or the NU Foundation.

Philanthropy Matters

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The Colleges

Get to Know Professor Benjamin Alvarado tells us why we should care about rapproachment with Cuba – and about dinner with Fidel.

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Six Continents and the Top of the World

Islamic Studies

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Faculty Fusion Faculty from around the world provide their favorite recipes

Q&A with Australia’s Chief Scientist

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Danish Delight

CLASS

Dinner with Fidel

Shoulder to Shoulder

50 Bookmarks 52 Just For You

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Ronald Roskens

NOTES

cover illustration

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Partners

On Top Down Under Dollars & Sense

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Counter Point

48 Sights & Sounds

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Retrospect

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For Fun

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FROM THE EDITOR

The first response to the inaugural issue of UNO Magazine left me a bit deflated.

One of our sharper-eyed alumni picked out (to date) the only error in the magazine and called us on it — we misspelled the name of “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, who so graciously had himself photographed for our debut.

Sorry, Mr. Trebek (and apologies to grad Gary Johnson, who works for “Jeopardy!” and who coordinated the photo).

After that initial call, however, came numerous notes of congratulations via mail, email, phone and word-ofmouth (a sampling provided here).

Reader feedback is key to making UNO Magazine among the best university publications in the country. Choose among these options for interacting with the magazine or university.

Letter to the Editor Write us about the magazine or university: www.unoalumni.org/unomag-led Suggest a story Tell us what you’d like to see in a future issue: www.unoalumni.org/unomag-storyidea Partner with UNO Want to join forces with the university?

Tell us how: tkaldahl@unomaha.edu Drop us a Class Note Give us an update on life, work and fun: www.unoalumni.org/classnote Make a difference Tell us your idea for how to support UNO: lbyrne@nufoundation.org Tell us the Future Have a child recently? Give us a name, we’ll give them a Future Alum t-shirt: www.unoalumni.org/futurealums By the Book Recently publish a book? Tell us about it for consideration in Bookmarks: www.unoalumni.org/bookmarkssubmit

Alumni from the 1940s through the past decade sent kudos, an encouraging sign that we’re meeting a difficult challenge — engaging a diverse readership.

Most magazines provide stories related to some shared reader interest.

Subscribers are after specific content when signing up for I Love Cats, Harmonica World or Culture: The Word on Cheese (yes, actual publications).

That makes it easier for an editor to fill pages.

We have to work much harder at UNO Magazine to capture reader interest and hold it with compelling content that is useful, informs, educates and entertains.

That’s because our nearly 80,000 readers are demographically scattershot.

They range in age from 20 to nearly 100. They are men and women; liberal and conservative; single, married, widowed and divorced; religious and atheistic; employed, out-of-work, retired and idle; rich, middle class and poor. And so on.

So how do we fill our pages?

We begin by identifying issues common to many if not all of us. UNO Magazine will present those issues thematically, devoting each issue to a specific topic that is reported on with university scholarship and alumni expertise.

Our debut focused on the economy. Future issues will address health, age, gender, energy/environment, faith, etc. (send your ideas my way).

In this issue we address global concerns — the strength of the dollar, relations with Cuba, the war in Afghanistan, global climate change, etc. — and show you how faculty and alumni are making an impact around the world.

Not much about cats, harmonicas or cheese, but plenty more to keep your interest, I hope.

Enjoy the read,

Anthony Flott Managing Editor

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FROM THE CHANCELLOR

Dear Alum:

On Winter 2010

Excerpts from letters received regarding our last issue.

“First edition of UNO Magazine was awesome. Great content, aesthetically appealing. Good luck on the next issue … you may have set the bar too high!”

Chuck Monico (’93) Owner of CM’s Custom Lawn & Landscape, Omaha “Congratulations on your new magazine format with its artful mixture of color, pictures and text.”

Robert S. Runyon Dean emeritus of UNO Library “Received your magazine in the mail today. Very nice. I like the new look and feel.”

Andrea Cranford Editor, Nebraska Magazine “Looks great, and we will make every effort to see that it gets distributed.”

Donald A. Leu (’75) CEO of CCCS of Nebraska “WOW, great work! I … am pleased and proud to be a UNO alum. Thank you for your tireless pursuit to keep us all informed and involved in the ongoing changes of our university.”

Gregory A. Eversoll (’90) Principal of Chandler View Elementary, Bellevue, Neb. “Great variety — I learned a lot of things I didn’t know. Like an equestrian club — who knew?”

Mollie Anderson (’66) Director of UNO Human Resources “Congratulations on the new magazine, especially the timely cover. The contents were enjoyed by us ‘Depression kids,’ coming into the brand-new, PWA-built university building, with $65 grants, working them off at 30-cents pay per-hour (when minimum wage was 25 cents) and tuition was $4 per credit hour.”

Helen F. Jasa (’43), Fremont, Neb. “UNO Magazine is a real hit! I have placed my copy in the lobby of the County Board offices in the Civic Center.”

Mike Boyle Douglas County Commissioner, Omaha “I love the cover.”

Shelly Fling Editor, Minnesota Magazine

This issue of UNO Magazine focuses on our impact around the world, spotlighting the efforts and achievements of students, faculty and alumni across the globe.

From UNO alum Penny Sackett’s service as Australia’s chief scientist to Dr. Alan Kolok’s research on the harmful effects of gold mining in Colombia, our metropolitan university reaches overseas in unexpected, unusual, but always-innovative ways.

Spurred by a commitment to provide “news you can use,” this edition strives to communicate the relevancy of these initiatives to our service area, and to the lives of UNO alumni throughout the world.

The founding of UNO’s international initiatives began nearly four decades ago with the creation of the Center for Afghanistan Studies, with the support and encouragement of then-Chancellor Ronald Roskens. Today, the center is a valuable source of information regarding the social and political fabric of that key Middle East nation. Back then, UNO had a total of 24 international students enrolled, had never received any federal or grant monies related to international education, and had just one study-abroad program.

Today’s international outreach has grown exponentially. More than $90 million in federal grants has been received and 1,300-plus students are enrolled each year from more than 115 countries. We also have established numerous study abroad opportunities and sister institutional relationships throughout the world. Each year, international students infuse more than $30 million into the local economy, while collaborative research projects continue to benefit the global community.

As our globe shrinks, due to advances in technology, communications and international business opportunities, it is more important than ever for our students to understand their role as citizens of the world. Metropolitan universities, located in cities with strong international ties, are particularly fortunate to be able to expand their students’ horizons beyond city, state, or even national boundaries. Likewise, they provide a context of the intellectual, cultural and social lives of American education, business and citizens for a growing cadre of international students.

During my tenure I have been fortunate to meet our international students and those studying abroad, and to visit a few of our sister institutions throughout the world. Each experience leaves me in awe of the vastness of humanity, its differences, and also its overwhelming similarities with respect to higher education. Throughout the globe, colleges and universities are working hard to promote understanding, bridge gaps, and create opportunities for the next generation of world leaders.

I’m proud of UNO’s many contributions to the process and, after reading this edition, I think you will be, too.

Until next time,

Chancellor John E. Christensen

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ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Education proponent to receive Citation The UNO Alumni Association will bestow its Citation for Alumni Achievement upon UNO graduate J. Terrence Haney during the university’s summer commencement Aug. 13 at the Omaha Civic Auditorium.

The Citation, inaugurated in 1949, is presented at each UNO commencement.

The association’s highest honor, it encompasses career achievement, community service, involvement in business and professional associations, and fidelity to the university. UNO Alumni Association President Lee Denker will present the award to Haney, the 152nd Citation recipient.

An Omaha native, Haney retired in 1999 after a successful business career that culminated as chief executive officer and principal owner of Insurance Consultants and PayFlex Systems USA. He enrolled at UNO at age 49, earning a BGS in 1991 and a master’s degree in gerontology in 1998.

“Terry’s lifelong pursuit of education is inspirational and testimony to the power of learning to enrich lives,” Denker said.

“Combined with his business success, his dedication to education has made him a patron to numerous others who follow his path, particularly students and faculty at UNO. “He is among the university’s greatest supporters and dearest friends.”

Business success, UNO devotion Insurance Consultants, founded in 1964, processed employee benefits, student insurance and a variety of other products for credit card-issuing entities in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. It was sold to J.C. Penney in 1999. PayFlex, an ICI subsidiary, was sold to employees in 1999. Today it is one of the country’s Top 10 third party administrators working with employers to administer benefit spending accounts, COBRA and Transit programs.

Haney has served UNO in numerous capacities. In 2001 he and his wife, Judy, established an endowed faculty position and three funds supporting faculty members in the gerontology department, whose board of advisors he chairs. He later funded student scholarships. Haney also served on the National Advisory Board for the College of Business, with UNO Library Friends, and on the Origination Committee for the UNO hockey team.

UNO in 2003 presented him with its highest non-academic award, the Order of the Tower, issued to individuals whose exemplary service and/or financial support have advanced the university’s mission. UNO’s College of Public Affairs and Community Service in 2005 conferred upon Haney that college’s highest honor, the Hubert Locke Distinguished Service Award.

The UNO Alumni Association in 1998 honored him with an Outstanding Service Award for continuous, outstanding service to the association and university.

See a full profile at www.unoalumni.org/awards-citation

2010 Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award recipients Pete Simi, John Erickson, Kerry Ward, Timi Barone, Hugh Reilly and Carol Mitchell. Not pictured, Melanie Bloom, Bruce Chase and Won Mee Jang.

Nine faculty issued 2010 teaching awards The UNO Alumni Association celebrated the 14th year of its Alumni Outstanding Teaching Awards program when it presented the honor to nine faculty members during the UNO Faculty Honors Convocation Breakfast April 8.

Association President Lee Denker presented the awards, established in 1997 to honor distinguished teaching in the classroom.

Recipients: Timi Barone, sociology and anthropology, College of Arts & Sciences; Melanie Bloom, Spanish, College of Arts & Sciences; Bruce Chase, biology, College of Arts & Sciences; John Erickson, management, College of Business Administration; Won Mee Jang,

computer and electronics engineering, College of Engineering; Carol Mitchell, teacher education, College of Education; Hugh Reilly, School of Communication, College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media; Pete Simi, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, College of Public Affairs and Community Service; Kerry Ward, information systems & quantitative analysis, College of Information Science and Technology.

Peer committees in each college chose recipients, each of whom received a $1,000 award. Denker presented recipients with commemorative tablets during the convocation breakfast in the Milo Bail Student Center. With the 2010 awards the association has issued $122,000 in AOTAs since the program’s start.

Brief descriptions of recipient research interests and educational backgrounds are online at www.unoalumni.org/aota2010.

We’ve got you covered Looking to get covered? Visit the Alumni Association Web site at www.unoalumni.org/insurance to see the discounted options available to UNO graduates for health, life, auto, and long-term care insurance.

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ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

welcome home!

Young Alumni to host wine tastings UNO Young Alumni, a social/networking group open to all alumni but focused on graduates under the age of 40, is hosting a wine tasting at Slattery Vintage Estates Vineyard (8925 Adams St., Nehawka, Neb.) on Thursday, June 24, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The per person fee of $12 includes food and five kinds of wine. Door prizes also will be awarded. UNO Young Alumni also will host a wine tasting and tour of Soaring Wings Vineyard Sept. 16. For more information, or to register for either event, visit www.unoalumni.org/unoyoungalumni.

Or, contact Elizabeth Kraemer at ekraemer@unoalumni.org

79th annual

UNO Homecoming Saturday, Oct. 2 UNO alumni and their families are invited to attend. The event begins at 10 a.m. with a Homecoming Parade. It will be followed by the Homecoming Tailgate Party in the Sapp Fieldhouse from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Alumni, students and fans prepare for the football game with games, food, entertainment and tons of Mav spirit.

The UNO football team will host Emporia State University at the adjoining Al Caniglia Stadium beginning with a 1 p.m. kickoff. The Mavericks have won 13 of their last 14 homecoming games and are 51-23-4 since the tradition began in 1928.

Additional information is available at www.unoalumni.org/homecoming.

The UNO Alumni Association also is taking part in or hosting several other Homecoming Week activities, including: • Sept. 28 — Homecoming Party for UNO employees who also are alumni; • Sept. 29 through Oct. 1 — Homecoming Office/Area Decorating Contest; and • Oct. 1 — Golden Circle Luncheon honoring the 50th anniversary of the Class of 1960. Followed by campus tour. Class of 1960 graduates and other alumni can find additional Golden Circle Reunion information at www.unoalumni.org/goldencircle

Chancellor’s Scholarship Swing tees off Sept. 13 The UNO Alumni Association will tee off for scholarships on Monday, Sept. 13, with the 30th annual Chancellor’s Scholarship Swing at Tiburon Golf Club.

The UNO Alumni Association’s biggest single fundraiser each year, the Swing last year raised more than $40,000, pushing the total to nearly $550,000 raised since the association began hosting the tournament 15 years ago.

The money raised supports various Association-sponsored student scholarships. That includes UNO Alumni Association Scholarships, four $2,500/year scholarships awarded to graduating high school seniors who have demonstrated leadership and involvement during high school. The scholarships may be renewed for up to four years total.

The Association continues to recruit business and individual sponsors for the tournament. To participate, or for more information, e-mail Elizabeth Kraemer at ekramer@unoalumni.org, or call (402) 554-4802.

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ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Two Gentlemen to rock 24th annual Shakespeare on the Green A rock musical version of Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona” will take center stage for the annual Shakespeare on the Green Alumni Picnic Thursday, July 8.

All alumni and friends are invited to the picnic, hosted in the Thompson Alumni Center beginning at 6:15 p.m.

The dinner features chicken, BBQ pork, potato salad, baked beans, coleslaw, cookie and beverages. Nebraska Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Alan Klem will provide a performance preview of “Two Gentlemen” at the dinner.

Afterward, alumni will be seated at a reserved “down front” space at the 8 p.m. performance. Alumni also receive reserved parking near The Green.

travelin’ mavs The UNO Alumni Association is offering graduates travel opportunities through two partners.

Travel this fall includes three cruises:

Romantic Rhine Sept. 18-26 Paris to Normandy’s Landing Beaches Sept. 27-Oct. 5 Grand Tour of Egypt Oct. 11-22 Also available is an eight-day tour:

New England’s Shea Carpenter Islands Oct. 1-8 Details available at www.unoalumni.org/travel

The Tony Award-winning musical comedy was adapted

by John Guare and Mel Shapiro with lyrics by John Guare and music by Galt MacDermot. It centers on Proteus and Valentine, best friends until they both fall for the same woman, Silvia.

The Shakespeare on the Green Alumni Picnic costs $12 per person. For more information e-mail Events Coordinator Elizabeth Kraemer ekraemer@unoalumni. org or call (402) 554-4802, toll free at UNO-MAV-ALUM (866-628-2586). Online reservations can be made at www.unoalumni.org/eventregistration.

More information about the play and Nebraska Shakespeare is online at www.nebraskashakespeare.com

Giving and Getting As another academic year ends, another class of impressive graduates leaves campus, facing a future filled with possibilities for growth, new opportunities and new connections.

But graduation shouldn’t signal an end to the connections new grads and alumni already have made on campus. The primary goal of the UNO Alumni Association and the driving purpose behind the UNO Annual Fund is to maintain connections with UNO alumni, including our most recent new alums.

In 2007, the Alumni Association formed UNO Young Alumni, a group for graduates who are looking to better themselves and the community while attending regular on- and off-campus events. The group has established an online presence on Facebook.

Since last fall, UNO Young Alumni has hosted and planned events that include: a private wine tasting, networking event and tour at Soaring Wings winery; a family holiday party at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo, a pre-game tailgate party in Omaha’s Old Market followed by a UNO Maverick hockey game; a party for 2010 May graduates; and a Young Alumni Business Seminar with speaker Steve Kontz of Renaissance Financial.

Your gift to the UNO Annual Fund fosters the growth of such new, innovative programs like UNO Young Alumni. It also supports students and faculty on campus and sustains traditional alumni programming and communications.

Please help us keep UNO alumni connections strong by making a gift today using the business reply envelope enclosed in this magazine, or by donating online at www.unoalumni.org/give.

For more information about getting involved in UNO Young Alumni activities, contact Elizabeth Kraemer at ekraemer@unoalumni.org or visit www.unoalumni.org/unoyoungalumni.

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PARTNERS

Clients of UNO Center quickly realize that the science of collaboration “just makes sense.”

DR. GERT-JAN De Vreede is managing director for UNO’s Center for Collaboration Science (CCS), which in just four years has become internationally recognized for its work, based on the idea that successful organizations need to excel at teamwork and collaboration.

Many organizations agree, as illustrated by the varied CCS client base. That includes businesses, non-profit organizations, the military, academia and government agencies.

Understanding that collaboration requires the input of a variety of disciplines — technology, education, psychology, communication, etc. — the university has included faculty from all six of UNO’s colleges in the center.

“We are a coalition of the willing,” de Vreede says. He recently received UNO’s annual award for excellence in research or creative activity. His work focuses on “thinkLets” — essential rules as a pattern language for small-group collaboration. De Vreede also conducts research in areas like collaboration engineering, virtual world environments (i.e., Second Life), convergence, facilitation, and group storytelling techniques for Agile Software Engineering.

His background is technical (he is a member of the faculty in the School of Interdisciplinary Informatics). Yet his approach is grounded in seemingly simple, yet extremely practical and peopleoriented techniques — showing people an easy way to provide input, measure the facts, and let solutions follow.

Collaborative work practices involve leadership, people, processes, information and technology. Collaboration science studies the way these factors affect the outcomes for people who work together to achieve a goal or goals.

Speaking of the readiness of organizations to apply collaboration methods, de Vreede says that, “some organizations are ahead of the curve while others are still trying to figure it out.”

Woodmen of the World has contracted with the CCS on several occasions during the last few years. The results have been useful and important, says Colleen Maciejewski, vice president for Woodmen’s Enterprise Project Management Office. She participated in a reorganization process in late 2007 that involved 200 employees and a reconfiguration of three divisions into one.

“A lot of people recognized there were issues,” Maciejewski says.

“You could go in 20,000 different directions with those issues.”

Collaboration sessions facilitated by CCS at Woodmen allowed employees to voice concerns and thoughts anonymously. More than 100 issues were brought forward. Those concerns were grouped into about a dozen categories. Maciejewski believes that the sessions — and the resulting solutions — helped create consensus and buy-in from the majority of people involved.

“You could do exactly what he (de Vreede) does without technology,” she says. But she agrees that computer technology speeds up the process of input and feedback and helps prevent any one person or group from dominating the conversation. Much of what

A tall order: de Vreede and UNO’s Center for Collaboration Science helped Maciejewski and Woodmen of the World through a difficult reorganization.

was accomplished through working with CCS seemed like common sense, she adds.

De Vreede understands that there are no magic bullets in what he and others do when working with people, but he firmly believes that collaboration can help with strategic planning, goal-setting, conflict resolution, communication and a host of other issues important to organizations.

“No matter who or where you are, addressing problems in a workplace often means some sort of new approach . . . and the center can help with that,” de Vreede says.

Even when change is difficult.

“The only person that wants a change is a wet baby,” he jokes.

Partner with CCS Want to partner with UNO’s Center for Collaboration Science? Contact Managing Director Gert-Jan de Vreede at 554-2026, email gdevreede@unomaha.edu or visit http://ics.ist.unomaha.edu.

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PHILANTHROPY MATTERS

International Initiatives Positioning University of Nebraska campuses as leaders in global engagement

When the University of Nebraska and the University of Nebraska Foundation announced a $1.2 billion fundraising campaign last year, NU President James B. Milliken acknowledged that the goals set for the Campaign for Nebraska were ambitious.

But the priorities, he said, are vitally important to Nebraska and to Nebraskans.

Fundraising priorities have been identified for key areas in which the University has proven strength and where leadership positions worldwide can be achieved. Among them is global engagement.

Following are excerpts from a speech Milliken gave last October at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He discusses the University of Nebraska as a global university and the significance of its role internationally and locally — for students, those educating them and the state of Nebraska.

The University of Nebraska has a long and rich history of international engagement. Our faculty and administrators have always recognized the ways in which experiences with diverse cultures, countries and languages enrich the lives of students, faculty and citizens.

As we celebrate International Education Week, we all recognize that today’s world is different — increasingly interconnected, interdependent and insecure. But we have unprecedented opportunities to collaborate to find solutions to global problems, including hunger, disease and poverty, and we have growing global markets for our ideas, goods and services. There are serious, violent conflicts in many parts of the world, but we may be in a better position than ever to work together and build new partnerships to address inequities and help reduce the risk of war and international terrorism.

