Nebraska Quarterly - June 2018 by Nebraska Alumni Association

Some 3,200 grads joined the University of Nebraska-Lincoln alumni ranks in May which indicates summer has arrived. As campus life slows down during the next few months, what better time to road trip across our great state and discover the hidden gems off I-80. It will illustrate why thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing better than a summer spent in

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a lso: BRAIN GAIN Innovation Campus keeps top graduates planted in Nebraska. page 40 RETOOLING 4-H No longer just cows and plows, programs promote tech skills. page 46

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Save even more money. Want a special discount on car insurance? You could get one because youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a part of the Nebraska Alumni Association. Get a quote and see how much you could save. Did you know that GEICO is a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary? One of the most valuable companies in the nation.

geico.com/alum/naa Some discounts, coverages, payment plans and features are not available in all states, in all GEICO companies, or in all situations. GEICO contracts with various membership entities and other organizations, but these entities do not underwrite the offered insurance products. Discount amount varies in some states. One group discount applicable per policy. Coverage is individual. In New York a premium reduction may be available. GEICO may not be involved in a formal relationship with each organization; however, you still may qualify for a special discount based on your membership, employment or affiliation with those organizations. GEICO is a registered service mark of Government Employees Insurance Company, Washington, D.C. 20076; a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary. ÂŠ 2018 GEICO

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JUST STEPS AWAY... There’s No Place Like Nebraska when you’re celebrating Husker game day just a few feet away from Memorial Stadium at the Nebraska Champions Club. Whether you’re hosting family, friends, clients or employees, we have a unique Husker Hospitality Package that’s right for you. Book your Husker Hospitality Package for this season today! For more information visit huskeralum.org/gameday.

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G O BIG GRAD History making The university conferred 3,221 degrees at commencement exercises May 4 and 5. At the undergraduate commencement ceremony, 81% of the graduating class took part in the ceremony and with 2,085 graduates present, it marked the largest ceremony in Nebraska’s nearly 150-year history. THE REAL DEAL Graduates received their actual diploma on stage. It is a long-held tradition at Nebraska that requires hours of behind the scenes work and careful preparation. COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER Oscar-winning filmmaker and Omaha native Alexander Payne encouraged the graduates to take chances, question everything and be true to themselves. “My thought (was) that even if I sucked at (filmmaking), at least I could go to my grave knowing I had tried it,” he said. “I needed to see whether my love of watching movies would translate into enjoying making them, and also whether I had any talent at it.”

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SUMMER 2018

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SUMMER

Contents 2018

Nebraska ranks dead last in a nationwide poll asking, “Which state do you most want to visit on vacation?” That is clearly a problem for tourism, but oddly an opportunity to discover unsung people and places once you venture off Interstate 80. P32 What was once the beloved Nebraska State Fairgrounds, located northeast of City Campus, is now an award-winning research campus helping keep top university graduates from leaving the state. P40 Former Husker Volleyball Coach Terry Pettit lives in Colorado these days and has taken to writing books on leadership as well as poetry. P30 University research is helping further the Cornhusker State’s burgeoning craft brewing industry. P10

craig chandler

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4 Contributors 6 Hate Won’t Win 8 Community 10 Campus News 27 Voices 53 Bulletin 54 Alum Profiles

Modern 4-H

Class Quotes

Love Story

The university’s Nebraska Extension continues to support and update 4-H beyond its cows and plows beginnings.

Alumni from all decades tell us stories about their most memorable summer jobs — even working in the fields.

When Kris Gallagher (’81) needed a late night pick-me-up, she and her sorority sisters headed to Goodrich Dairy Store.