NU President James B. Milliken in August 2009 was among eight university presidents who accompanied U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings (pictured) and other government officials on a sevenday trip to Brazil and Chile.

The United States will continue to play a leading role in the world, and whether we do that wisely will depend in significant part on the education of our citizens — an education that more than any time in history requires an understanding of the rest of our small planet and respect for the peoples of the world.

No one understands this imperative better than our faculty, who play a critical role in educating the rising generation of global citizens. With their leadership and encouragement, we are making a renewed commitment to global engagement at the University of Nebraska.

New international initiatives exist on each of our campuses, and international engagement is one of the major goals of the University of Nebraska Foundation’s “Unlimited Possibilities” capital campaign. Our success in these ambitious efforts will require a significant investment of private funds, and we believe donors increasingly recognize and support the importance of this success.

We have identified four University-wide objectives to position the University of Nebraska as a leader in global engagement, and to offer our students, faculty and the people of Nebraska the opportunities we believe are important to achieving this position:

For more information about supporting these objectives, visit www.campaignfornebraska.org or contact Lori Byrne at the University of Nebraska Foundation, (402) 502-4920 or lbyrne@nufoundation.org

1) We plan to provide the opportunity for every undergraduate to have a meaningful academic experience abroad. We must encourage students from more disciplines to pursue international study, promote longer and more meaningful international experiences, and encourage faculty to raise the bar for international engagement — in the classroom, in developing study abroad programs, and in their own research and in scholarly activity. The University should offer our students the same kinds of opportunities that would be available to them in leading institutions anywhere in the country. This should not be considered a luxury or be available only to those whose families can afford it.

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PHILANTHROPY MATTERS 2) We plan to double international student enrollment.

International students add millions to the state’s economy, but of course the real value is in the richness of the experience gained by having students from around the world on our campuses and in our communities. This year, 128 countries are represented in the 2,800 international students enrolled on our campuses. I hope we can double the number of international students on our campuses by 2019, the University’s 150th birthday.

3) We plan to significantly increase opportunities for faculty to collaborate with colleagues around the world. As important as it is for students to pursue international study and be exposed to international students on our campuses, it is equally important that faculty have the opportunity to pursue their scholarly work in the world of knowledge, which certainly doesn’t end at our borders. We will support a new emphasis on mutually beneficial collaborations, exchanges and partnerships.

4) We plan to renew our commitment to work with countries and institutions around the world. To serve the interests of the University and our state, but also our nation, we will continue to develop strategic partnerships abroad in fields critical to mutual well being. The University has a rich history in working with developing nations to help address challenges in education, agriculture, medicine and many other fields. We can serve both state and national interests through involvement in sponsored work in the developing world where we have much to offer, as well increase our mutually beneficial partnerships in developed countries.

These strategies support the University’s goals of providing a highquality 21st century education, building leading academic programs, contributing to the innovation economy in Nebraska, and contributing to health, stability and well-being in the world. This is an exciting time for the University of Nebraska, and efforts to significantly increase the level of engagement in the world will offer tremendous benefits to our students, faculty and citizens.

Understanding Immigration

Calling London Freeman Scholarship helps UNO students experience UK criminal justice system For more than 30 years, UNO students have been experiencing the United Kingdom criminal justice system firsthand.

Rest easy, though — it’s for a class.

For 16 weeks, students enrolled in the Comparative Criminal Justice Systems class compare the U.K.’s criminal justice system with that of the United States. After that comes a 15-day London Criminal Justice Trip with visits to prisons, police agencies and training academies, and tours of historic sites like Scotland Yard.

It’s an experience of a lifetime for those pursuing a career in the field. But for students living on a college budget, funding such a trip can prove difficult at best.

Ellen Freeman-Wakefield sympathizes with their plight. Which is why in 2008 she established the Len and Ann Freeman Scholarship through the University of Nebraska Foundation in memory of her parents. Each year she funds a $3,000 scholarship to a student in the class — the money coming directly out of her pocket.

The scholarship, based on need and academic performance, defrays the cost of tuition and travel fees.

“I understand the importance of students having the opportunity to study abroad,” Freeman-Wakefield says. “These students get to talk and learn in class, and then actually go and experience it in real life. Programs such as these make the educational process much richer.”

And, as Freeman-Wakefield knows, the trip can be life-changing.

Freeman-Wakefield’s father was a City of London police officer who helped make possible UNO’s first criminal justice trip in 1978. She moved to the United States 30 years ago and today is married to Dr. William Wakefield, a UNO professor who led more than 2,000 criminal justice students and faculty to London while serving as course director from 1978 to 2007.

– Jenna Zeorian

Ford Foundation supports OLLAS efforts From 2000 to 2006, Nebraska’s immigrant population rose from 74,600 to 99,500.

To help better understand immigrant communities and increase engagement with these populations throughout Nebraska, UNO’s Office of Latino/Latin American Studies (OLLAS) has developed programs and research endeavors. That’s been accomplished in large measure with financial support from the Ford Foundation, which to date has provided OLLAS $200,000.

One such project resulted in a pioneering report, says OLLAS Director Lourdes Gouveia. It was a “perfect example of research that was born out of requests from legislators, advocates and community organizations.”

The project focused on the economic impact of the immigrant population on the state’s economy. With this knowledge OLLAS created bilingual presentations about

the immigrant population to help educate companies employing immigrants, health professionals, community organizations and others.

The Foundation funding also supported workshops that educated community organization workers about the Nebraska legislative process so that they could take that information into the community to educate the larger population.

“These workshops led to historic participation of new immigrants in the legislative process,” Gouveia says. “They packed capital hearing rooms to learn about bills, wrote letters to congressmen and learned about registration and voting.”

A culmination of the Ford Foundation support, Gouveia says, is Cumbre, a summit hosted by OLLAS (see article page 14).

“At OLLAS, we take seriously our responsibility to look at the issues that our communities are grappling with and are working to provide more information, research and dialogue,” Gouveia says. “A greater level of understanding will lead to better public policies and influence social change.”

– Jennifer Arnold

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Making Connections

From a small, comfortable office in UNO’s College of Information Science and Technology, Dr. Yong Shi carries out world-class research.

Studies cover things like data mining and data warehousing, information overload, optimal system designs, multiple criteria decision making, decision support systems and telecommunication management. A bit arcane-sounding, perhaps, but areas for which businesses, governments and the military all have a use.

In general, Shi focuses on how to better use, search through and store information — often in huge amounts.

Now his work is receiving international acclaim.

First came the Georg Cantor award from the International Society of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM.) The society’s highest recognition, the award honors “a researcher who, over his distinguished career, has personified the spirit of independent inquiry … .”

Dr. Yong Shi

An even more prestigious award followed in November — the Fudan Prize, often considered China’s version of the Nobel Prize.

Shi shared the award with two other professors in China for their contributions to management science. He traveled to Beijing last November for the ceremony at the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The three shared a monetary prize of 1 million Chinese yuan (about $147,000).

“The most important thing to me is the recognition of my work,” says Shi, who came to UNO in 1991 and joined the IS&T faculty in 1996.

Shi is not just a man of science and technology. He’s also a networker who understands the importance of staying connected to people. His office includes a class photo from China’s Dalian University of Science and Technology. In 1983, Shi was part of a first wave of Chinese students receiving a new kind of degree in the People’s Republic — an MBA.

He keeps in touch with many of his classmates and the faculty members who taught them nearly 30 years ago. Four of those former MBA students went on to become governors of Chinese provinces.

He’s also stayed connected to the people he’s learned with, taught with and researched with here and abroad. Shi earned his doctorate in management science from the University of Kansas in 1991.

Those connections benefit UNO. “This guy is dynamic in the pursuit of exchanges between UNO and China,” says Tom Gouttierre, dean of UNO International Studies. “He’s just great with suggestions and relationships to share.”

Shi has been instrumental in getting Chinese students interested in UNO, particularly from his hometown of Chengdu.

He describes that kind of higher education ambassadorial work as “just my side job.”

Connections he once made with phone calls and faxes are quicker and easier now thanks to the Internet and e-mail. Computing power, which makes his research work possible, also has shrunk the world.

Five years ago and earlier, it was easier to recruit international faculty and students to the United States, where they often would stay permanently. Just like Shi. If he were a 30-year-old now, he says, he likely would take his degrees and return to China. The research, the relationships between scholars, and the funding for work all have been internationalized. Major corporations — Intel, Citigroup, AMD, etc.

—have a presence in China’s major cities.

From Shi’s point of view, international exchanges — a strength at UNO — are more important than ever.

“It’s a much better route that makes the most sense for us today,” Shi says.

– Tim Kaldahl

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the colleges

Back to Bethsaida Ten UNO students this summer are digging into the New Testament without even having to open a Bible.

A model of the city gate made by Duane Pieper. An 8th century BCE storage jar.

uno students, along with more than 100 other students and numerous faculty from around the world, are in Israel with the Consortium of the Bethsaida Excavations Project (CBEP), headquartered at UNO and composed of 20 universities worldwide.

Bethsaida, situated on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, was founded in the 10th century BCE as the capital city of the Biblical kingdom of Geshur. It is one of the most frequently mentioned towns in the New Testament.

Bethsaida was identified in 1838 but wasn’t excavated until beginning in 1987. UNO faculty and students have participated in digs for more than 20 years.

The Bethsaida excavation is an interactive education project in which students learn the skills of biblical archaeology.

“The work is divided into stations,” says Rami Arav, director of CBEP at UNO. “Students rotate positions within the stations and learn skills such as land surveying, mapping, log keeping, elevation, technical drawing, stratigraphical excavation and analysis of finds and pottery.”

Recently, an extremely rare piece of artwork was discovered at the site. According to Arav, this style was first discovered on the western slope of the Acropolis at Athens (now called the Western West Slope). It is a unique white and red decoration on a glazed pottery

bowl. The decoration depicts white lilies and red ivy leaves on a black background.

This year, CBEP for the first time is offering a course called “Photography and Archaeology” with the UNO School of Communication.

“The course will train students in photographing archaeological sites and objects,” Arav says. “This course is good also for training photographers working for CSI who take photographs for documentation.”

CBEP this summer expands to include universities from Australia and New Zealand. Two faculty members — Greg Jenks from Charles Strut University in Australia and Jacqui Lloyd from Laidlaw College in New Zealand — will accompany students to the dig. Student and faculty representatives from several other U.S. and international colleges and universities also are attending the three dig sessions, which began in May and continue through June.

“Each and every expedition to Bethsaida is extremely costly,” Arav says.

“We appreciate any donation to CBEP. This makes this work possible.”

Donations are accepted and dig updates provided at www.unomaha.edu/bethsaida – Becky Bohan Brown

IS&T grant helps students go global

fourth partner in the GlobITpro program. Select faculty will join in the collaboration with shorter visits to host lectures and workshops.

UNO students participating in Global IT Project Management (GlobITpro), a unique study abroad experience, are gaining a new world perspective with support from a $194,000 ATLANTIS Mobility Grant.

UNO will have four program participants this summer, UW-Eau Claire two. The students will split their time between Austria and Germany, though future exchanges will allow participants to choose which campus they attend for the duration.

The College of Information Science and Technology (IS&T) is one of only 25 U.S. schools to garner such funding, which comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) program.

In addition to their studies, students will visit several foreign corporations, including major world players like Volkswagen and SAP AG, a multinational software development and consulting firm.

The four-year grant provides students with an opportunity to pay local tuition and receive a stipend for living expenses while studying abroad at two UNO sibling universities — the Management Center Innsbruck (Austria) and the Braunschweig University of Technology (Germany).

“We hope the program positively influences the way students look at the world,” says Deepak Khazanchi, principal grant investigator and associate dean for academic affairs in IS&T. “It is an excellent opportunity to receive a better understanding of other cultures and technology, as well as enhance the reputation of UNO.”

During the course of the grant, 48 students are expected to take part in the exchange, including representatives from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, the

Additional grant details are available at www.GlobITPro.org.

– Beverly A. Newsam

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the colleges

Reaching the Summit with Cumbre UNO’s Office of Latino and Latin American Studies staged its fourth edition of Cumbre (“summit” in Spanish) this past May, focusing once more on significant international issues with worldclass presenters.

“By now, so many people know us,” says OLLAS Director Lourdes Gouveia. “They aren’t surprised by what we put together, but they are continually impressed.”

Ollas’ logo is based on a “coati,” a mammal in the raccoon family. “There are a few at our zoo,” says Lourdes Gouveia.

OLLAS faculty and staff who sponsored and created “Cumbre 2010: The Fourth Latino/Latin American Summit of the Great Plains” see what they do as providing a unique space for academics, community organizations, elected officials, students and the public at large to meet and discuss ideas at the forefront of world and local issues. The major theme for this Cumbre centered on human mobility and the promise of development and political engagement.

An estimated 200 million people now live outside their country of origin, pushed from their homes by politics, economics and a variety of other issues.

Previous Cumbres addressed immigration policy and transnationalism, and integration. Hundreds of participants attend each

Cumbre. Presenters this year included a director of immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the former director of the Pew Hispanic Center.

Though the conferences are based in an office with a Latin American focus, Cumbre presenters understand the necessity of looking at comparative realities. An immigration issue in South Asia can be seen and understood by someone facing similar issues in Europe or Africa or the Americas, Gouviea says. Presenters this year came from and addressed issues concerning South Africa, the Philippines, India and elsewhere.

“We’ve been especially good at capitalizing on our network of colleagues and friends,” Gouveia says. UNO’s faculty have a deep and diverse international experience to drawn on. How OLLAS operates and puts together Cumbre makes it unique not only in the University of Nebraska system, but also the nation.

“I always like to say we address issues ‘from the grassroots to the grass tops,’” Gouveia says. “So many of our colleagues look forward to Cumbre. We know it makes a difference.”

– Tim Kaldahl

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UNO Economics Blogger Gains National Recognition As a graduate student, Art Diamond learned an easy and relatively effective way of taking notes and tackling cumbersome research — documenting his findings on four-by-six-inch note cards.

Diamond would jot down important information and their accompanying sources to use on his thesis and other projects.

When the time came to return to his notes, it was as easy as flipping through the healthy stack of detailed, color-coded note cards.

Diamond still uses this method today, now as a UNO economics professor. His media, however, replaces note cards with the World Wide Web. Since 2005 Diamond has maintained a blog focused on economics. It’s part-classroom tool, part-public bulletin board for stories, facts and other content Diamond finds while conducting research and staying atop current events.

“The blog provides the same benefits of those notecards, with quotes and examples, but in a high-tech way,” Diamond says.

“It’s definitely an aid to my research and teaching.”

And his students aren’t the only ones visiting the Web site. The Kauffman Foundation recently recognized Diamond as one of “the country’s most prolific and influential economics bloggers.”

Diamond is a self-taught blogger who uses an open-source platform for his blog, available at www.artdiamondblog.com.

He enrolled in a few courses on Web page creation through the Nebraska Business Development Center, a branch of UNO’s College of Business Administration.

News articles constitute many of Diamond’s frequent blog postings, but he also keeps his eyes open for relevant videos on the Web that supplement his undergraduate and graduate teaching.

Big blogger: Diamond’s economic postings are among the country’s “most prolific and influential.”

Many entries also feature brief or lengthy commentary from Diamond about the topic at hand.

“Blogging helps me find and highlight recorded evidence (on today’s economic issues) that are made accessible to everyone,” Diamond says.

Although Diamond hails from a background deep in academics, he admits that traditional forms of sharing information — specifically, vetted and peer-reviewed journal articles — have their issues.

“There are times when articles can be made worse when reviewed by pre-certified experts,” he says. “And then there’s the delay of publishing these articles. Blogs most certainly have a role in today’s communication age.”

– Wendy Townley

Omahan presents CBA with another major gift What Dean Louis Pol calls “The Carl and Joyce Mammel Halo Effect” has yielded further support for UNO’s College of Business Administration.

Omaha resident and UNO supporter Virginia Schmid made a $1 million gift to the University of Nebraska Foundation for the college’s new home, Mammel Hall, opening this fall near the University of Nebraska Peter Kiewit Institute at 67th and Pine Streets. The dedication ceremony will be held Oct. 15.

Schmid, who is close friends with the Mammels, learned of their support for the new facility and also wanted to

help. Schmid’s donation will support Mammel Hall’s state-of-theart auditorium.

The auditorium will comfortably seat nearly 200 students. Professors will utilize the space’s technology features when teaching courses.

The auditorium also will allow CBA to expand its guest lecture series, including panelists whose research and expertise is focused on innovation, entrepreneurship and investment management.

Pol envisions that the space also will be used for outreach events focused on

UNO alumni and faculty research, as well as by local organizations such as the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce.

UNO colleges and departments also could jointly host events at the new auditorium, Pol says.

“We greatly appreciate Virginia Schmid’s generosity and support of our building project,” Pol says. “The auditorium will be an important gathering place in our new home, bringing together students, faculty and the community in a beautiful, modern setting.”

– Wendy Townley

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athletics

Andrew Bridger

Ellen Thommes

Athletes celebrated at ‘A Night at the OSCARS’

UNO Athletics in late April at Qwest Center Omaha inaugurated “A Night at the OSCARS,” a celebration of the 2009-2010 season. OSCARS is an acronym for Outstanding Students Celebrating Achievement and Recognition Showcase.

More than 700 athletes, family, coaches, staff and community members attended the event.

UNO presented Senior Career Athlete Awards to a male and female athlete. Andrew Bridger of the basketball team won the men’s award and Ellen Thommes of the volleyball team won the women’s award.

The department recognized Mike Higgins of the football team for his community service with the Humanitarian Award. For three years he participated in UNO’s Seven Days of Service, volunteering his time with Habitat for Humanity, the Open Door Mission and Quality Living. He also helped at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Football Camp Ashley Nelson of the women’s basketball team won the Phoenix Award, given to the athlete who has overcome adversity during his or her UNO career. Nelson played the first three years at UNO while her mother battled cancer.

After her mother’s death in the summer of 2009, Nelson captained the Mavericks during her senior season and had a career year on the court and in the classroom.

opportunity to put their mark on the program through recruiting and player development.”

Blais led the Mavericks to a 20-16-6 record in 2009-10 including a record of 13-12-3-2 in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association, good for sixth place. It was the fourth 20-win season in UNO history, the first since 2005-06. Eleven UNO players had career years in 2009-10.

“The university is clearly committed to the success of the hockey program, and I am committed to the job we began here last season,” Blais said. “My wife and I have come to enjoy Omaha, and with this extension I anticipate being able to finish my head coaching career here at UNO.”

Blais, Alberts Contracts Extended The UNO athletic department took another step to solidifying the direction of its hockey program when it signed head coach Dean Blais to a two-year contract extension in April. Blais, who took over the UNO hockey program in the summer of 2009, will guide the Mavericks through the 2014-2015 season.

“We are thrilled by the progress the team made under Dean’s leadership in his first season as head coach,” said Trev Alberts, UNO’s director of athletics. “By extending his contract, we hope to bring further stability to the position and give Dean and his staff a better

At the same news conference, UNO Chancellor John Christensen announced that Alberts will have his contract extended through the 2014-2015 academic year. Alberts was named to the position in April 2009, succeeding David Miller. In addition to hiring Blais, Alberts is responsible for the hockey team’s move this fall from the CCHA to the Western Collegiate Hockey Association.

“Trev has done an outstanding job in his relatively short time leading the athletic department,” Christensen said. “He has defined a clear vision for UNO athletics and has worked proactively to achieve that goal.

“By extending his contract to run concurrently with Dean’s, we have brought stability to the department and put both men in position to continue to build our hockey program.”

The UNO hockey team plays its first-ever game as a member of the WCHA on Oct. 15 at perennial power Minnesota.

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VIDEO BOARDS

Pinar Saka Turkey

Anja Puc Slovenia

Nkeiruka Domike Nigeria

Maja Mihalinec Slovenia

International talent sparkles for Maverick track and field team More than 1,300 international students attend UNO, but not all of them come just for the great academics.

Many also come for the great athletics.

was a good decision for me because I knew that the program was competitive and that Coach [Stephen] Smith was a good leader.

Nowhere is that more apparent than on the UNO women’s track and field team, which features seven athletes from outside the United States.

“Academically, I felt comfortable with UNO, and I am happy to be here.”

Leading the way are sprinters Pinar Saka, Anja Puc and Maja Mihalinec and triple jumper Nkeiruka Domike, all of whom have earned All-American honors while at UNO. The four were major contributors to UNO’s Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association Indoor Championships in 2009 and 2010, and to back-to-back top-five finishes at indoor nationals.

Saka, a senior sprinter from Istanbul, Turkey, came to UNO in 2007 as a sophomore transfer from Nebraska.

She since has become one of UNO’s most decorated athletes. The U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association named her Division II’s 2009 Indoor Track Athlete of the Year. She also was named UNO’s Female Athlete of the Year for 2008-2009.

Saka was a two-time indoor national champion last season, winning the 400 meters and anchoring the winning 4 x 400 meter relay. A multiple All-American, she is UNO’s indoor record holder at 200 (23.93 seconds) and 400 (53.04) meters. Her 400 time also set a new standard for Turkey, eclipsing the country’s national record previously held by her Turkish Club Coach, Oznur Dursun.

Puc, a native of Medvode, Slovenia, also arrived in 2007 and is a two-time All-American. She holds the university’s 800-meter indoor (2:09.44) and outdoor (2:05.91) records.

“I had different chances to go to some bigger schools — Akron, Clemson, Harvard,” Puc says. “I think UNO

Mihalinec, a native of Mozirje, Slovenia, is a sophomore who finished the 2010 indoor season as one of UNO’s six All-Americans. In March she broke the school’s 60-meter record with a time of 7.49 seconds at the NCAA Indoor National Championship meet. She later finished sixth in the event. UNO finished fourth in the team standings.

At the outdoor Drake relays in April, Saka, Puc and Mihalinec joined teammate Shannon Moore to set a meet college record in the sprint medley. The quartet finished in 3:49:11, 10 seconds better than secondplace Oklahoma Baptist and more than a second better than the previous meet record.

Domike, of Nigeria, came to UNO this season. In her first-ever indoor campaign she won the national championship in the triple jump, also setting a UNO standard in that event at 42-21/4. Her personal best is 45-91/4, set while winning the Nigerian national championship in July 2009.

The Mavericks this year also featured Kenya native Zenah Chepkwony, a freshman distance runner, and two sophomores from Jamaica: Jody-Ann Coore (60 meters) and Lianne McNaughton (400, 100 hurdles, shot put).

“We have a great combination of girls here,” Puc says, “and we have all put in a lot of practice to get to where we are. Everybody on the team deserves recognition for our success.”

– Sean Owens

The new video boards in UNO’s Sapp Fieldhouse debuted to rave reviews as the Mavericks hosted the 2010 NCAA Division II Wrestling Championships March 12 and 13. The video boards, dubbed “D.J. Sokol Vision” in honor of the late son of donor and alum David Sokol (‘78), displayed all the action of the twoday event, which culminated in a second consecutive national championship for the Mavs and the fifth in the last seven years.

The two boards, hung at either end of the fieldhouse, will get quite a workout when the 2010 UNO volleyball season begins in September, followed by men’s and women’s basketball in late November. Plans currently are in process to bring a larger video board to Al F. Caniglia Field for the beginning of the 2010 football season, which kicks off Sept. 4 when the Mavericks host Nebraska-Kearney in the annual battle for the Victory Bell.

gator & indians Former UNO baseball coach Bob Gates (“Gator”) was inducted into the Omaha Sports Hall of Fame on April 29.

Gates has more wins than any baseball coach in UNO history (464). He led the Mavericks from 1977 to 1999 and won two conference championships.

The Omaha Sports Hall of Fame also recognized UNO’s 1954 football team. Then known as the Indians, the team won the 1955 Tangerine Bowl and finished the season 10-0 under coach Lloyd Cardwell.

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get to know FIVE FOREIGN LOCATIONS I’D LIKE TO VISIT: Beijing, China; Sidney, Australia; Vancouver, Canada; Lisbon, Portugal; Ethiopia

she answered

we asked Gail Baker Dean, College of Communication, Fine Arts & Media

FAVORITE CHILDHOOD TV PROGRAM: Jonny Quest. He traveled the world and faced all kinds of different adventures!

A DIFFERENT FIRST NAME I’D CHOOSE FOR MYSELF: Felicia. It’s my middle name and it’s what I was called growing up.

I would switch my name from Gail Felicia to Felicia Gail.

MY FIRST JOB: My first job was at Montgomery Ward in Chicago. I was a sales clerk in the housewares department. I fell in love with the number and variety of dishes and plates and still am today.

THE BEST ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED: Leave it better than you found it.

we asked

WHICH COUNTRY WOULD I LIKE TO LIVE IN AND WHY?

I would like to live in Durban, South Africa, because of the ongoing reconciliation efforts between minority and majority groups due to that country’s past history of racial apartheid. The South African people have begun working together to heal racial divides that once separated them from each other. I observed the togetherness of different racial groups during my research trip to that country in the summer of 2008. This made me extremely optimistic about the future progress of South Africa and its people.

answered

Robert Franklin General Manager, KVNO

I would love to live in New Zealand!

I have never been there but it seems to be a beautiful place with great weather for outdoor activities. I think I would take up paddle boarding if I lived there and I would do LOTS of hiking.

answered

Jennifer Huberty HPER Professor

I think I would like to live in Canada. It has a little bit of some of my favorite places here in the states: snowy mountain tops of Estes Park, sunny waterfronts of San Diego and rare, exotic animals from Omaha’s Zoo, to name a few.

And, it’s located north of the U.S., so I could always come back home and visit at anytime.

answered

Andrea Ciurej Editor, Gateway

I would live in Fiji because of the spring-like weather all year and water so clear that you can see to the bottom of the ocean.

Text, photos by Jenna Zeorian

England. Since I work for the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival and have spent the last six years immersing myself in Shakespeare’s plays, it would be great to live in the country where William Shakespeare lived and worked and where his plays were first performed.

answered

Thomas Lowe Director of Production & Education, UNO Dept. of Theatre

answered

Elijah Madison UNO Heavyweight National Champion

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Ronald Roskens is a man who rarely finds himself shocked

Sun rises on Roskens

Emperor Meiji of Japan created the award, that nation’s first decoration, in 1875. It remains one of the most prestigious honors that can be conferred by Japan. The awarding of the Order is administered by the nation’s Decoration Bureau through the Office of the Prime Minister in the name of the Emperor.

Roskens met Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and Emperor Akihito when he and his wife, Lois, went to Tokyo for the May 8 award ceremony.

Roskens’ relationship with Japan dates to the early 1980s while he served as president of the NU system. He did important work that enhanced and expanded Omaha’s sister city relationship with Shizouka.

Roskens has made, by his count, “eight, nine or 10” trips to Japan over the years.

During his latest visit to accept the Rising Sun award he took a day to visit Shizouka (which now has more than 700,000 residents) and reconnect with friends and business acquaintances.

“The most important facet of relationships with other countries is face-to-face discussion,” Roskens says.

He can speak with authority about how important the personal touch is in a business and government dealings. He served as administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development for nearly three years starting in 1990.

Omaha’s Takechi family (Takechi Jewelry) helped him make important first contacts in Shizouka and beyond. He says he often advocates about the importance of international student exchange programs, especially to Asia, which has established business powers like Japan and two of the world’s great rising powers — China and India.

Exchanges, of course, go both ways.

For more than 25 years, Japanese ambassadors and their staff members have regularly made visits to Omaha and the rest of Nebraska.

“Not in every case, but several of them were, I think, astounded to find that this wasn’t cowboy and Indian territory,” Roskens says. “Rather, what they found was a civilized and rather markedly growing city. Cosmopolitan.”

Kenji Shinoda now serves as deputy chief of mission for the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C. For many years he worked as Japan’s consul general in Chicago and became well acquainted with Roskens, who served as Japan’s honorary consul general in Nebraska from 1999 through last year.

Shinoda says that he’s excited and delighted for his friend. Roskens, he says, was key in showing Nebraska could be an inviting and attractive place for foreign investment. The conversations Japanese business officials had with people from Omaha and Lincoln were important in getting Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing to come to the state.

Roskens says he hopes the Rising Sun award will help him open up even more doors in Japan and lead to more education, business and civic connections. Even after decades of work, he says, there are certainly more people to meet and more to get done.

– Tim Kaldahl

Photo: Tim Fitzgerald, University Relations

The former University of Nebraska president and UNO chancellor has always had a commanding presence, and he has traveled the world in a wide range of higher education, government and business circles. Still, when he was informed earlier this spring that he would receive one of Japan’s most prestigious awards — the Order of the Rising Sun — he was certainly surprised. More like stunned.

Former UNO Chancellor and NU President Ron Roskens displays the Order of the Rising Sun he received in Japan in May.

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Illustration by Tom Kerr

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By John Fey

Looking back, Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado realizes the bland food was a telltale sign that the old man wasn’t quite feeling himself.

Benjamin-Alvarado’s first and only meeting with Fidel Castro came in 2006 during an evening that he had expected to spend listening to jazz. Instead, a trip coordinator delivered surprising news as the UNO political science professor lounged hotel poolside: “Be in the lobby in one hour with a suit on; you’re going to meet the president.”

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I’m one of the last Americans to see him before he took ill.

The meeting was March 2006, and by July he was laid up in the hospital and hands over power.

Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado UNO associate professor of political science

Dinner with Fidel “We were there from 7 in the evening to 3 in the morning with him,” Benjamin-Alvarado says. “He’s long-winded as everybody has made him out to be. I was thinking, ‘This guy’s taking forever, but it’s Fidel Castro.’

“He did say, ‘So you’re the energy guy.’

They had files on us. They had done their homework. I was not surprised at all that he knew exactly of my work. I remember thinking to myself, ‘This is so unreal. You are so fortunate.’”

Benjamin-Alvarado’s wife didn’t believe it until he showed the gifts Castro gave him — Cuban rum and cigars.

Just a few months later, the communist dictator would be hospitalized and hand the reins of Cuba’s government over to kid brother Raul.

Thinking about Cuba Benjamin-Alvarado’s knowledge of the small island country extends well beyond breaking bread with Castro. During the past two decades he has gained an up-close perspective of Cuba and its inner workings, becoming an expert on the country’s nuclear energy ambitions and capabilities. That’s resulted in appearances on NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, PBS, etc.

His interests began in 1990 when his boss at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a think tank in Monterrey, Calif., asked him to write a report on Cuba.

“I began to look at how this poor country was attempting to build a nuclear reactor for energy,” he says. “Obviously, the Cuban missile crisis colored that because of the kind of assistance they were receiving from Russia throughout the cold war period.”

The more research he did, the more fascinated Benjamin-Alvarado became. He visited Cuba for the first time in 1992, and what he saw amazed him.

“It was very eerie, because they were in the midst of a severe economic crisis,” he

recalls. “There was very little of any type of activity on the streets. There was no gasoline, no oil. There were blackouts every night.”

That first visit whetted his appetite to know more about the country. He began working toward a doctorate degree in political science from the University of Georgia, fueling his passion for more fact-finding trips to Cuba. There were no travel opportunities between 1993 and 1996. But because of his research and published articles while working for the Center for International Trade and Security, he began garnering attention in Washington, D.C. A number of grants from various national foundations and private individuals followed.

By the time he earned his Ph.D. (becoming the first Hispanic awarded a doctorate in political science at Georgia), he was giving lectures throughout the United States.

“I essentially was able to kind of write my own ticket to continue to do my work in Cuba,” he says.

Change coming?

Through his Washington connections Benjamin-Alvarado began traveling as part of government delegations and got a better feel for the inner workings and philosophies of the Cuban government. He was granted access for interviews and to examine facilities and documents related to his research.

He came to UNO in 2003. Three years later, power shifted from Fidel to Raul — without a hitch.

“There hasn’t been the kind of social upheaval that we see in a lot of other countries,” he says. “There’s no civil war, there’s no mass exodus from the island occurring.”

Fidel’s status is something of a mystery. The BBC this March reported Raul saying that his 84-year-old brother “exercises every day and he is more disciplined than ever. And I could tell you that for his age, he is really doing very well.”

Doctor and Dictator: Benjamin-Alvarado and Castro at their marathon dinner in Cuba.

The U.S. relationship with Cuba, meanwhile, remains regulated by the HelmsBurton Act, an embargo Congress passed in 1996.

Benjamin-Alvarado, also assistant director for research and outreach in UNO’s Office of Latino and Latin and American Studies, says U.S. relations with Cuba could and should change. There are signs that’s beginning to happen despite the embargo.

“The state of Nebraska since 2005 has sold almost $100 million of agricultural products to Cuba,” he says, adding that Congress is considering a bill that would allow even more.

Cuba also could play a larger worldwide role in energy, says Benjamin-Alvarado, primarily through the transfer of technology and through training and education in engineering, especially to other countries in the region in the development of alternative technologies.

“Cuba is much more integrated in the global economy compared to 20 years ago,” he says. “Twenty years ago, Cuba was in a precarious situation.”

Perhaps much like Fidel today.

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Italy LITTLE

A UNO student studies the small Sicilian town that shaped Omaha and its Italian community

By Lori Rice

Growing up Italian in an Italian family in an Italian neighborhood meant the same thing for Brad Costanzo every Sunday at about 2 in the afternoon — pasta with the family-specialty meatballs and sauce.

The secret recipes have been passed to Costanzo, a generational bond to and reminder of his heritage.

The food is great. But it’s the story of his grandparents and their journey from Italy to Omaha that best reminds Costanzo of the importance of his Italian roots.

“I recognize how hard they worked and the struggles they had to endure to get ahead,” says Costanzo, who graduated from UNO with a bachelor’s degree in accounting in 1995.

“Just taking a leap of faith coming across the ocean to a brand-new country.”

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Courtesy Patricia Coate.

HIGH HONORS

The homeland: a panoramic view of Carlentini, Italy.

His grandfather Saverio arrived in 1918 from northern Italy. Three years later came his grandmother Vincenza, who emigrated from a small town outside Carlentini, Italy.

Vincenza was not alone — nearly two-thirds of Omaha’s Italian-Americans trace their roots to this quiet town of around 20,000 people in eastern Sicily.

So says UNO graduate student Patricia Coate, who has no family ties to the boot-shaped country but who has studied the Omaha-Carlentini connection as the basis of her thesis. Coate, who graduates in August with a master’s degree in history, says the first immigrants from Carlentini made the 5,500-mile trek to Omaha in the late 19th century. They peaked in numbers right before World War I but continued to arrive as late as the 1970s. Hopeful for a life with more opportunities, many came to work for Union Pacific Railroad or to start a business in their trade.

Same name

Coate stumbled upon the Omaha-Carlentini connection three years ago while interning at Catholic Cemeteries, for whom she transcribed names from original burial logbooks into an online database.

Over and over she typed the same last names of individuals with the same Italian birthplace — Carlentini.

Same place

She had found her thesis topic — searching for the trends and traditions that came with the Carlentini immigrants to Omaha.

“In history they study immigration a lot,” Coate says, “especially the major waves of immigrants who came over at the turn of the century.

But a lot of these studies don’t necessarily go back to the old country.”

Coate did — literally. To aid her research Coate enrolled in an intensive six-month Italian language course in Italy during the summer of 2008.

“I don’t know if that’s insanity or a brilliant idea,” Coate says with a laugh. “But then I figured out that this is the best thesis of all because I’m forced to have to go to one of the most beautiful countries on earth and study this language, which is a beautiful language, and eat the food.”

Eric Francis Photography

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Armed with a pocket-sized Italian phrase book, she enrolled at the University for Foreigners in Perugia. By that Christmas, Coate was fluent enough to conduct the difficult research required to fulfill her thesis requirements. She dug through archives and hard-to-read Italian manuscripts, spending hours at a time deciphering written records. She took digital photos of paperwork and interviewed local Italians about their connection to Omaha.

Coate at Omaha’s Holy Sepulchre Cemetery next to a gravestone with one of the many names to hail from Carlentini: Caniglia.

Her work began to reveal their influence on Omaha. There’s the obvious, like the city’s annual Santa Lucia festival held in June and the many Italian restaurants that are such a staple to Omaha palates. Several Italian restaurants and eateries in Omaha trace their founding to families who emigrated from Carlentini — Caniglias, Orsi’s Bakery, Mister C’s, Piccolo Pete’s, Venice Inn and the Sons of Italy hall.

“It still lasts to this day. The food was very influential,” Coate says. “Most of the mom-and-pop places you can eat around Omaha are Italian. It’s almost become Omaha’s food.”

The Carlentini influence went beyond food and festivals.

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Tracing

Roots

Genealogy, Coate says, is a way to personalize history.

A way to see how families were involved in the past and to learn about the practices and beliefs that have passed through generations.

For more than 30 years, UNO student Nancy Archdekin has been involved in genealogy as a hobby and a profession. She’s tried to track down heirs for lawyers and family ties for a health-related university study. Her research for individuals has led some to publish family books.

“I love it,” Archdekin says. “It helps you to realize who you are, why you are the way you are. I find it’s fulfilling to learn about your ancestry and where people came from.”

It’s become a popular pastime. Archdekin advises that budding genealogists start with themselves then move backward. “One of the first things a new person should do is talk to parents and grandparents,” Archdekin says.

She also points to several resources available throughout the city.

• The main branch of the Omaha Public Library.

There, Archdekin says, the library provides a room dedicated to genealogy with records for the local area and several surrounding states. Microfilms of early newspapers also are available.

• Local family history centers sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. You can find them in Omaha (11027 Martha St.) and Papillion (12009 S. 84th St).

• The Nebraska State Historical Society in Lincoln, where immigration records are maintained.

The Internet is one reason for the surge in family searches.

“The big news of the last decade is that so many sources are now available online,” says Sharon Wood, professor of history at UNO and chair of the history department. Wood, who uses genealogy in her research at UNO, recommends several online sites to use as tools.

That includes free sites, such as www.familysearch.org and www.usgenweb.org, and fee-based sites, such as www.ancestry.com.

“Once I have a clue I can follow it to other sources,” Wood says. “That’s sort of the main task you have to figure out with genealogy of any sort. You have only a few clues and you have to figure out how to make them tell you as much as possible.”

– Lori Rice

Top left: Gagliolo Rosa e figli, 1930. Top right: Costantino Rosario.

Bottom: Banda Musicale di Pietro Cosentino, Omaha

family &

“They worked very hard,” Coate says. “A lot of them went for professional degrees right away and within one generation they were the doctors, dentists, police officers. They were already very present all over the city in a short amount of time, and I think it speaks volumes about them.”

Faith

Former Omaha City Councilman and one-time acting Mayor Subby Anzaldo is among those with Carlentini roots, his father and mother having emigrated from there in 1927. Their son most remembers the work ethic his parents passed onto him.

“Everything they had, they had to work hard for,” Anzaldo says. “They taught me the same heritage, and all my life I’ve tried to profess the same thing and pass it on to my children. Work hard and you’ll be successful.”

Another emphasis in Coate’s thesis focuses on the religious practices and faith traditions brought from Carlentini. Their Catholic faith, says Coate, played a strong role in their lives and provided a support system for the early immigrants. Omaha churches such as St. Frances Cabrini, St. Ann’s and Holy Family often provided places to stay, jobs assistance, and a social gathering point.

Coated witnessed some of those faith roots firsthand when she returned to Carlentini in August 2009 during the two-week long Santa Lucia festival, which includes an elaborate procession honoring the town’s patron saint.

“They take this huge statue of Santa Lucia on a cart and these men, who are chosen for their leadership in the church, have to push it up and down the streets,” Coate says. “It’s a real labor.”

The tradition is replicated in Omaha every spring, beginning at St. Frances Cabrini and processing this year to the festival site at Lewis & Clark Landing.

Today, Coate says, Omaha’s concentration of Italians has dispersed throughout the city. They, like everyone else, made money, received a good education and tended to move to the suburbs. Their impact, however, continues to influence Omaha today.

“If you live in this city long enough, you know these people, they are everywhere. They really left a mark in the community.”

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Unveiling Islam UNO’s Islamic Studies Program educates on faith, culture, history

By Jenna Zeorian

Blomfield, center, surrounded by students from UNO’s Islamic Studies Program.

Mysterious is hardly the word Dr. Bridget Blomfield would use to describe the Islamic religion and culture.

But it often describes the impression others have of them, she says.

That’s one of the reasons why the UNO professor is passionate about the sucA calligraphic meaning, “Our cess of the university’s Islamic Studies best ornaments are our Program, which she directs. UNO is one good manners.” In Islam, says Blomfield, “this is the of the only universities in the Midwest to concept of loving kindness.” offer an Islamic Studies program, offering students a minor through instruction on Islamic faith, culture and history.

The multidisciplinary program was developed in 2007 and formally implemented in the fall of 2009. It involves the university’s history, religious studies and political science departments.

That gives UNO students a unique advantage, Blomfield says.

“Universities have a responsibility to not only present clear information but to present it from multiple viewpoints and voices,” she says. “We are able to do that by involving different departments.”

Courses offered this spring included “Middle East Politics,” “Soul of Islam” and “Islamic Art and Architecture.”

Blomfield says critical thinking and dialogue, in addition to the presentation of clear information, are key to understanding and relating to different cultures.

“Muslim people and Islam as a religion are misunderstood,” she says. “When students are educated, though, and learn how to communicate their knowledge both globally and locally, they can disseminate information to others to challenge stereotypes.

“One of the great things about our country is the diversity.

And the more bridges we build, the safer and more functional our world becomes.”

The Islamic Studies program was established through private support from anonymous donors who felt it was imperative to make more education about Islam available at UNO. Additional gifts to the University of Nebraska Foundation by anonymous community partners have funded guest speakers, presentations and discussion panels, enhancing the program’s curriculum.

That includes lectures by Dr. M. Ibrahim Farajajé, professor of Islamic studies and cultural studies at the Starr King School for the Ministry, a member school of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. Farajajé in April spoke on Malcolm X and on Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, jurist, theologian and Sufi mystic.

In 2009, Elinor Aishah Holland spoke on Islamic calligraphy.

A calligrapher in the traditional method of the Ottoman Hattat (calligraphers), Holland’s clients include the U.S. State Department, Clinton Global Initiative and Museum of the City of New York.

Other gifts have supported scholarships for students who study abroad. In 2009, 12 students studied in Turkey for one month. This June, 16 students traveled to Morocco for a two-week stay during the Sacred Music Festival in Fez. Students attended daily concerts, colloquiums and religious events and visited historic Marrakech and Morocco’s Essaouria beaches on the Atlantic coast.

“These gifts have been essential to our ability to promote more programs, student opportunities and community outreach, which is what makes our university outstanding,” Blomfield says.

“Students that are a part of our Islamic Studies Program have a better understanding of our world and the people in it.”

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S h oul d e r

By Christine Kasel

U.S. Department of Defense photo by Staff Sgt. Michael L. Casteel, U.S. Army.

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IMPROVING LITERACY in the Afghan Army It could be any spring semester International Studies class at UNO. Sixteen students, 20-something to middle age, occupy the cramped Arts and Sciences Hall room.

Small conversations pop up on the merits of global phone service carriers; the ineptitude of specific golfers; and why the lone window in the room refuses to budge open.

But this is no ordinary UNO class. And when Tom Gouttierre (above), director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies (CAS), enters to deliver the morning lecture, the students snap to extraordinary attention.

These are candidates for Human Terrain Teams, groups of four to nine civilian advisers who will embed with military units. They include former military personnel and social scientists. After they complete the CAS immersion program and additional training at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the graduates will guide U.S. military troops through the very human, socio-cultural terrain of war-worn Afghanistan.

Since April 2008, CAS has presented the Army’s HTT candidates with a series of seminars focusing on Afghanistan studies, issues and current affairs, combined with language training in conversational Dari. Some 300 HTT candidates have been trained in 20 seminars presented by CAS, says U.S. Army Reserve Major Bob Holbert, Human Terrain System regional training coordinator, Afghanistan and Iraq. Funding for the program comes through the U.S. Department of Defense budget.

UNO’s Center for Afghanistan Studies is the only U.S. institution that focuses on Afghanistan, and the sole provider of Afghan immersion seminars for the U.S. Army, says Holbert. The University of Kansas provides a similar program for HTT candidates bound for Iraq.

In addition to Gouttierre, instructors include Dr. Jack Shroder, geology; Shoaib Yosoufzal, Afghan Army; Shaista Wahab, history and culture; Abdul Raheem Yaseer and Abdullah Yaseer, religion; and Sher Jan Ahmadzai, ruling structures. The candidates also spend a good portion of each day working on their command of Dari with Esmael Burhan or Jamil Nuristani.

Each Human Terrain Team consists of a leader and at least one social scientist, research manager and human terrain analyst. They are not soldiers. They neither take part in lethal military action, nor do they engage in intelligence gathering. Human Terrain At left: U.S. Army Maj. Robert Holbert takes notes as he talks and drinks tea with a local school administrator during a cordon and search of Nani, Afghanistan, in June 2007. Holbert was attached to the Human Terrain Team, 4th Brigade Combat Team.

Furthering relations between Americans and Afghans is part of the Center for Afghanistan Studies’ core mission. And the U.S. Army isn’t the only military that benefits from ties to the UNO campus.

Another CAS program now is working to improve literacy rates within the Afghan Army, 120,000 strong but 85-percent illiterate, says UNO’s Abdul Raheem Yaseer. In addition to his contribution to the HTT seminars, the assistant CAS director also heads the Afghan Army Literacy Program.

That program, funded through the U.S. Department of Education and Cultural Affairs, initially was met with resentment from some officials in the Afghan administration who wanted to fill the teaching ranks with friends, “old generals and majors, and retired buddies.”

“We pressed and pushed” to hire only the most qualified, Yaseer says.

The Center for Afghan Studies recruited, tested, and trained the 460 teachers now in place with brigades from Kabul to the provinces, he says.

Many of the teachers are former refugees who fled the country in the face of danger and now have returned.

The program has other benefits, too. Previously, expensive expatriate instructors often were the norm; hazard pay, insurance and other costs could add up to $500,000 per year per instructor. By employing qualified Afghan teachers, the program saves money and provides the country with much-needed jobs.

Yaseer says the soldiers are very happy with the program, and that the teachers, all of whom are evaluated in the field, have received good reviews.

Now in its second year, the literacy program is “working very well and getting better.”

– Christine Kasel

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Afghanistan at UNO The Center for Afghanistan Studies was formed at UNO in 1973. Since then CAS (http://world. unomaha.edu/cas) has provided training, coordination, development and management for almost all sectors of education in Afghanistan: adult literacy, manpower development, gender equity, teacher training and curriculum development. Other facts about CAS and Afghanrelated ties at UNO:

Team members support their unit by guiding them through the complexities of Afghan culture and social life, and developing relationships with members of the local community.

• Since its formation the center has obtained nearly $60 million in grants and contracts to support technical assistance programs, training and educational exchanges.

“The first thing is to try to understand who you are with,” Gouttierre stresses to students in the HTT class.

• In the six months following September 11, 2001, CAS Director Tom Gouttierre and Assistant Director Abdul Raheem Yaseer provided more than 2,500 interviews to local, national and international media sources.

• The center publishes self-study and classroom language materials for Dari, and a Dari-English Dictionary. Research associates of the center are engaged in an ongoing Atlas of Afghanistan Project.

• The center maintains a field office in Kabul and cooperates with the current Afghan government and its Ministry of Education.

• UNO and UNMC collaborate to revitalize health care in Afghanistan and improve educational opportunities for Afghan health care professionals.

• More than 500 Afghans have come to UNO as participants in exchange programs and other projects. More than 100 faculty and staff from the University of Nebraska have participated in projects related to Afghanistan.

• In 1974, the Arthur and Daisy Paul Afghanistan Collection was donated to CAS. It houses one of the largest collections of Afghanistan research materials in the world.

Sept 9 Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud is assassinated.

In one morning presentation, “Afghanistan’s Past and Present,” Gouttierre parses the country’s history and discuss its effects on present-day Afghanistan. It is familiar ground for students in UNO’s International Studies program. For HTT candidates, this is applied social science. They take what they learn into the field and apply it in building cultural and social bridges between the Afghans and Americans who live and work together.

That perspective of the world through the eyes of an Afghan is something for which Holbert has a deep appreciation. The former social studies teacher served as research manager for Afghanistan’s first HTT, deployed in 2007. The training for that first group took place entirely at Fort Leavenworth and included “a five-day ‘round the globe’ introduction” to Afghanistan by Gouttierre.

“It wasn’t nearly the scope or breadth of the current three-week class,” Holbert says, but the small investment provided substantial returns.

After training, Holbert’s team embedded with a unit stationed at Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khwost Province, about 15 miles from the Pakistan border. He and fellow team members quickly discovered an opportunity that would benefit both their unit and the local Afghan community.

Salerno had been a frequent target of rocket attack. “The mosque on the FOB was in bad shape,” Holbert says, and that had a profound, negative effect on the native Afghans. HTT members proposed a joint work project to the local leadership — Afghan nationals working side by side with American soldiers to repair the community’s mosque.

The combined crews quickly repaired the mosque, which raised the spirits within the local community. “It was a gem at our feet,” says Holbert, “and helped bridge the cultural gap between the soldiers and the local civilians. It also showed the insurgents that the Army respected the Afghans and their culture.”

No one expects the candidates to become experts on all things Afghanistan after just three weeks. But by incorporating the lessons learned with their social science background and training, the candidates should become invaluable cultural interpreters.

Holbert says HTT members must know at least enough language to hold a conversation, something not just practical, but a show of respect for the culture.

“You also need to understand the role of Islam in Afghanistan,” he says. It is manyfaceted, and is affected by, and in turns affects, everyday life. Candidates need to “recognize the diversity of the population, and understand tribal relationships and dynamics.” They must also “be aware of the difference between the central and local governments; understand gender roles; and know how the human geography is related to the physical geography.”

Sept 11 Al Qaeda operatives, none of whom are Afghan nationals, attack targets within the United States.

But more than anything else, says Holbert, “Building relationships is No. 1.”

oct 7 U.S. launches Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

march The Pentagon begins drawing military and intelligence resources away from Afghanistan and toward Iraq.

dec Osama bin Laden flees to Tora Bora southeast of Kabul. He is then thought to have escaped by horseback into Pakistan.

june Hamid Karzai is chosen to lead the country’s transitional government.

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2002

Something that starts thousands of miles away in an Arts and Sciences Hall classroom. may The U.S. administration declares an end to major combat operations in Afghanistan.

2003

oct 9 Karzai becomes the first democratically elected head of Afghanistan.

2004

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Photo: PD-USGOV

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on the search for osama Dean of International Studies and Center for Afghanistan Studies Director Tom Gouttierre can’t say exactly why it’s been so difficult to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.

But he is sure about one thing.

“We had a chance” to catch him back in 2001, Gouttierre says, “but we dropped the ball. We let him get away.”

Following the attacks of Sept. 11 by al-Qaeda operatives, none of whom were Afghan nationals, U.S. and Afghan forces pursued Osama into the rugged, remote and mountainous Tora Bora region.

Instead of focusing on Osama’s capture, however, resources were re-directed towards Iraq and Saddam Hussein. “We out-sourced development activities and under-sourced the military” efforts in Afghanistan, Gouttierre says.

The terrorist leader then reportedly left the haven of Tora Bora and escaped by horseback through the mountains to find sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan.

If Osama is still alive — and most people assume that he is, says Gouttierre — his capture would be a great public relief. It would act as a symbol to Afghanistan and the rest of the world that the U.S. is serious about ridding the world of terrorism.

But as important as Osama’s capture may be, Gouttierre warns, “It won’t be the end of al-Qaeda.”

U.S. Department of Defense photo by Staff Sgt. Michael L. Casteel, U.S. Army.

U.S. Army Sgt. Britt Damon points out features in a book as he interacts with local children during a cordon and search conducted with the Afghan National Police in Nani, Afghanistan, in June 2007. Damon was with the Army’s Human Terrain Team, 4th Brigade Combat Team.

february President Obama announces plans to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan. march President Obama connects success in Afghanistan with stability in Pakistan.

The reality today, as Gouttierre imparts to the scholar-students in the Afghan Immersion program, is that al-Qaeda is not the same organization we knew a decade ago. Its structure has morphed: It is something different, but familiar.

Bin Laden has franchised al-Qaeda around the world, says Gouttierre, “and the franchises are plentiful.”

“The war in Afghanistan is not an end unto itself,” he adds.

“It’s a larger war against an al-Qaeda franchise. Afghanistan is just a chapter in that war.”

– Christine Kasel

november President Hamid Karzai is re-elected to another term. february The first Human Terrain Team is deployed to Afghanistan.

2007

dec 2 President Obama commits an addi- february NATO-led forces launch tional 30,000 forces to Afghanistan, and says Operation Moshtarak to secure a troop drawdown will begin in July 2011. government control of Helmand province.

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Photos: Osama bin Laden as he appeared in an Al Qaeda propaganda poster found

by U.S. Special Operations Forces; Osama as he might appear today, according to a digital representation created by the FBI using an image of Spanish politician Gaspar Llamazares.

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Herding Cats Attempting to gather seven faculty to stand on top of the world on the same day is, you might say, a Herculean task. That’s especially so with active professors whose research takes them to far-flung sites around the globe. So it was something of a small miracle when six of the seven showed up on campus for a UNO Magazine photo shoot on a sunny spring day (and a Sunday, to boot). The seventh was out of state conducting — you guessed it — research. So how did seven smiling faces end up in the photo?

We photographed No. 7 on another sunny day and “Photoshopped” them onto our giant map.

Guess No. 7, win a stadium blanket So who’s No. 7? Tell Managing Editor Anthony Flott which professor you think was added to the photo (include your name, address and phone). Those who guess correctly will be included in a random drawing for a UNO Alumni Association fleece stadium blanket. Send submissions to 6705 Dodge St., Omaha, NE 68182, or email aflott@unoalumni.org – Deadline July 5

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s t n

and the Top of the World

By Kevin Warneke

Dr. Harmon Maher doesn’t need much prodding to talk about UNO’s reach throughout the world.

Maher first mentions the Center for Afghanistan Studies, then quickly talks about agreements the university has with peers in Norway, Germany and Austria.

“We truly do have a broard spectrum of faculty who are involved in international endeavors,” says Maher, who is serving as interim associate vice chancellor for research and creativity activity. “I could go on.”

So he does: joint research projects with a university in Russia; service-learning in South Africa; longstanding relationships between the College of Business and a university in Moldova; the College of Information Science & Technology’s relationships with peer institutions in India.

“Linking Omaha as a community and UNO as a university to the rest of the world is our mission,” he says.

Research and service-learning projects have taken UNO faculty and students to six of the seven continents — and to an Arctic island near the top of the world.

UNO’s presence is absent only in Antarctica. Any takers?

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The man was dying of AIDS. His physician said so.

Aundrea Hansen, who last year spent five months studying and working in Stellenbosch, South Africa, noticed the man as both waited in an emergency room waiting area. The man was so weak he wasn’t able to hold his drink.

Hansen, an international studies major from Lincoln, later learned that the man forfeited his right to additional medical assistance by not following the guidelines set for his care.

Hansen spent her time in South Africa taking classes at Stellenbosch University and working at an AIDS clinic. At the clinic, she took urine samples and blood pressure readings, and sat in on counseling sessions.

Hansen, who plans to attend medical school and someday work for Doctors Beyond Borders, has returned to classes at UNO and is helping coordinate World AIDS Day 2010.

From left: Timi Barone, Alan Kolok, Harmon Maher, Jukka Savolainen, Aundrea Hansen, Peter Szto, Tom Bragg.

But the memories of time spent in the ER with a friend who had cut her foot remain most vivid. She came away with a better understanding of how health-care systems differ among countries.

She also came to realize that South Africa’s approach to AIDS care is not that different from the approach in the United States.

“Our government could do so much more,” she says.

Dr. Timi Barone’s fascination with sleep began during a conversation about the connection between stress and how long people think it takes for them to nod off.

The intrigue continued as she explored why siestas are practiced in some countries, but not in others. She discovered that the popularity of siestas is not tied to climate, hard work or eating habits, but with health. Countries with more serious health issues were more likely to have its citizens take siestas.

Now, the associate professor of anthropology’s focus is on the sleeping habits of college students, particularly those at UNO. She knows that a temporary lack of sleep can lead to health problems, including the possibility of Type 2 diabetes. What happens to students who routinely receive less sleep? She aims to discover.

So she’s asking UNO students to wear actigraphs while they sleep. The oversized wristwatches measure sleep patterns. “Everyone wakes up very briefly during the phases of their sleep. Most people don’t remember.”

Preliminary results indicate UNO students sleep less than U.S. adults. She understands that students face the pressures of work, class and study. Something must give, she says.

“They may be trading part of their health to get an education,” Barone says. “I don’t know that for sure, but it is my concern.”

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There’s something in the water in Medellin, Colombia. Dr. Alan Kolok hopes to find out if it’s dangerous.

The professor of biology recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the water that is carried in the runoff from banana plantations and gold mines in Colombia. The waters near the banana plants might contain fungicides, he says, while the waters near the gold mines could contain mercury, used in the extraction process to separate gold from other minerals.

For every ounce of gold that is extracted in the mines, Kolok says, three ounces of mercury is used. “Very likely, it’s getting into the fish,” he says.

Which means that mercury in fish may be going to market, headed for human consumption.

Kolok, who holds a joint appointment with the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, first learned about the potential health hazard during a meeting with a contingency of officials from Colombia several years ago. They invited Kolok to visit their country.

Through a process called biomonitoring and focusing on guppies, Kolok and two students will determine the amount of mercury that is entering into the water near the mines. Their task: “Is this a serious, significant route of contamination of mercury into the food supply? If so, what can we do about it?”

Dr. Peter Szto witnessed the largest mass migration in human history.

China converted from a state-controlled economy to free enterprise.

The movement started in the early 1980s in rural China and accelerated more than a decade later as the country experienced economic reforms.

Economic zones sprouted, especially in the south — and the Chinese went seeking jobs and a better life.

Forty of the 1,200 photographs he took are on display in the College of Public Affairs Building at UNO. His exhibit previously was on display in UNO’s Weber Art Gallery.

Szto, an associate professor of social work, documented the survival strategies used by hundreds of millions of Chinese as they migrated from rural to urban China. “Some people got into factories and got good jobs.

Some didn’t. Some are beggars, some are entrepreneurs.”

Szto, who came to UNO in 2004, photographed these migrant populations in the streets of Ghangzhou, known in the West as Canton. Through his work, he documented the social effects of major economic policy as

For an example of a mass migration in the United States, Szto cites the movement from farms to factories in the early 20th century. But that was a trickle compared to the 150 to 200 million people who comprised the floating populations in China.

Szto likes two photographs from the exhibit best for illustrating contrasts — joy and despair — that he encountered during his study. One shows two men dancing. The other shows a man begging for money to pay for medical treatment for his sick son.

“I tried to capture their human dignity,” he says.

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Dr. Jukka Savolainen figures there are lessons to be learned from how European countries have responded to violence and teenage drinking.

The assumption, says Savolainen, is that the more teens drink, the more likely they are to become violent. Not necessarily so, the associate professor of criminology says.

Rather, violence is more influenced by the “drinking culture” of a country.

In countries such as Spain and France, which Savolainen describes as “wine cultures,” youths drink, but do so with adult supervision and in a controlled manner.

“I don’t see a strong effect between drinking and violence.”

Not so in northern and eastern European countries, which he describes as beer or vodka cultures. Because of this, dictating one type of policy regarding alcohol

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consumption among all teens in European countries isn’t practical, Savolainen says.

And that might have implications closer to home. U.S. university presidents — as they try to create safe environments on their campuses — might want to take notice. But Savolainen cautions: “Culture doesn’t happen overnight. We can’t just pretend we’re Mediterranean because we change the rules.”

Savolainen also is studying how Finland and the United State respond to crime and criminals. Finland is one of the few European countries that have embraced shorter prison terms for criminals, he says.

The obvious question, he says: Do those who receive shorter prison terms return to crime after their release?

“Do they take advantage of that coddling?” he asks. “I tend to find no cost in terms of public safety.”

It’s not the flames and heat that sparked Dr. Tom Bragg’s interest in fire. He’s more intrigued with what happens after fires have been extinguished.

For years, Bragg has traveled to western Australia to study the aftermath of fires in the country’s desolate regions. His task is to study how quickly vegetation returns. “After fires burn, what kinds of plants come back and how long does it take,” Braggs asks.

Bragg is especially interested in the mulga tree and its regeneration after fire.

Back in the day, Australia’s aborigines started fires in these areas. Now, fires in the region are started by lightning and burn wildly.

“The culture of burning changed,” Bragg says.

The professor of biology’s work coincides with another movement in Australia: to reintroduce mid-size mammals — including the northern bettong and the bilby — which have been nearly eliminated from their natural habitat by domestic cats and foxes that roam the area.

As these marsupials are reintroduced, they need vegetation for food and a place to hide.

And they need the right kind of vegetation, Bragg says.

“Every thing needs a place to live.”

For Dr. Harmon Maher, Spitsbergen is a special place.

Nearly 20 times during the past 30 years he’s traveled to Spitsbergen, the largest of the Svalbard islands and a place he fondly refers to as near the “top of the world.”

There, Maher studies the architecture of mountains or, basically, how they grow.

He’s especially interested in how sentiments accumulate. The professor of geology said he’s finishing a project that is examining a place where the earth pulled apart. Sentiment accumulates and caves form.

The point is to study how fluids — water, oils and gases — move through these formations. This work has implications for the petroleum industry, he says.

Spitsbergen also is special because a corner of the Barents Shelf is exposed there. “If you want to understand what’s underneath the water above the exposed area of the Barents Shelf,” he says, “Spitsbergen is a good place to start. To get a better understanding, you want to see and touch rock. You can do that in Spitsbergen.”

Whenever Maher visits Spitsbergen, which is about 600 miles from the North Pole, he sees some familiar faces — researchers from Russia, Poland, Iran, England, Italy and the Netherlands.

“It’s truly a place where scientists from around the world meet.”

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n o i s u s F e t i y r t o l v u a f c FaKitchen e h t f r om f o t o p g n i t y l t e l u m c a f U N O’s

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Dr. Jonathan Bruce Santo is a professor in the psychology department. He is a native of Canada who came to UNO in 2009. He researches adolescent identity development, moderators of the depressive effects of peer victimization, and cross-cultural differences in peer relations. His teaching interests include adolescent development, statistics and cross-cultural psychology. Contact him at jonathan.santo@gmail.com My mother’s side of the family is French-Canadian, and this recipe, in one form or another, has been passed down for at least three generations. It’s a hearty soup that’s perfect after time outside on a chilly day.

Canadian Yellow Split-Pea Soup

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Yield: 4 servings

4 1/2 ounces yellow split peas (uncooked)

1 cup onions, finely chopped

1 quart water

1 cup carrots, sliced

accompanying beverage: White burgundy or Alsace Pinot Gris

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon sage leaves, crumbled

2 teaspoons oil (olive, vegetable or canola)

1/2 teaspoon allspice

2 ounces diced bacon (preferably Canadian)

Fresh parsley

Rinse peas. In large pot combine peas, water and salt. Bring to a boil; remove from heat and let soak for 1 hour. In a 10-inch nonstick skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat; add bacon and cook, stirring frequently until browned. Add onions and carrots, stirring occasionally until onions are translucent; add to peas in saucepan and stir to combine. Add sage and allspice and bring to a boil.

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Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally to prevent mixture from sticking to bottom of pan. Cook until peas are softened and mixture thickens, about 45 minutes. If soup becomes too thick, add up to an additional cup of water. Garnish portions with fresh parsley.

Dr. Gerardus-Jan “GJ” de Vreede is a native of the Netherlands. He came to UNO in 2002 and is the Frederic W. Kayser Chaired Professor in the department of information systems and quantitative analysis, College of Information Science & Technology. He also is director of UNO’s Center for Collaboration Science (see article on Page 9). His research and teaching interests include: collaboration science, facilitation, group support systems, virtual worlds, virtual collaboration, thinkLets, collaboration engineering, software requirements engineering, systems development approaches and more. Contact him at gdevreede@unomaha.educom A traditional dish served in many, if not all, Dutch homes, especially in the colder months of the year. Recipes vary slightly, handed down through the generations. A filling side dish, it is a perfect accompaniment to steak or pot roast with gravy.

Rode Kool Stampot (Red Cabbage mashed with potatoes) Yield: 6 to 8 servings accompanying beverage: Shiraz or Merlot red wine

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10 medium potatoes, peeled & quartered

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon nutmeg

2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 onion, finely chopped

Juice from half a lemon

1 teaspoon thyme

1 red cabbage, finely chopped

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper

2 apples, peeled and chopped

4 ground cloves

3 teaspoons cornstarch

Red Cabbage: Melt the butter and sauté the onions in a large pan. Add cabbage; cover the pan and let simmer for about 15 minutes. Add all other ingredients, except for cornstarch. Add water to the level of the cabbage and cook until cabbage is soft. Mix cornstarch with a bit of the cooking sauce; add to pan and cook until cabbage thickens.

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POTATOES: Put potatoes in a pan and submerge in water; add salt.

Boil potatoes until tender enough for a fork to easily pierce. Drain water. Mash potatoes with a fork and mix with cooked cabbage.

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30 Halla 32 Kim 34 is from 36 Seoul, 38 40 42 He44 48 in50 1999 52 and54 Dr. Korea. came46 to UNO is an56 as- 58 sociate professor of philosophy. He typically teaches Kant, 19th century philosophy and East Asian philosophy. He recently completed a book-length manuscript on Kant’s ethics and will soon begin writing monographs on universals in modern philosophy, Spinoza, and a history of Korean philosophy. “When I am not too busy,” he says, “I read or learn foreign languages, lift weights or play golf.” Contact him at hallakim@unomaha.edu

Bulgogi is one of the most popular Korean dishes. It tastes best cooked on a grill but also can be cooked in a frying pan or broiled in an oven.

During the Chosun dynasty (1392-1910) Bulgogi was popular during festivals, especially as appetizer dishes for alcohol drinks. Its sweetness, though, wasn’t added until around the turn of the 20th century.

Bulgogi (Fire Beef) 1 pound beef (rib eye), sliced into finger-length strips*

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Marinade:

2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed Asian pear juice

3 tablespoons chopped garlic (about 2 cloves)

1 tablespoon rice wine (or dry wine)

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon sesame oil

2 tablespoons sugar

3 green onions , finely chopped (including green part)

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon pepper

Marinade can be prepared as follows or purchased at Asian grocery store. Combine marinade ingredients and mix until sugar and honey are dissolved/distributed. Mix marinade into meat with hands or chopsticks, making sure all meat is covered. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours or overnight. For tougher cuts, the longer it marinates, the better (Uncooked marinated beef can be frozen in small amounts for later use). Grill, broil or stir-fry beef until well done and caramelized on the outside.

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Koreans usually eat Bulgogi with steamed rice and vegetables (e.g., Kimchee, a spicy, fermented cabbage). It also can be accompanied with lettuce wraps and spicy red pepper paste (Kochujang), eaten with bread or, as now is popular in Korea, on pizza.

Yield: 4 servings accompanying beverage: Soju, a clear, distilled wine made from rice with about 20% alcohol content.

Somewhat like Vodka but not as strong and slightly sweeter. Often available at Asian grocery stores.

* Top sirloin, tenderloin or almost any other steak cut also will suffice; Korean/Asian grocery stores often have meat for Bulgogi pre-sliced for sale.

Vegetable Pulao* Birud Sindhav came to UNO 10 years ago and is an associate professor of marketing in the College of Business Administration. He teaches marketing research in the undergraduate program, marketing strategy and marketing in a high technology environment in the MBA program, and leadership and managerial toolkit in the Executive MBA program. His other teaching interests include marketing on the Internet. He has taught classes at the Management Institute, Innsbruck, Austria, and visited the UK and Australia markets with Executive MBA students for market feasibility studies for clients. He received the Distinguished Professor award by the department of marketing and management in 2008. His research interests focus on areas of business-to-business commercial relationships, including communication and coordination issues among firms in marketing channels. He also is researching issues related to marketing on the Internet, including E-tailing and social networking. Contact him at bsindhav@mail.unomaha.edu This is a North Indian rice-based dish and most likely derived from something that originated in the Middle East. I cannot prepare it well, but can definitely appreciate a well made one! It is my favorite because it is delicious and is a complete dish in itself — usually you require bread or rice to accompany cooked vegetables in Indian cooking.

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Owen Mordaunt was born in Swaziland. He came to UNO in 1986 and is a professor of English. He teaches linguistics and black short fiction and is director of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificates. From 1995 to 2000 he and UNO Professor Yvone Tixier Y Vigil (TED) prepared in-service teachers to teach English as a second language using a $300,000-plus grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Mordaunt has published numerous articles. Contact him at omordaunt@mail.unomaha.edu A South African dish of spiced minced meat baked with an egg-based topping. In 1954 it was declared the national dish of South Africa. According to “Kontrei Recipes: Bobotie,” written by Cass Abrahams of Kontreihuis Restaurant (http://www.kontrei.co.za), Bobotie dates to the 17th century and probably was introduced to the Cape by Malay slaves from modern-day Indonesia, which was Dutch-ruled at the time.

Often employed in the Cape as cooks, the slaves introduced Asian recipes into the local cuisine.

Bobotie Yield: 6 to 8 servings

2 pounds cooked or uncooked ground mutton or beef (or leftover roast, minced)

accompanying beverage: Cape wine, dry or sweet

2 onions, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon curry powder

2 tablespoons vinegar or juice of 1 lemon

Oil

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

6 almonds quartered

1 slice white bread

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 cup raisins

1 cup milk (separated)

1/2 teaspoon pepper

3 tablespoons chutney

2 eggs

1/2 tablespoon turmeric

4 bay leaves

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Place sliced onions in a saucepan filled with a little boiling water and cook for about 5 minutes, or until they appear swollen and glassy. Remove and drain. Chop onions finely and brown slightly in hot oil. Soak bread in some milk, then squeeze bread dry. Combine onions, bread and remaining ingredients, except for 1 egg, 1/2 cup milk and bay leaves. Place the mixture in a greased baking dish (9X13). Insert bay leaves into meat in an upright position. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours if uncooked meat is used, 45 minutes if cooked meat is used. Beat remaining egg with 1/2 cup milk and pour over meat for final 1/2 hour of cooking time. Serve with cooked rice and chutney, custard or vanilla pudding for dessert.

* Recipe used with permission, www.indianfoodforever.com

Yield: 4 servings

accompanying beverage: Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay

2 cups Basmati rice

1 cup mixed vegetables (cauliflower, potato, carrot, French beans)

3 tablespoons dried fruits, cashews, raisins

2 green chilies, finely sliced

4 cloves

4 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 tsp black pepper powder

5 1/2 ounces green peas

2 teaspoons caraway seed powder

3 onions, finely sliced

1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 teaspoon red chili powder

4 tomatoes, finely chopped

1/2 cup yogurt (curd)

salt to taste

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Wash basmati rice well before cooking.

Cook rice with 3 3/4 cups water, a little salt and 2 tablespoons of dried fruit in pressure cooker, in a pan or in microwave. Cut vegetables into small thin pieces and fry each separately in oil (including peas).

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a pan and add mustard seeds, green chilies, cinnamon, caraway seed powder, cloves, and black pepper powder and stir for about a 1/2 minute. Add onions and sauté for 1 minute, or until they turn pink. Add salt and red chili powder and stir. Add tomatoes and fry until properly cooked. Put yogurt in blender and make fine, about two rotations.

Add yogurt to onion-tomatoes mix and stir well. Heat for about 10 seconds.

Add all the fried vegetables, cooked rice and mix well with very light hands so that the rice grain doesn’t break. Cook for about 3 minutes. Place on serving dish, garnished with remaining dried fruits and green coriander leaves. Serve vegetable pulao hot with yogurt and pickles.

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Penny Sackett has made a name for herself not just on three continents, but in the cosmos, too.

Too bad that the planet she helped discover doesn’t have such a catchy moniker.

“Penny” is hard to forget; OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

ON TOP

DOWN UNDER

By Managing Editor Anthony Flott

OGLE, we’ll call it for short, was discovered in 2005 by a global network of 73 astronomers from 12 countries that Sackett began assembling in the 1990s. That team, dubbed PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork), found OGLE using an innovative approach known as “microlensing”— something first predicted by Einstein and dealing with the way gravity bends light.

It is the smallest planet detected outside our own solar system, an Earth-like orb circling a star 20,000 light years away in the inner Milky Way. Three years after OGLE’s discovery, Sackett became something of a star herself, being appointed chief scientist for Australia in September 2008. She provides high-level independent advice to Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and to other government ministers on matters relating to science, technology and innovation.

A NASA artist’s depiction of what OGLE-2005-BLG390Lb might look like.

Photo: NASA

It’s a post she couldn’t have imagined while taking classes at UNO in the midto-late 1970s. But her horizons expanded, she says, thanks to physics professors who helped her realize “that it was not only possible for me to undertake doctoral study in physics, but that this could lead to a world of future careers.”

She left UNO in 1978, graduating summa cum laude and being named outstanding mathematics student and outstanding physics student.

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She next earned a master’s degree and doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Pittsburgh. She taught at Pittsburgh from 1978 through 1993 and served a year with the National Science Foundation as program director with the astronomical sciences division. She also was a research member and fellow at the University of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies. There she studied and became a world expert on dark matter, the mysterious substance scientists believe accounts for most of the mass in the universe, but which to date has been identified only by astronomical observation.

In 1995, Sackett moved to the Netherlands and became an assistant professor at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute at the University of Groningen. In 2002 she moved to Canberra, Australia, becoming director of the Australia National University (ANU) School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and of the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories.

Glen McCurtayne /Fairfaxphotos

Just six months later, wildfires destroyed the world-famous, 78-year-old observatory and its five telescopes, causing more than $10 million in damage. Sackett led the rebuilding, which included a new instrument and technology centre that will help manufacture parts for the proposed Giant Magellan Telescope in northern Chile — set to be the biggest telescope on earth.

She remained at ANU until becoming Australia’s chief scientist. She holds dual citizenship and lives in New South Wales, just outside the nation’s capital. “Quite different to the Nebraska of my youth but similarly as beautiful,” she says.

UNO Magazine Managing Editor Anthony Flott conducted a Q&A with Sackett in 2009. Excerpts follow.

In 1997, when interviewed for our “Profiles” magazine, you said the biggest challenge for students entering the “real world” was, “Forming your own personal definition of success in the face of a world shouting another.” What was the world shouting to you when you were at Omaha North High School?

In secondary school, particularly in the junior and senior years, the world, the status quo, if you like, seemed to be saying “Get a job, have a family and buy a house” — all in one package. For me, these were separate considerations, though no doubt the last two were dependent on the first.

Before attending UNO I was not intending on going to graduate school.

In fact, I was not even aware of what graduate study meant or what doors it could open.

You were inspired to study physics by a teacher. Who was that teacher and how did they inspire you?

Before being able to take a second year of any science course in my high school, one had to take a first year in all the science courses. This is how I got introduced to physics. Physics was much more than I expected it would be. It involved everything from understanding how the joints work in your body, to understanding why the stars and the planets appear to move across the sky in the way they do. And more fun, practical things such as how could you package a raw egg so it doesn’t break when you drop it. It seemed to me that physics could really help you understand any question about the world that you wanted to ask. Even then, though, I had no idea what a physicist did for a living; only that I wanted to know more about physics. Mr. Slocum was the physics teacher at North High that opened my eyes in this way, supported my continued interest and consequently altered my subsequent life enormously.

What prompted the career shift into astronomy?

Following my post-doc year, in which I focussed on biophysics, I was exposed to astronomy through my involvement in a project that was investigating the atmosphere of Saturn. To understand this, I had to do a heap of reading and learning about atmospheric chemistry, and as a result I was able to build my own computer model of Saturn’s atmosphere and test it against the

Penny Sackett UNO graduate 1978

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data. This was extraordinarily satisfying. It was also a turning point for me because it taught me to think about different ways to do science. Following this project, I pursued further research in astronomy, specifically using polar ring galaxies to study the distribution of dark matter. My research took me first to the Netherlands then back to the United States, where I was a research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, which is where Albert Einstein spent the latter half of his career. Almost everyone there was an early career researcher, which made it a very unique place to be. It was here that I moved into an area of research called microlensing, which is an idea that Einstein articulated in 1936. This phenomenon enabled us to look for planets around stars that were too dim themselves to be seen.

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climate change science effort, and how to communicate science with the younger generations. I also advise on the distribution of resources through individual programs and on investment in sustainable, productive agriculture.

The new post will take you away from research. What will you most miss?

I will certainly miss my research at Mount Stromlo, and I’m pleased that I was given the opportunity to remain as an adjunct professor. This allows me to continue to work with the students that I have been supervising and live some of my research life vicariously through them.

What was the primary reason for your move to Australian National University?

The opportunity to work in Australia at Mount Stromlo, one of the world’s best observatories with some of the world’s leading researchers was my primary reason. ANU’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics (RSAA) is Australia’s leading space research institution and consistently ranks in the global top 20 institutions in space sciences. In the latest Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators report, published by Campus Review, which lists the global top 20 institutions in space sciences, the ANU ranked 10th, topping Harvard University, Cambridge University and the University of California, Berkley. The quality of its earth sciences program is of equally high calibre, so it presented a unique opportunity to pursue planetary science.

What was the hardest day after the day that fire destroyed the Mount Stromlo facility?

My first visit to the site, seeing the destruction to the facilities and the surrounding nature.

What was the best day after the fire?

The Mount Stromlo facility rebounded remarkably well. This is due to the strength of its people and the community that is there.

People that visit now see huge changes; they also see remnants of the fire that passed through. What they may not see is the work being done behind the doors of the administration and academic offices where almost non-stop the astronomers have been making interesting discoveries and building exciting instruments even since the day of the fires.

The Chief Scientist for Australia is to provide independent advice to the government on scientific and technological issues? What advice have you been able to provide thus far?

Some of my advice to the Australian government has been around international relations in the global science world, Australia’s

Photo: Jeff Cutting Photographic Image Resource

The day we made contact with all staff to ensure their safety. All of Canberra was affected in one way or another. The second best day was the day the Commonwealth Government committed $7.3 million to the Mount Stromlo budget to rebuild our technology centre.

What did you learn in the aftermath of the fire?

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Sackett at Canberra, Australia’s, Mount Stromlo Observatory on Jan. 19, 2003, one day after fires destroyed the historic observatory.

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What are the most pressing issues facing Australia where science can make the greatest impact?

Australia faces a number of issues that are faced by the rest of the global community, including global warming, dwindling water supplies, securing energy resources for our future, national security and new innovations in the commercial sector.

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the SKA is sited, however, Australia will play a role alongside its international partners.

What research will SKA allow that currently is unaviable?

The SKA will help answer questions about the universe and probe previously unexplored parts of the universe. Using the SKA, scientists will focus on five key projects:

Can you provide examples of scientific advice ignored — to the detriment of Australia?

• Cradle of life – the search for Earth-like planets, and whether they host intelligent life;

The first that comes to mind is climate change science of the past 20 years. Climate change will have a particularly adverse affect on Australia, and until recently we haven’t listened to the bulk of the scientific evidence.

• Probing the Dark Ages — explore the first black holes and stars, and help to answer the question of what happened after the big bang and before the first stars and galaxies formed;

What goals have you established for your term?

• Strong field tests of gravity using pulsars and black holes — thereby testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity; and

I have established a number of goals, including: • Increasing the role science plays in shaping national and international policy and program directions; • Ensuring science plays its part in providing innovative solutions to the daunting challenges we face as a nation and collectively as inhabitants of our planet under increasing duress. These challenges include: • Understanding, mitigating and adapting to climate change; • Managing water resources on our dry continent; • Exploring and implementing sustainable energy generation; and • Improving health care for all Australians; and • Strengthening existing scientific linkages and forging new linkages across borders and sectors to ensure we take a unified and coordinated approach to the global challenges.

What’s been your biggest surprise about the post thus far?

The biggest surprise I have found is how willing key people are to engage on the issue of science and research. However, the most intriguing was after my address to Australia’s National Youth Science Forum. A young gentleman mentioned to me that I was the “Angelina Jolie of science”. That was certainly the most interesting and surprising description of my current post.

Why would Western Australia be a good spot for the Square Kilometre Array?* Western Australia (WA) has high quality observing conditions for radio astronomy, in particular, the extreme radio quietness of the vast open space. WA also has the landmass that can accommodate the concentration of radio antennae in the core “radio-quiet zone” as well as the peripheral antennae spread out over an area up to 3,000 kilometers from the core site. *SKA, the largest and most sensitive radio telescope ever to be built.

What are the country’s odds of landing the ska contract?

Australia is well placed to land the contract. The earliest the final decision will be made will be 2012. The country has a long history in radio astronomy, including playing a part in the Apollo 11 mission, providing television images of the moonwalk. It has the scientific, technological and infrastructural capabilities. Wherever

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• The origin and evolution of cosmic magnetism;

• Galaxy evolution, cosmology, and dark matter — this will explore how galaxies are born and how they evolve, and seek a better understanding of “dark energy” that fills the majority of the universe.

The world is shouting many things to the younger generations, and I am hoping to learn more about what motivates young women, and in fact all young people, in terms of their career choices. If I can do some of the shouting, I like to say, ‘Choose your own path, learn from your mistakes, and believe in yourself.’

Of what are you most proud, career-wise?

Certainly being Chief Scientist for Australia is a remarkable honour and responsibility. One doesn’t chart their life expecting that opportunity might be given to you. From a scientific management point of view, I found it rewarding to serve as director during the reconstruction and rebirth of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Mount Stromlo Observatories after the devastating Canberra bushfires of 2003. Scientifically, there are little projects that I worked on that produced results that I still take great delight in, even though most people wouldn’t first associate them with my finest work. As a team effort, putting together the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration with the determination, talent and expertise to make a new technique work, and to see it deliver a new planet that is one of the most earth-like planets we know — that was really a big moment.

Read this story online at www.unoalumni.org/unomag-sackett for links to mentioned projects and to other interviews with Sackett.

Further information can be found on the Chief Scientist’s website at http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au. She also can be connected at www.facebook.com/chiefscientist.

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Laurie Fulton’s new gig as U.S. Ambassador to Denmark took her out of the Beltway last year, but for a while it seemed that all of the Beltway followed.

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Photo: Omar Ingerslev

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Danish Delight

By Kalani Simpson

In September, just two months after her arrival in Copenhagen as ambassador, Fulton helped welcome a U.S. delegation that included first lady Michelle Obama and Oprah to lobby the International Olympic Committee. In December came more U.S. dignitaries, including President Barack Obama, cabinet-level officials and congressmen, as Denmark hosted the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Photo: Pamela Juhl

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Above: Ambassador Fulton introducing The First Lady to Embassy staff

Fulton was involved with meetings between President Obama and Denmark Queen Margrethe II, and between the president and Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.

Turns out ambassadorships aren’t the merely ceremonial posts they’re often stereotyped to be. Fulton, in fact, frequently puts in 12- to 14-hour days — a heavier workload than when she practiced with the high-powered Washington law firm Williams & Connolly.

Fulton doesn’t seem to mind.

“It is a delight to work for President Obama,” says the 1971 UNO graduate. “He is extremely popular in Denmark. I am so proud to be his representative.”

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Inside-Outside Fulton comes to the post with roots as deep in Denmark as they are in Washington.

Her great-grandfather served in the Danish parliament, and it was 100 years ago this year that her grandfather immigrated to the United States.

Fulton was born in Sioux Falls, S.D., but attended UNO while her husband, Tom Daschle, was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base — before a Congressional career made him a household name.

At UNO she had a double major in a foreign language (Spanish) and psychology — a good mix for a diplomat. She fondly remembers having her eyes opened by the adult nontraditional students, foreign exchange students and professors. She graduated magna cum laude (later duplicating that feat when graduating from Georgetown University Law Center in 1989).

Her political involvement began with Daschle, whom Fulton later divorced but remained close to (she later married Philip Fulton; they divorced in 1999). It was Daschle’s recommendation to President George Bush, in fact, that secured Fulton a spot on the board of directors of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by Congress.

The USIP aims to “prevent and resolve violent international conflicts, promote postconflict stability and development, and increase conflict management capacity, tools and intellectual capital worldwide.”

Fulton served on the USIP board from 2004 to 2008.

It’s the people, not the power she most misses about Washington — especially her family (which includes three daughters and grandchildren).

“My children are grown and they have jobs and families of their own. That makes it lonely,” she says. “I miss them very much.”

The Dependent Danes Fortunately, she’s on friendly soil and loves getting out and meeting the people — even if she can’t quite master the Danish accent (though most Danes speak English well).

“My heart is always warmed by their reactions,” she says.

The feeling appears to be reciprocal.

“They’re a country we can count on,” Fulton says of the Danes.

And it’s her job to make sure we can keep counting on them. Denmark has quietly long been one of America’s best friends, Fulton says. The Danes contribute NATO forces to the security and stabilization effort in Afghanistan. They are reliable partners in health research and in fighting terrorism.

Danish frogmen have completed rescue missions in the fight against pirates.

And, the country is unique among Scandinavian countries in that it is in both NATO and the European Union, making it a key ally. Also, the current NATO secretary general is the former Danish prime minister.

They are always there for us, Fulton says, but they always tell it to us straight.

At Williams & Connolly she had a national trial practice specializing in complex civil litigation, including antitrust, mass tort, white-collar criminal defense and product liability litigation. In 2004, she was named one of “Washington’s Top Lawyers” by the Washingtonian magazine.

The country also is a world leader in energy self-sufficiency. After the 1970s oil crisis, “Denmark set their path that they could not and would not rely on energy sources from countries that were unpredictable,” Fulton says. The things that the United States is just starting to consider and argue about, the Danes have done for 30 years.

President Obama nominated her to the Denmark ambassadorship in May 2009.

The senate confirmed her July 10. Nineteen days later she was in Copenhagen.

“Frankly they’re ahead of us,” Fulton says. “In the last 20 years their GNP (Gross National Product) has gone up steadily and dramatically, and their energy

Fulton and Friends: The ambassador with President Barack Obama in the Bella Center during Cop15.

(White House Photo) ; signing a treaty with Denmark Minister of Justice Brian Mikkelsen; Ambassador Fulton’s arrival in Copenhagen in 2009; with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (Photo Pamela Juhl) ; with Al Gore at the ambassador’s residence, Rydhave during COP15. (Photo Pamela Juhl).

consumption has stayed the same. It’s a different culture.”

In May, the U.S. Embassy and the Confederation of Danish Industries hosted a major “green partnership meeting” between major U.S. companies and Danish entrepreneurial companies. Fulton was there, as she seems to be everywhere: studying Denmark’s national hospital; touring a pilot biofuel refinery and production facility; signing a bilateral agreement on research cooperation.

Every day just another day on the job, learning all she can in the land of her forefathers.

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Dollars & Sense:

what can you buy for a

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Illustration by Tom Kerr

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By Tom McMahon UNO students get a real bang for their buck in the classrooms of UNO Professors Mark Wohar and Donald Baum.

Including an education in the value of a dollar.

Perhaps better than anyone else on campus, Wohar and Baum can provide a global perspective on what it means to have a strong dollar, how it is weakened, and what that means to pocketbooks.

It’s an education that shouldn’t be limited to students — especially given recent news of rising trade deficits, $12 trillion in national debt, and fears of a coming hyperinflationary crisis.

“The question is, how long can this go on?” asks Wohar, a College of Business Administration (CBA) distinguished economics professor. “Huge trade deficits accumulate foreign debt. If we don’t turn it around, countries will say the debt is too high and that they lack confidence in the dollar’s value.”

And that just might affect how many Big Macs you can buy. Or, if you happen to be dining in a Paris café, how many croissants you order.

Big Macs One way Baum illustrates the value of a dollar compared to other currencies is to apply the Big Mac

Theory of Exchange Rate — aka, “Burgernomics.”

Baum, assistant professor and chair of CBA’s department of economics, says burgernomics gets at purchasing power parity, the idea that a dollar should buy the same amount of goods and services in all countries.

“The Big Mac Index looks at prices all over the world,” says Baum, who notes that Big Macs sell in about 120 countries. “It gives a sense of what the dollar is worth at any given time. You are comparing apples to apples — or burgers to burgers.”

In July 2008, for example, a Big Mac went for $3.57 in the United States, 280 yen in Japan. Based on those prices, $1 would equal 78 yen if the currencies had parity. In actuality, $1 equaled 107 yen at that time, indicating the yen was undervalued against the dollar by 27 percent.

That was good news for Big Mac fans and others with U.S. green in their pockets because a strong U.S. dollar in relation to other currencies increases purchasing power.

Ins and Outs But that’s not good news for all Americans.

Whether a strong U.S. currency is desirable depends on who you are, Wohar says.

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Wohar in 2001 received (with co-authors) the Vernon Zimmerman Best Paper Award at the 13th Asian-Pacific Conference on International Accounting Issues.

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Baum’s global initiatives include service as a reviewer for the International Review of Economics and Finance.

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dollar domination The dollar hasn’t always been top dog. For nearly 100 years it was the British pound that led the pack.

“If you are an importer, you like a strong dollar. Not so if you are an exporter,” Wohar says. “When the dollar’s value appreciates against a foreign currency, imports from that country are cheaper and exports more expensive. It is just the opposite if the dollar is depreciating.”

“That is why a weak dollar, not a stronger one, is better for U.S. exporters,” says Wohar.

“American companies could charge less than the local competition in foreign markets, and imports to the United Sates would be more expensive.” That would make Americanmade goods more competitive at home.”

In early 2002, a U.S. tourist in Paris could have dined along the Seine for 50 euro and paid the equivalent of $44. Six years later, that 50-euro meal would cost the American in Paris $79.

What the dollar can buy also is impacted by the country’s debt, which Wohar says leads to high interest rates and causes the dollar to appreciate. “Our domestic debt is higher than ever and projected to continue,” he says.

The dollar’s power, though, has waned since the early 1970s, when some countries demanded gold for their dollars to help curb inflation. Rather than deplete all gold reserves, President Richard Nixon ended the gold backing.

The government needs to either cut spending or raise taxes to deal with the debt, Wohar says. “There is no costless solution.” Just look at Greece. “They are cutting spending and raising taxes so much that people are rioting in the streets.”

The dollar declined again in the early 1980s, then rather dramatically during the past few years.

Freddy Frenchman, on the other hand, has to spend more to purchase U.S. goods whenever the dollar strengthens against the euro.

For example, a U.S. automaker who wants to sell a $20,000 car abroad would charge 14,598 euros at today’s rates compared with 13,245 euros in November.

The impact of trade, debt and inflation A strong dollar, then, grows the country’s trade deficit, which came to $40 billion in March and overall totals about 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

President Barack Obama in his January State of the Union address set a goal of doubling exports within five years. The goal was to create 2 million jobs.

According to Wohar, a strong dollar would wreck that plan.

Every 1 percent increase in the dollar, averaged against other major currencies, reduces U.S. exports by about $20 billion annually and eliminates some 150,000 jobs, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washingtonbased nonpartisan research group.

Tuition over Time

Inflation also impacts the dollar. Baum says one condition for a strong currency is a low inflation rate relative to other countries.

Currently, he says, worldwide inflation is low.

But, he adds, there is concern among foreign investors that the United States will raise interest rates to fight inflation.

Despite these stresses on the dollar, Wohar does not see any immediate danger of it losing its prominence in the world. Factors such as inertia in currency use, the large size and relative stability of the U.S economy, and the dollar pricing of oil and other commodities help perpetuate the dollar’s role as the dominant medium for international transactions — at least for a while.

“Dollars continue to be a strong currency to hold,” he says.

What’s your dollar buy today … and yesterday? Here’s an historical look at tuition for 15 hours of undergraduate classes at UNO — actual and adjusted for inflation.

1913

Actual $30 Today’s price $659

1938 $54 $833

1963 $135 $960

1988 $675 $1,242

2013 $2,550 –

Note: 1913 tuition based on a semester, not credit hours; 1938 tuition based on $58 per 16 hours

As the U.S. economy grew, though, so did the dollar’s domination, says CBA Professor Mark Wohar. Its status as a global currency was solidified following World War II when the world’s developed countries created the Bretton Woods Agreement, which fixed the exchange rate of all foreign currencies to the dollar. All dollars were backed by gold.

But it hasn’t collapsed. Wohar says it is in the interest of most countries to prevent a collapse, since that would decrease the value of their own dollar holdings. The UNO professor says an estimated $580 million in physical U.S. currency was circulating overseas as of March 2009 and that about two-thirds of foreign reserves in developing countries are U.S. dollar assets.

“The stability of the dollar makes it an attractive currency in countries that are experiencing volatile economic and political conditions or that have histories of such risks,” Wohar says.

According to the Reinhart and Rogoff (well-known U.S. economics professors) categorization, seven countries use the dollar as their currency or have currency boards using it. China and 88 other countries set their exchange rate against the dollar.

Euros, though, are playing a greater role as international cash, Wohar says, mainly in countries bordering the euro nations. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan argued in 2007 that the euro could replace the dollar as a global currency.

Change can come quickly, though.

From 2002 to 2008, Wohar says, the dollar lost 40 percent of its value against the euro, while U.S. debt increased 60 percent. But during the credit crisis of April 2008 to March 2009, the dollar strengthened 22 percent as businesses hoarded dollars during a time of credit scarcity.

Putting a bit of bite back in the dollar.

– Tom McMahon

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point

Top 10 reasons we don’t need to worry about global climate change Robert W. Smith, Ph.D. Professor of Chemistry

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The greenhouse effect is a good thing. Greenhouse gases “trap” infrared radiation near the earth’s surface and thereby make the surface warmer than it would be otherwise. Without the greenhouse effect, the earth’s surface would be, on average, 59 degrees Fahrenheit colder than it actually is. Imagine a summer in Omaha where the average high temperature is 30 degrees!

Carbon dioxide is a minor contributor to the greenhouse effect. Water vapor in the air and water droplets in clouds account for 90 percent to 95 percent of the greenhouse effect. Water vapor constitutes roughly 1 percent to 4 percent by volume (depending on the temperature and relative humidity) of the lower atmosphere, compared to 0.039 percent for carbon dioxide.

The concentration of gases and their absorption of radiation are related by a logarithmic function. In simple terms, this means that concentration would have to increase by a factor of 10 to double absorption.

Global temperature changes are cyclical. Studies of ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland and sediment cores from the mid-Atlantic show a roughly 1,500-year temperature cycle during the past 2.5 million years. For example, there was a cold period known as the Little Ice Age with a low-temperature point about the year 1700. Before that, the Medieval Warm Period had temperatures that peaked about the year 1100.

The current warming rate is the same before as after the Industrial Revolution. Global temperatures are increasing at about 1.4 degrees per century. This rate has been pretty constant for 300 years, meaning it has been unaffected by the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

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Temperatures were higher during previous warm periods than today. The Medieval Warm Period, for example, was 1 to 2 degrees warmer than today and the Roman Warm Period (which peaked about the year 500 B.C.) was warmer still.

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Temperature cycles are probably driven by solar cycles. The Little Ice Age, for example, corresponded to a time of extended solar inactivity known as the Maunder Minimum. It is reasonable to suppose that regular solar cycles account for regular terrestrial cycles.

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Climate modelers do not accurately account for all climate factors. Alarmist modelers all make the same assumption: increasing carbon dioxide levels increase temperatures, which increase water vapor (humidity), which increase temperatures even more. In other words, they assume a positive feedback loop. They do not account accurately, however, for sunspots, solar wind, cosmic radiation, cloud formation, and the earth’s reflectivity (or albedo).

For example, climate modelers cannot explain the decrease in temperatures from 1940 to 1980. Carbon dioxide during this period steadily increased, but global surface temperatures decreased! If modelers cannot accurately account for the past, why should we believe their predictions for the future?

Polar bears are doing well. In the late 1970s, there were an estimated 5,000 polar bears worldwide. In 2005, their population was 22,000 to 28,000. That is a five-fold increase in just 30 years!

A new ice age is coming. There have been more than a dozen ice ages in the last 2.5 million years, each of which lasted about 100,000 years. Between ice ages are warm interglacial periods, which last 6,000 to 10,000 years. The current interglacial period (known as the Holocene Epoch) has already lasted 10,000 years. When massive glaciers are grinding the northern cities of our descendents, I doubt they will be worried about global warming.

what’s your take?

What’s your position on global climate change? Send us a Letter to the Editor at www.unoalumni.org/unomag-lettertotheeditor

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counter point

Top 10 reasons we need to worry about global climate change Dr. Bruce E. Johansen Kayser Professor, School of Communication

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Thermal inertia: Today’s fossil fuel consumption does not turn to heat tomorrow; through thermal inertia, it takes about 50 years in the atmosphere and 150 to 200 years in the oceans. Thus, we, today, are facing the results of fossil fuel emissions from roughly 1960. The amount of fossil fuel burned per year has risen 300 per cent since then.

Climate change is cumulative. Many of the feedbacks that provoke rising temperatures tend to accelerate over time, compounding each other. For example, rising emissions from human sources provokes melting permafrost, which adds even more carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere. Melting ice makes surfaces darker, which absorbs more heat.

Global warming is most intense where most people don’t see it, such as in the Arctic, and on the rims of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which also house much of the world’s frozen water. Warmer winters in the Arctic provide less cold weather at lower latitudes. As much as we may rue cold snaps in winter, they serve a natural purpose. In the U.S. West, Alaska, and British Columbia, warmer winters have played a role in insect infestations that are killing large areas of evergreen trees.

Some skeptics argue that rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases don’t matter. At 180 parts per million (ppm) CO2, the earth has had an ice age for the last 800,000 years; at 280 ppm, it has had an interglacial, such as today. The carbon-dioxide level is now above 380, and rising. Appreciating the effects of thermal inertia (see No. 1), one can see why average temperatures probably will be much higher 50 to 100 years.

Rising carbon-dioxide levels cause problems other than warmth, most of them out of human sight. For example, rising CO2 makes the oceans more acidic, imperiling anything in the ocean with a shell. Rising acidity in the oceans also plays a role in declining fertility of plankton, the base of the aquatic food chain.

Beware “clean coal,” which is an oxymoron, at least in our time. All schemes to capture or sequester greenhouse gases from coal are very expensive in energy and money, so much so that they make alternative fuels look like a bargain.

Human shortsightedness. Snow today, ice age tomorrow, sing some of the skeptics, ignoring the difference between weather and climate. Weather is the story; climate is the plot. While weather varies, there is an underlying trend in temperature, and it is rising.

Mountain glaciers are the “water towers” of many cities: in South America (Peru, Bolivia, Chile), Asia (parts of India and China) and, yes, even our own Missouri River.

When mountain glaciers melt, drought intensifies.

Polar bears feed from the ice, so no ice means no bears, at least not as we have known them. While some skeptics (such as Bjorn Lomborg) have written that polar bears will adapt to climate change and get with the program, do we really want them raiding garbage dumps and mugging tourists because they can’t get ringed seals?

The hydrological cycle speeds up as temperatures warm, causing droughts and deluges to intensify, both of which pose problems for agriculture, Nebraska’s largest industry.

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SIGHTS & SOUNDS

sights Scenes on and off campus February 5

Selling Out The promotion worked — UNO hyped the hockey game as “Sell Out Ohio State,” and 13,417 fans, the largest crowd in UNO hockey history, saw the Mavs tie the Buckeyes 5-5 at Qwest Center Omaha. UNO finished its season 20-16-6.

March 13 –20

Service in Spring UNO students were out in force again during the eighth annual Seven Days of Service that took place during spring break. Volunteers donated time and talent to Habitat for Humanity in Omaha and Council Bluffs, the Salvation Army, Lauritzen Gardens (left), Catholic Charities, Turning Point and the Bellevue Little Theater.

March 12–13

A Campus of Champions UNO served up some home cookin’ in March while hosting 160 wrestlers from 39 schools at the 2010 NCAA Division II Wrestling Championships. The Mavs won the school’s second straight national championship and fifth in the past seven years.

The run was led by heavyweight Elija Madison, the second freshman in school history to win an individual title.

Photos: Mike Bell, Gateway

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Photo: Jodi Penn, Gateway

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April

Pies, Prison, Pancakes and Plants UNO’s Theta Chi fraternity members were served whipped cream on a plate during a fundraiser for suicide prevention. For the sisters of Alpha Xi Delta sorority members, a fundraiser for Child Autism meant waiting on $25 bail each. There were happier faces later in the month during the student government-sponsored “Pancake Palooza,” the first 500 students receiving flapjacks from the Pancake Man. UNO’s Maverick Productions had more freebies in April — 400 plants passed out as part of Earth Day celebrations.

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SIGHTS & SOUNDS

April 17

Walkabout

More than 1,000 walkers turned out for the 25th UNO Women’s Walk presented by Diet Pepsi, helping raise more than $267,000 for student-athletes on the eight women’s teams.

That pushed the event to more than $4 million raised since its start in 1986.

Pictures by Tim Fitzgerald, University Relations, unless otherwise credited

Heard on and off campus

sounds

On homelessness

About Mark Twain

In a community, how are they going to organize themselves to solve these larger problems, the poverty problems that are impacting these folks and then all the inequalities in our society? It gets very large, very messy and very complicated quickly, so hopefully if I can help you today it will be to try and sort out some of these things.

Dennis Culhane, professor of social policy, psychology and policy research and evaluation at the University of Pennsylvania.

He spoke on The Dynamics of Homelessness during the UNO School of Social Work’s annual Gandhi Symposium and Award Luncheon. Reported in April 20 UNO Gateway

His literature has lasted so long because there is still something of the child in you that was first attracted to Mark Twain, and that hold doesn’t loosen its grip. But he is a different writer when you meet him as an adult.

Michael Shelden, UNO alum (’73) and Mark Twain biographer He spoke as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Centennial Speaker Series. Reported in March 30 UNO Gateway

Fecklessness at the CIA

Blais among the best I think Dean [Blais] is one of the best coaches in the game. I put him in the same category with a Herb Brooks or a Jack Parker at Boston University.

There are certain coaches that are born to coach.

They have a passion to coach and teach, and clearly Dean has that.

Mike Eruzione, captain of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team that won the gold medal Keynote speaker of A Night with the Mavs on March 31. Reported in April 9 UNO Gateway.

Two new elements joined the accountability process overseeing the CIA after Sept. 11, 2001: a spate of books from former agency officers criticizing the CIA for fecklessness, not recklessness; and media campaigns by former directors to defend their and the agency’s record.

Clayton D. Laurie, UNO grad (‘82) and senior historian with the history staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA He spoke April 5 at the College of Arts and Sciences Centennial Speaker Series on The CIA and Accountability. Reported by UNO History Professor Oliver Pollak.

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BOOKMARKS

Bicycle tours and devil’s gates Alumnae perspectives on Japanese life One is an executive director in the legal and compliance division at Morgan Stanley’s offices in Tokyo. The other is a stay-at-home mother in the small fishing town of Yaizu, Japan.

capital city and the death of President Mohammed Daoud and many of his followers.

Both are Nebraskan expatriates, UNO alumnae and recently published authors.

Vicki Beyer, 51, is the Tokyo professional recently named to the board of governors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan. She wrote: 10 Temples on 2 Wheels, a guidebook of day tours of Kamakura, Japan. The city is home to the second tallest bronze Buddha statue in the country, one of Amida Buddha.

Thersa Matsuura, 42, lives with her husband and 13-year-old son about two-and-a-half hours outside Tokyo in Shizouka Prefecture.

She wrote A Robe of Feathers and Other Stories, an English-language collection of 17 stories based on traditional Japanese folk stories and mythology.

Both graduated from UNO with degrees in international studies — Beyer in 1980 and Matsuura in 1996. Both also found their way to Japan through UNO, studied language and met their future husbands abroad.

Beyer’s first experience overseas was participating in Project Afghanistan Nebraska, a program that exchanged six Afghan students and six UNO students. They traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan, shortly after the 1978 coup that saw a bloodbath in the

Vicki Beyer UNO graduate, 1980

“When we arrived in Kabul, there were burned-out tanks in the street and soldiers carrying AK-74s — probably not unlike it is today in that regard,” Beyer says.

Beyer has been to 40 other countries since Afghanistan, including every Asian country except Bhutan. She traveled to Japan after graduation to teach English for two years at a Japanese girl’s high school, after six-months of intensive language instruction.

All that traveling made Beyer a connoisseur of travel books. She decided to write her own, 10 Temples on 2 Wheels, to share a bicycle tour of the former Japanese capital of Kamakura she developed while teaching law.

“We had worked out a circle course you could do to see what we — after our many explorations of Kamakura — had decided were the best temples to see in a course. It worked out in a day and was actually 10 temples,” Beyer says. “After a while, people would say, ‘Gosh, you should really write this down into a book.’”

Following a different path, Matsuura was interested in Asian cultures during her studies at UNO, which included courses

Theresa Matsuura UNO graduate, 1996

in martial arts, Eastern philosophy and Chinese language.

After a summer trip to China, Matsuura was accepted into a study-abroad program to study Japanese language and culture at one of UNO’s sister institutions, Shizuoka University. She met her future husband while studying there.

After getting married, Matsuura and her husband went to live with her parents-inlaw, who lived in a fishing village and were extremely superstitious. Her mother-in-law told her a lot of folk stories and myths, which she later used as the basis for her stories.

One of the stories from A Robe of Feathers — My Devil’s Gate — is based on the superstitions Matsuura encountered after building a new house.

“There’s actually a direction called a devil’s gate and you’re not allowed to put a door there or a stove or a bathroom, because it’s where the devils could come into your home,” Matsuura says. “I ended up having to go to a Shinto priestess to get consulted and get special amulets to ward off the evil because we had built the house wrong. This sort of stuff goes on all the time.”

Matsuura recently has been working on editing a children’s book and branching out to writing a young adult novel. Beyer has developed three new tours for 10 Temples on 2 Wheels, which she hopes to include in an expanded bilingual version.

– Scott Stewart, University Relations

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BOOKMARKS Author Harl Dalstrom, professor emeritus of history and class of 1958, and

WE WERE NOT WORRIED AT DINNERTIME

October 10, 1938

was Canada’s Thanksgiving Day, but that warm and windy Monday brought the horror of forest fire to the Ontario-Minnesota Rainy border. Seventeen people in Dance Township, Ontario, lost their lives as did one man in International Falls, Minnesota. In addition to telling a story of disaster and near disaster, the authors examine what life was like for settlers on one of North America’s last frontiers.

KAY CALAME DALSTROM is retired from the Foreign Language department at UNO. She has co-authored articles with Harl about dance bands and dancing in Nebraska and the Dakotas and on the 1948-1949 blizzards that wrought havoc over a large area of the plains.

Photo of present-day Dance Township

HARL A. DALSTROM AND KAY CALAME DALSTROM

HARL A. DALSTROM is rofessor Emeritus of History at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. (UNO) He has written two books and has authored or co-authored articles about the Great Plains region. He is also co-author with Lawrence H. Larsen, Barbara J. Cottrell and Kay Dalstrom of Upstream Metropolis: An Urban Biography of Omaha and Council Bluffs. Harl has spent summers at Longbow Lake, near Kenora, Ontario since 1966.

WE WERE NOT WORRIED AT DINNERTIME

THE OCTOBER 1938 FOREST FIRES AND THE LAST FRONTIER IN THE RAINY RIVER - LAKE OF THE WOODS BORDERLAND

Bar Code

Kay Dalstrom, class of 1964

Book We Were Not Worried At Dinner Time: The October 1938 Forest Fires and the Last Frontier in the Rainy River – Lake of the Woods Borderland,” Rainy River District Women’s Institute Museum.

Synopsis Two of the authors of Upstream Metropolis examine the history of the October 1938 forest fires at Minnesota-Ontario borderland near Rainy River and Lake of the Woods, in which 18 people lost their lives – including 12 from one family.

Author Karen Falconer Al-Hindi, professor of geography and women’s studies and director of women’s studies (with Pamela Moss) Book Feminisms in Geography: Rethinking Space, Place, and Knowledge, Rowman and Littlefield, 286 pages.

Synopsis A textbook that discusses what feminist geography is and who feminist geographers are through a mix of original content and collected selections in a one-of-a-kind anthology.

Know of a recently published book you’d like to see featured in Bookmarks? Tell us about it at www.unoalumni.org/bookmarkssubmit.

campus copies alumni authors Biology

Concepts

A Framework to Deepen Student Understanding This well-researched book provides a valuable instructional framework for high school biology teachers as they tackle particularly challenging concepts in their classrooms. The author counsels educators first to identify students’ prior conceptions, especially misconceptions, related to the concept being taught, then to select teaching strategies that best dispel the misunderstandings and promote the greatest student learning.

The book is not a prescribed set of lessons plans. Rather it presents a framework for lesson planning, shares appropriate approaches for developing student understanding, and provides opportunities to reflect on and apply those approaches to specific hard-to-teach topics. The five hard-to-teach concepts are meiosis, photosynthesis, natural selection, proteins and genes, and environmental systems and human impact. More than 300 teacher resources are listed.

Hard-to-Teach Biology Concepts: A Framework to Deepen Student Understanding

Hard-to-Teach

Hard-to-Teach

Biology

Concepts

A Framework to Deepen Student Understanding

Koba Tweed

PB238X ISBN: 978-1-93353-141-0

Grades 9–12

By Susan Koba with Anne Tweed

Author Stacy Danielle

Stephens class of 1996 Book The Bohemian Girl

and Other Stories, lulu.com, 238 pages; The Nothing That Is and Other Stories, lulu.com, 228 pages.

Synopsis Two new collections

of previously unpublished short stories written during the last six years. Stephen’s work is a fusion of traditional prose coupled with untraditional characters and situations.

Author Don Clifford Class of 1996 Book Ben Solomon: A Bastard Prince Denied His Throne, Outskirts Press, 340 pages.

Synopsis: An historical

novel about an accident of birth preventing Abel, the first son of King Solomon, from inheriting the throne of David. Abel must fight to reclaim his birthright while exploring ancient Bedouin and Phoenician cultures.

Author Leslie Schenkman Kaplan Class of 1974 (with Bill Owings)

author Susan B.

Jinings Koba Class of 1977 (with Anne Tweed)

Book American Education: Building a Common Foundation, Wadsworth Publishing, 592 pages

Book Hard-to-Teach Biology Concepts: A Framework to Deepen Student Understanding, National Science Teachers Association Press, 350 pages.

Synopsis A textbook for people planning to enter the teaching profession aimed at connecting foundations topics with relevant contemporary educational issues. The text explains the teaching profession, as well as its historical, philosophical, political, legal, economic, curricular and instructional foundations.

Synopsis An instructional framework to help highschool biology teachers with five challenging concepts: meiosis, proteins and genes, photosynthesis, natural selection and environmental systems and human impact.

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just for you

Picture-perfect advice for your next vacation

By Tim Fitzgerald If you’ve done any kind of photography over the years — travel, sports or just family pictures — chances are you’ve used Kodachrome slide film to record your memories.

Those days are over.

Last year, Kodak announced it was discontinuing the film, introduced in 1936. When I travel this summer to Denmark, Germany and Sweden, I’ll shoot the last rolls of Kodachrome I’ve had zip-locked away in my freezer for the past few years.

I enjoy shooting with slides. There’s a joy that comes from holding those transparencies to a light or projecting them onto a screen. (You remember slide projectors, don’t you?)

Kodachrome’s end is just one of the numerous changes digital technology has brought to photography. I went digital about eight years ago and today shoot with a Canon EOS 50D. The quality and new camera models seem to improve daily. For the most part, they’ve made it easier to take photographs.

But technology can’t do it all.

I’ve been taking photographs professionally for four decades, and I’m frequently learning something new.

The lessons began in 1970 when I started working at UNO for what now is University Relations. I’ve also picked up handy practices during annual summer vacations, including seven trips overseas. The latter began in 1973 with a university-sponsored trip to the USSR (I guess photography isn’t the only thing to change).

Perhaps you’re planning your own summer vacation, home or abroad. If so, here are a few photography tips — Just For You.

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin • RESEARCH

I often plan my vacations — in the United States and overseas — based on sights and scenes that are great to photograph. That means researching my destinations in advance by using travel guides, photo magazines and the Internet. Once on site, I look at local postcards and souvenir books to help select other shots.

• PACKING

Make a packing list before you leave.

However, pack unexposed or exposed film in your carry-on luggage to avoid the heavier x-rays used on checked baggage.

• TESTING 1-2-3

Test your camera before you leave.

• CHARGING

If your camera uses rechargeable batteries and you’re traveling overseas, chances are you’ll need an electrical converter or plug converter to match the proper voltage (see www.voltagevalet.com for a country guide).

• STORING MEMORIES

Lugging around a laptop computer to store your digital images gets cumbersome. Consider investing in portable storage devices or memory cards — their prices have dropped dramatically. Make sure, though, that the card works in your particular camera.

• LENSES AND LEGS

To avoid carrying multiple lenses, I’ve invested in an 18-200 mm “travel” lens that gives me wide-angle and telephoto capabilities. I’ve also added a lightweight travel tripod.

• RISING EARLY

The early morning hours and the two to three hours before sunset give your photographs the best color. But artificially lighted sites at night also can produce dramatic images — just consider using a tripod to help avoid blurring. If you’re using a digital

camera and are away from artificial lights, try some long-exposure shots of the stars.

• MUSEUM MANNERS

Ask museums if they permit photography or flash photography. You might have to purchase a special photo pass. Also, some countries since 9/11 have put restrictions on photographing public buildings. Check beforehand.

• SETTING THE STAGE

Your digital camera may give you options for image capture. I adjust my camera settings to take regular, portrait, black-and-white and landscape photos (the last offers more color saturation).

• LOOK DEEPER

Study your travel scenes for bright colors, reflections and interesting patterns of shadow and light.

• MOVE AROUND

Move around your site and shoot it from a variety of angles. Look for small details that can make a big difference.

• END-OF-DAY EDITING

At the end of a day of shooting, edit the images in your camera — keep what you want and get rid of the rest.

• MAKE GOOD PHOTOS GREAT

If you have a computer program such as Photoshop, use it to crop, sharpen or adjust the color, brightness and contrast of your images.

• EXPERTS

A number of websites offer great examples and ideas for photography. There are great monthly tutorials, for instance, at Daveblackphotography.com.

Other favorites Nikonworld.com, NationalGeographic.com, Arthurmeyerson.com, Jimrichardsonphotography.com and Jimbrandenburg.com.

Tim Fitzgerald has been photographing the people and places of UNO since 1970. In 1990 he received the Chancellor’s Medal in honor of significant contributions to the university.

Online: Photos by Fitz. To see a slideshow of Fitzgerald’s favorite international pictures he’s taken, visit www.unoalumni.org/unomag-photosbyfitz Morgine Lake, Banff National Park, Canada

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CLASS NOTES

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NOTES

CLASS 59

Send your classnotes to www.unoalumni.org/classnotes DALE WOLF (BA) lives in Omaha. He and his wife, Clara, recently celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary. “It has been a glorious road, some of it uphill and some of it downhill, some sharp curves, but mostly on straight and level.”

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LARRY ALLAN BOERSMA (BA; MS, 1955)

lives in Sarasota, Fla., and is a widely published wildlife photographer. Defenders of Wildlife used several of his photographs of gray wolves for a fundraising appeal, one for a poster. That same image will be used as the package face of “Save the Wolves” coffee, marketed nationally by an artisan roaster in California. Also, two of his DVDs, “Keep Animals in our Lives!” and “Little Lost Mountain Lion,” will be used by the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz., for educational outreach. He recently was elected to the Southwest Florida Council of the Boy Scouts zreservewildlife@ goprimecast.com

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JOSEPH J. VANCE (BA)

lives in Ralston, Neb., and has just retired. He was admitted to the Nebraska Bar Association in 1960.

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DAVID L. BELDEN (BGS)

last November received an honorary membership in ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers). Belden is executive director of the United Engineering Foundation (Mount Vernon, Va.). He was recognized for outstanding accomplishments as a major leader in the worldwide engineering association community.

Belden in 2002 became executive

director of the United Engineering Foundation, an organization founded in 1904 with a grant from Andrew Carnegie. Prior to that Belden for 15 years was executive director at ASME, a 400-person operation with 10 offices throughout the United States. From 1976 to 1987 Belden was executive director and a member of the board of trustees of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), then a 43,000-member technical society headquartered in Atlanta. Belden retired from the U.S. Air Force as a colonel in 1976 after a 22-year career with numerous decorations. He earned a master’s degree in industrial engineering (1963) and a Ph.D. (1969) from Stanford University.

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CAROLYN WEBER (BA)

in January began a three-year stint as a Presbyterian USA missionary in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. There she teaches English and serves as a library advisor and a curriculum specialist at Mekane Yesus Theological Seminary for the Ethiopian Evangelical Church. Weber had spent 20 years in parish ministry in Illinois and Nebraska. In 2008 she spent a month as a missionary in Liberia, leading a Sacred Journey of Healing retreat for 150 Liberians suffering as a result of the country’s 14 years of civil war. She provides updates on her missionary work at www.pcusa.org/ missionconnections/profiles/weberc. carolyn.weber.joyfl66@gmail.com

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KENNETH KOEHLER (BGS) was featured in the

Feb. 21 Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil when the Council Bluffs Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution honored him with its Community Service Award. Koehler, an American Red Cross disaster response volunteer, since 1991 has served at 42 disaster scenes in 23 states and Puerto Rico. That’s taken

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Bringing smiles to Rwanda 74

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On a 2006 safari to find the gorillas of Rwanda, Dr. Richard T. Reckmeyer

instead found a new mission — caring for the people of that impoverished and genocide-ravished country.

A retired Phoenix dentist and UNO MBA graduate, Reckmeyer this June is making his fifth trip to Rwanda, where he is conducting a three-week program to teach nurses and community health workers how to deliver basic dental services.

“Because the entire health infrastructure was destroyed during the 1994 genocide, when 1 million people were killed in 100 days, the supply is scarce and the demand is astronomical for rural oral health care,” Reckmeyer says.

He plans to work with public schools and Home Based Management Care, provided by the government. The first training was to be offered at the Ruhengeri Hospital in the Musanze District of the Northern Province. It will cover health histories, oral examinations, dental anatomy of baby and permanent teeth, sterilization, prevention, cleaning techniques with oral hygiene instruction, injections, and simple extractions.

Reckmeyer’s five-year goal is to have all 750 nurses trained in 375 districts. But the Phoenix dentist, who retired in 2001 because of disability after three rotator cuff surgeries in one year, can’t do it alone.

He is seeking help from volunteer dentists, hygienists and students, and donations of money, instruments and supplies (especially scalers, curettes, elevators and forceps).

To help, contact Reckmeyer at (623) 979-7555 or richard.reckmeyer@cox.net.

Learn more at Rural Rwanda Dental, www.rrdental.org Story modified from article originally published in Cornhusker Impressions, UNMC College of Dentistry.

him away from his family in Treynor, Iowa, for a total of 88 weeks. He has helped after the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, tornados in Parkersburg, Iowa, and Oklahoma City, earthquakes in southern California, floods in North Dakota, Hawaii, Texas and Louisiana, and terrorists on Sept. 11. An accountant who retired from Union Pacific Railroad in 1990, Koehler has tracked Red Cross funds at the disasters where he has helped. He also served as acting mayor of Treynor. His daughter, SHEILA (KOEHLER) LEWIS, is a 1992 UNO graduate.

ALBERT HODAPP (MA) retired in

June 2009 after working as a school psychologist since 1973. He will continue to teach social psychology at

Buena Vista University. He and his wife, fellow UNO grad JOAN HODAPP (MS, 1974) celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary this August. In September 2009 he presented a paper, “Books, Television, and Homework” at the Kentucky Association of Psychology in the Schools conference in Louisville, Ky.

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JOHN E. BIRCHER III (BGS) is national director of

public relations for the Military Order of the Purple Heart. He has held a number of elected positions for the organization, formed in 1932. Composed exclusively of Purple Heart recipients, it is the only veterans service organization comprised strictly of combat veterans. Bircher had a 30-year military career. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1959 and retired in

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CLASS NOTES 1988 as a colonel. He was a military intelligence officer and Middle East foreign area specialist for most of his career and served in Vietnam with special forces in 1969-1970, when he was awarded the Purple Heart. He has served as a military attaché in Iran, Lebanon and Morocco and speaks both Arabic and French fluently. He is a graduate of the National War College and holds a master’s degree in international relations. He has received numerous U.S. and foreign awards and decorations. Bircher also worked in Washington, D.C., as president of Neill and Company, Inc., a lobbying and public affairs company that specialized in Middle East business and politics. He and his wife, Carol, reside in Lady Lake, Fla. john@bircher.us

FRED GALATA (BA) in April

finished third among competitors age 55-59 at USA Triathlon’s Duathlon Nationals in Richmond, Va. He was 141st overall, competing in a 10k run, 40k bike and 5k run. He won the same event in 2009. Last year he also: won gold in cycling the National Senior Olympic Games in San Francisco; placed eighth in the World Duathlon Championships in North Carolina; and won the gold medal in 40k cycling and the overall championship jersey at the World Senior Games in Utah. Galata lives in Omaha. marathontel2@qwestoffice.net

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REBECCA FAHRLANDER (MA) is an

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TIMOTHY RASINSKI (BS; MS, 1979) recently was

adjunct professor at UNO. She also writes a column on travel, “Safari Journal,” for the Bellevue Leader newspaper. She lives in Bellevue.

elected into the International Reading Hall of Fame for his career achievements and contributions to literacy and literacy education worldwide. He is a professor of literacy education at Kent State University.

Through his research into reading fluency and the role of singing in learning he has developed a program called Sing Read Learn (www. singreadlearn.com). Each song, taken

from American history and culture, is presented to students with accompanying music. Students practice each song by reading/ singing it several times. This is followed by specific activities, from each song, for teaching word recognition, vocabulary, and comprehension. trasinsk@kent.edu

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ANDREA CLAUSON KING (BM) has returned to

Omaha and now teaches in Woodbine, Iowa. She is pursuing a master’s degree at UNO. a_king81@yahoo.com

Helping in Haiti On Jan. 12, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the city of Port au Prince, Haiti, leaving at least 230,000 dead, 200,000 injured and 1 million homeless. The aftermath overwhelmed the third-world country’s government.

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Massive aid poured into Haiti from many countries, including the United States. For UNO graduate James Temme (’84), that took the grim form of helping recover and identify the remains of U.S. citizens during two weeks in April.

A current member of the UNO Alumni Association Board of Directors, Temme is an associate director and professor with the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Division of Radiation Science Technology Education. He was in Haiti as part of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT), a unit of the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS).

DMORT usually is assigned to disaster events in the United States. This was its first assignment in a foreign country.

Temme worked as a radiographer (x-ray technologist) alongside an interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, forensic pathologists, fingerprint experts and medical legal investigators. His specific responsibilities included radiographing victim remains and looking for joint replacement prostheses and other surgical implants. Such devices typically have a serial number that can be used to identify a victim.

Temme described some of the challenges facing the team, established at the Port au Prince airport 100 yards from the runway.

“The noise from the incoming supply planes, helicopters and generators was loud and constant,” he says. “The team slept on army cots in tents with mosquito nets and lots of repellent. The temperature was in the 90s each day. We drank at least 15 bottles (16 oz) of water daily. Military rations called Meals Ready to Eat (MRE’s) were the only food the team ate.

“The hardships for the Haitian people are endless: there is extreme poverty everywhere, lack of food and safe water, no sewer system and the need of more medical help. I am glad to be a citizen of the USA.”

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PATRICK STIBBS (BA)

received four 2009 Nebraska Broadcasters Association awards for outstanding achievement.

Stibbs swept the radio commercial category, taking home Gold Awards for service to children (Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis), public service (Arthritis Foundation), best 30-second commercial (Fatburger), and best 60-second commercial (Burger King). Hear the award winning commercials at www.onthespotradio. com. Stibbs owns On the SPOT Productions. He and his wife, fellow UNO graduate MONICA MEISENBACH (1984) have been married 23 years and have three children: Chris, 16; Kathleen, 14; and Nora, 11. Patrick@onthespotradio.com DOUGLAS J. SMITH (MBE) was

appointed to the board of directors with Pioneer Behavioral Health, a leading provider of inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services. He retired as assistant vice president of labor relations for Union Pacific Railroad.

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GAIL DEBOER (BSBA)

received the 2009 Woman of the Year Award from the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce. DeBoer is president of SAC Federal Credit Union, responsible for all areas of a $401 million financial institution, including a staff of 200 people with 15 locations in the Omaha metro area.

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NAGARAJ V. MYLANDLA (MBA) is founder and

managing director of Financial Software and Systems (FSS), headquartered in Chennai, India. FSS is a global provider of electronic payment and transaction processing solutions and services for the banking and financial services industry. It was established in 1991. It has $55 million in revenue and 1,200 employees with offices in Mumbai, India, New Jersey, London, Dubai, Singapore and Melbourne. Mylandla

previously worked closely with the Indian banking industry, for Omaha’s First Data Corporation and for ACI Worldwide. He moved back to India in July 1989. nagarajm@fss.co.in TUGBA KALAFATOGLU (BA) owns Tugba

Kalafatoglu & Associates, a global management and public affairs consulting firm based in Istanbul, Turkey, and providing strategic public relations, government relations, communication, marketing and lobbying services (tugbakalafatoglu.com). The firm’s campaign, “Vote Women in Politics,” won a gold 2010 Pollie for public affairs.

Pollies are promoted as the “Oscars of political advertising” and are sponsored by the American Association of Political Consultants based in Washington, D.C. Kalafatoglu founded “Vote Women in Politics” (votewomeninpolitics.com), a non-partisan organization dedicated to helping women build the skills and infrastructure they need to become more effective leaders in the political world. tugba@tugbakalafatoglu.com

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WILL RASGORSHEK (BGS, BSBA) is a major with

the U.S. Marines and assistant commander of the Marine Corps Aviation Association McCutcheon Squadron in Jacksonville, N.C. He returned home in March for the Omaha premier of a new documentary, “America’s Marine Aviators,” produced

by Omaha film director Dana Altman and former KFAB talk show host Jeff Bolton. The pair traveled around the world during a six-year period, following Marine pilots, aircrews and their families while they served their country in peacetime and in combat. The MCAA McCutcheon Squadron is using the film to help raise funds for its efforts to build the first Marine Aviation Memorial Tower. The tower will honor all of those who have served in Marine Aviation for the past 98 years. “Our goal is to honor the men and women of Marine Aviation who have paid the ultimate sacrifice while serving their country,” Rasgorshek

says. “I served in Iraq for 18 months and met many great Marines that never made it home.” Photos and information about the documentary can be seen at www.americasmarineaviators.com.

Information about the McCutcheon Squadron can be seen at http://web. me.com/rasgorshekwa/McCutcheon_ Squadron. Rasgorshek has been in the Marines since he was 18, first as a member of the Commandant’s Own, the U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps. mccutcheonsquadron@gmail.com

DAN MORRIS (BA) lives in Nashville, Tenn., and writes: “I’ve been an Internet marketer for some time but have switched from Web site and affiliate marketing to local business marketing. Our sole focus now is teaching small businesses how to better use the Internet as a tool. Our goal is to not only dominate the search results for relevant keywords, but to do so with vehicles that build credibility and trust and ultimately lead the customer to the company’s Web site or front door. We are based in Nashville, but work with small companies nationwide.”

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dan@danmorrismarketing.com

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SUZANNE L. SCHMIDT (BSW) lives in Fremont,

Neb., and married Dave Jensen in 2009. She has eight grandchildren and one greatgranddaughter.

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NICHOLAS MINER (BSBA) writes that he and

his wife, Tiffany, had their first child, Jacob Lee Miner, on Feb. 20. “Mother & son are doing great!” nminer@ccim.net CHRIS MILLER (BA) lives in Tampa, Fla., and writes: “I am now pursuing my MBA with a concentration in entrepreneurship at the University of Tampa. My real estate business (deltarep.com) is still ticking along in Omaha. This year we had our first private equity offering and raised $250,000 to purchase seven to eight residential properties to provide housing to UNO, UNMC and Creighton students,

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as well as to young professionals looking for a nicer, more affordable place to live in midtown/downtown Omaha.” chris.miller@deltarep.com CASSY LOSEKE (BS) lives in Washington, D.C., and is marketing support manager for the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (http:// atlasnetwork.org), a nonprofit think tank. “In addition to creating marketing materials, I work with the fundraising/ development team.”

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cassy.loseke@gmail.com

AARON LUNEKE (BSBA) writes: “Hey there! Life is definitely very good! I am with Werner Enterprises (in Omaha) with their finance department.

Outside of work, I serve on the board of the Omaha Jaycees and as of December ’09 I became a ‘Big’ with Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Midlands. Incredibly rewarding experiences and memories serving as a volunteer. I strongly encourage anyone with a few extra hours per week to consider it!” aaronluneke2002@msn.com

SHEENA KENNEDY (BA) this

May completed her Master of Arts in educational administration with a specialization in student affairs from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. sheenamariek@gmail.com

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KILEY CLEMENS (BA)

lives in Omaha and is an account representative with Union Pacific Railroad’s Agricultural Products. kileymcgovern@gmail.com

JENNIFER TOEPFER (BGS) lives in Bakersfield, Calif., and writes that she is “Toepfer Household CEO. Proud parent of 2-year-old Lizzy and 7-monthold Alex.” loverlyflower@hotmail.com LAURA KOONCE (BS) lives in Yap, Micronesia, a small island in the Pacific (near Guam). She writes, “I will be living here until late 2011 as I am working as a volunteer with the Peace Corps. I am currently working as an elementary school teacher and a community developer. Kam Magar and all the best.” lakoonce@gmail.com

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CLASS NOTES KRISTEN PATTERSON (BSBA) , is a financial representative with Mutual of Omaha. kristen.patterson@mutualofomaha.com

FACULTY NOTES JAMES A. THORSON is completing

his work at UNO on June 30 and will move back to his hometown, Chicago, so he and his wife can be near their children and grandchildren. He had served UNO’s department of gerontology since 1977, 27 years as chair until beginning a three-year partial retirement in 2007. He is the author or coauthor of 85 refereed journal articles, eight books and 22 chapters in other books. “Professoring has been a wonderful, satisfying career,” he says, “but nothing matches grandfathering.”

in memoriam 1937 Voimir Belda 1940 Kathryn Margaret Medlock 1944 Frank L. Mansell 1947 Mary Ingrid Paulson Carey 1948 John Erickson 1950 Marjorie M Bierly-Ellithorpe 1956 Jean M. Bednar Skinner 1958 John L. Carper

Wayne Higley 1959 Richard A. Campbell 1961 Richard I. Hanson 1963 Joseph Robert

“Bob” Tunnicliff 1964 Col. (retired)

Harry H. Riddle

William Vidal Harvey Guy Lisenby Richard G. Gay

Jack L. Bradshaw 1965 Beverly Jean Wood Hurstad

John F. Maher 1968 Junius Barrilleaux

Alfred F. Trafford Jr. 1970 George D. de Haas Fred L. Friedman

James D. Lester

Donald R. Nugent

William A. Stanfill 1972 Frank Robert Vavrek Sr. 1974 Clara M. Drew 1975 Sedell Bailey 1984 Dusty Jordan 2009 Yusef B. Mustafa

FACULTY Sumner Edward “Scott” Copple III Wayne M. Higley

future ALUM Submit a birth announcement (within 1 year of birth) and we’ll send you a certificate and an Ador-A-Bull T-shirt.

Include baby’s name, date of birth, parents’ or grandparents’ names and graduation year(s).

Mail to UNO Magazine, 67th & Dodge Streets, Omaha, NE 68182-0010 or online at www.unoalumni/futurealums

CLASS NOTES

Brenden Cash Anzaldo, son

Jacob Lee Miner , son of Tiffany

of Jon and Krissy (Olson, ’01) Anzaldo of Omaha and grandson of Marcia (’93) and Dean (’85) Olson of Papillion, Neb.

and Nicholas (’00) Miner of Tempe, Ariz.

Dominik Rowan Applegate,

daughter of Maribel and John (’09) Nixon of Greensboro, N.C.

son of Shawna (Lucas, ’06) and Bruce (’05) Applegate of Goodyear, Ariz.

Mason William O’ConnorCox , grandson of Jeanne (’08) and

Sophia Kohana Bohn, daughter

James (’76) O’Connor of Omaha.

of Rie (Eguchi, ’01) and Eric (’00) Bohn of Astoria, N.Y.

Elizabeth Leigh Toepfer ,

Karley Jo Chesnut, daughter of

daughter of Jennifer (Mayfield, ’09) and Joseph Toepfer of Bakersfield, Calif.

Mandy and Nic (’03) Chesnut of Omaha.

Addison Marie Scott, daughter

Maxwell John Henry Goebel , son of Pamela and Douglas

of Sarah (Young, ’07) and William (’06) Scott of Omaha.

(’99) Goebel of Omaha.

William Kirgan Pugliese,

Caleigh Abigail Landreth,

son of Tara (Buzzell, ’99, ’01) and Billy (’01) Pugliese of Omaha.

daughter of Brant and Laura (’09) Landreth of Bellevue, Neb. Alivia Marie Lee, daughter of

Courtney (Nichols, ’05) and Jon Lee of Moorhead, Iowa.

Henry James Libis, son of Angela (Palmesano, ’00) and Cory (’00) Libis of Omaha.

City/State/Zip: E-mail: News:

Alyssa Lourdes Van Pelt,

daughter of Aileen and Brian (’99) Van Pelt of Maize, KS.

May we post your email address in the next UNO Magazine?

Last name while a student:

Address:

Cooper James Schroeder , son of Catherine (Kepler, ’08) and Mitchell Schroeder of Plattsmouth, Neb., and grandson of Charles Kepler (’88) of Omaha.

What have you been doing since graduating from UNO? Your fellow alumni would like to know! We welcome personal and professional updates and photographs for Class Notes.

Send your news to Class Notes Editor, UNO Magazine, 67th & Dodge Streets, Omaha, NE 68182-0010; fax to (402) 554-3787; submit online at www.unoalumni.org/classnote

Name:

Class Year:

Jennifer Amarise Nixon,

Degree:

Phone:

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RETROSPECT

An historical look at the people and events shaping the university’s life UNO’s current campus is a beehive of construction.

But that’s been commonplace since the university’s first days on its original campus at 24th and Pratt Streets. Less than a year after the first-ever classes were held in September 1909, thenOmaha University began erecting the John G. Jacobs Memorial Gymnasium. The building was named in honor of the deceased son of benefactor Lillian Maul, who had donated land near UNO’s present West Dodge site. That tract was sold for $14,000, funding the gymnasium’s construction. The gym was built partially from marble removed from the second Douglas County Courthouse, discarded rails from the streetcar company, and bricks from a nearby church that had recently been demolished. Faculty carried the bricks in wheelbarrows to the construction site. Jacobs Gymnasium was demolished in 1964 to make way for the Omaha Housing Authority’s senior facility, Evans Tower.

snapshot

See more than 2,200 university archive photos on UNO Criss Library’s photostream, www.flickr.com/photos/unocrisslibrary

Research UNO history for yourself Visit the Gateway Collection, an online database of all Gateway student newspapers from 1922 to the present.

Connect at http://library.unomaha.edu/research

they were here A look at notable individuals who have visited campus — and what they had to say Alexander Archipenko October 9, 1950

Indira Gandhi April 13, 1962

One of the world’s great cubists made two appearances on the Omaha University campus — sort of. For 13 days in 1939 the campus hosted the works of Ukrainianborn Alexander Archipenko, world-renown sculptor and avant-garde artist. Gateway reporter Art Cohn said some called it, “the largest and most important sculpture and painting exhibit ever brought to Omaha.”

In 1950 Archipenko himself came, lecturing at a convocation and displaying his art. “He demonstrated with slides his credo that artists do not create, they rediscover,” reported the Omaha World-Herald. “Nature has provided the research for modern art principles, he said, pointing to spiral stairways based on the design of seashells; a few home building techniques based on the structure inside a wasp’s nest; some filigree is a direct steal from seaweed construction.”

She was the first First Lady to visit UNO. Indira Gandhi, daughter of India Prime Minister Jawaharal Nehru, spoke on “Security through Peace” at the University Nights Lecture Series.

The Omaha World-Herald reported on her country’s neutrality, specifically relating to China. “I wouldn’t say we have a fear, but we don’t like them taking our land,” she said. “I think we can face them on our borders … and keep them from coming in.” She also told the paper that if it were not for Nehru and his party India would be Communist, and that her father was “winning an ideological war for the West.” Rajiv Gandhi, 17, accompanied his mother. Indira and Rajiv both later became prime ministers of India — and both were assassinated.

Photo Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.

Photo courtesy Criss Library Archives

Hamid Karzai Afghanistan President May 25, 2005

Tom Gouttierre brought a well-known doost to UNO in May 2005 — Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. The two became doosts (friends in Farsi) in Afghanistan in the 1980s through Gouttierre’s post as director of its Center for Afghanistan Studies. Karzai first visited rural Nebraska before touring campus, meeting with a variety of university and government officials. Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey presented him with a key to the city and UNO conferred upon him an honorary doctorate of humane letters. “Nebraska has done for Afghanistan what no other state has done,” Karzai was quoted in the Gateway. “Tom Gouttierre is the man who has done that. Sometimes we call him the son of America. Most often we call him a son of Afghanistan.” And a friend.

Photo Tim Fitzgerald, University Relations

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FOR FUN

StickElers Test your brainpower with these puzzles (answers below) created by UNO graduate Terry Stickels (’76). An author, speaker and puzzle maker, Stickels’ FRAME GAMES is published by USA Weekend magazine and in 600 newspapers.

Visual How many “sticks” go in the box with the question mark?

For more information on Stickels, or to order any of his books, visit www.terrystickels.com

Mathematics A group of journalism graduate students were asked to write down what newspapers they read from a large city — 69 percent were reading the Sun-Times, 21 percent were reading the Tribune, and 12 percent were reading both. What percentage of the students were not reading any newspaper?

Logic For security reasons, a new hotel is trying different number codes on their room keys. They change these codes often so people won’t have time to crack the codes. Below is a list of room numbers with the accompanying codes for this week. Can you decipher the code and determine the room number for the first question mark and then reverse it and find the code number for a room for the second question mark?

Room Number

?

Code Number

326

784

512

598

148

962

?

364

278

?

submissions

Puzzles taken from “The Big Brain Puzzle Book,” created by Terry Stickels for the Alzheimer’s Association

Visual: 4 sticks. 156 is doubled to 312, which is doubled to 624.

1 5 6 3 1 2 6 2 4 Logic: For the first question mark the room number is 746. For the second question mark the code number is 832. Subtract each individual digit in the room numbers form 10 to crack the code.

Likewise for the code numbers.

Mathematics: 22 percent. Here’s one way to view this: 69 + 21 - 12 (who were reading both) = 78. 100 - 78 = 22 students who were not reading any newspaper.

Answers

Trees • Shrubs • Perennials Garden Center • Bulk Materials Design/Consultation • Landscaping • Lawn Care

www.RobertsLLN.com 4 Blocks North of 156th & Fort

402-551-3654

look who’s reading uno magazine What person of note can you photograph reading UNO Magazine? A famous actor or singer? An athlete? The president or Pope? Send your photos to Managing Editor Anthony Flott at aflott@unoalumni.org.

Include your name, contact information and year of graduation, plus text explaining your relationship with the person photographed.

We’ll select the best of the bunch and publish them in the next issue of UNO Magazine.

Photo courtesy David Irete, associate director of Jeopardy!

Get down to business at

The Thompson Center at UNO Why have hundreds of Omaha businesses and organizations selected the Thompson Center to host their meeting, workshop, seminar, conference, retreat or other business-related event? See for yourself!

• Elegant Décor & Design to impress clients • Convenient, Midtown Location minutes from anywhere • Versatile Room Spaces to suit any function • Affordable Rates with multiple booking discounts • State-of-the-Art A/V Capabilities and free high-speed Wi-Fi • Exceptional Catering options for all meals and events • Free & Available Parking on site Stop by, call or visit our comprehensive Web site! www.thethompsoncenter.org

Room Selection The Thompson Center boasts a variety of spaces that can be configured for any business or business-social event.

Multimedia Ceiling-mounted LCD projectors, electronically controlled screens, and free Wi-Fi on a high-speed network.

Catering & Service Offering the exceptional fare and services of Brandeis Catering, voted Omaha's best caterer four consecutive years.

The Thompson Center 67th & Dodge Omaha, NE 68182 (402) 554-3368

www.thethompsoncenter.org

554-3368

Two who received jusT wanT To give back.

As a UNO junior majoring in English, Colleen Connor’s college money was just about to run out and she was investigating student loans. Then she received the Helen Basler Anderson scholarship and was able to continue her education without loans.

Jim Audas’ family helped him with tuition so, like Colleen, he was able to graduate without any college debt.

After they were married, both Colleen and Jim knew they wanted to support students at UNO someday. And now they have.

It’s never too early to support your UNO.

They contacted the University of Nebraska Foundation to find out how they could give back and today, the Colleen (Connor) and Jim Audas Scholarship is available to any UNO student in any course of study.

To contribute, go to unoalumni.org/give. Or contact Mary Kenny, mkenny@nufoundation.org, 402-502-4924.

6001 Dodge Street Omaha, NE 68182-0510

inside 26

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Shahna ba Shahna How UNO is helping U.S. and Afghanistan armies in the fight for freedom.

Six Continents

A look at UNO research being done around the globe.

On Top Down Under

Catching up with Australia’s Chief Scientist.

www.unoalumni .org / unomag vol . 1, no. 2

NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT #301 OMAHA, NE

UNO Magazine is the flagship publication of the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is published three times a year. It is mailed to all UNO graduates and to community leaders in and out of Nebraska. Please share your copy with anyone who might benefit from the work of our great university.