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NEBRASKA

CONTRIBUTORS

QUARTERLY

Summer 2018 SARAH BAKER HANSEN

Sarah Baker Hansen is the food critic for the Omaha WorldHerald. She writes restaurant reviews and started the Food Prowl series, wherein she creates teams of tasters and explores Omaha to find favorite foods. The Better Half, a book she wrote with her husband Matthew Hansen (’03), is her second. She was born and raised in Omaha, graduating in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

VOLUME 114 NO. 2

Shelley Zaborowski, ’96, ’00 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Kirstin Swanson Wilder, ’89 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SENIOR DIRECTOR, PUBLICATIONS

Charley Morris GRAPHIC DESIGN SPECIALIST

Kevin Wright, ’78

QUENTIN LUENINGHOENER

Quentin Lueninghoener (’06) started his career in newspapers as a designer and illustrator for The Oregonian and Omaha World-Herald. He founded Hanscom Park Studio in 2012. Since then, his small company has designed magazines, branded restaurants and built websites, all with a foundation in storytelling and strong editing. He lives and works in Omaha, where he’s restoring a Victorian home.

JANE SCHUCHARDT

Jane (Menninga) Schuchardt (’74) is a Nebraska 4-H (Otoe County) alumnae. She recently retired to the family farm in northeast Nebraska after a career devoted to Cooperative Extension, primarily through national leadership roles in Washington, D.C., at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and USDA. She has advanced degrees from Oklahoma State and Iowa State.

DIRECTOR, DESIGN

Jenny Chapin ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR, BUSINESS/ALUMNI RELATIONS

EmDash MAGAZINE DESIGN

Mario Zucca COVER ILLUSTRATION

NEBRASKA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION STAFF Stephen Boggs, ’12 GAME DAY AND FACILITY OPERATIONS MANAGER

Katie Brock, ’16 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, ALUMNI AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Justy Bullington VENUES MANAGEMENT AND EVENT SPECIALIST

ANDREW LAMBERSON

Andrew Lamberson (’10) is a freelance photographer and special education high school teacher living in Brooklyn, N.Y. He has worked for The Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News and Huck magazine. He is a 2017 New York City Teaching Fellow and currently teaches social studies at James Madison High School in Brooklyn.

Conrad Casillas VENUES MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS SPECIALIST

Charles Dorse CUSTODIAN

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materials and reader comments are welcome. SE ND MAI L T O :

Nebraska Quarterly Wick Alumni Center / 1520 R Street Lincoln, NE 68508-1651 Phone: 402-472-2841 Toll-free: 888-353-1874 E-mail: nebmag@huskeralum.org Website: huskeralum.org Views expressed in Nebraska Quarterly

do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Nebraska Alumni Association. The alumni association does not discriminate on the basis of gender, age, disability, race, color, religion, marital status, veteran’s status, national or ethnic origin, or sexual orientation. EDITORIAL QUERIES:

Kirstin Wilder (kwilder@huskeralum.org)

ADVERTISING QUERIES:

Jenny Chapin (jchapin@huskeralum.org)

COORDINATOR

Jessica Marshall, ’11 DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS AND MEMBERSHIP

Tracy Moore EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

Carrie Myers, ’03, ’11 SENIOR DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

Heather Rempe, ’03 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

Derek Engelbart

Larry Routh

ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALUMNI RELATIONS

ALUMNI CAREER SPECIALIST

Julie Gehring ’91

Nebraska Quarterly (USPS 10970) is published quarterly by the Nebraska Alumni Association, the known office of publication is 1520 R St., Lincoln NE 68508-1651. Alumni association dues are $50 annually of which $10 is for a subscription to Nebraska Quarterly. Periodicals postage is paid at Lincoln Nebraska 68501 and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS. Requests for permission to reprint

Michael Mahnken, ’13 VENUES

Viann Schroeder ALUMNI CAMPUS TOURS

MEMBERSHIP AND PROGRAMS ASSISTANT

Deb Schwab

Jordan Gonzales ’17

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, VENUES

DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

Hanna Hoffman, ’16 ALUMNI RELATIONS AND PROGRAMS COORDINATOR

Wendy Kempcke ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR

Andy Washburn, ’00, ’07 ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS

Katie Williams, ’03 SENIOR DIRECTOR, MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

Hilary Winter, ’11 ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, DIGITAL STRATEGY/PR

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Richard Serra’s Greenpoint, 1988 Nebraska’s City and East Campuses feature more than thirty outdoor sculptures from Sheldon’s permanent collection.

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Toluw LISTENING TO ALEX CHAPMAN

Shan

Colu

Some 1,500 members of the campus community participated in a studentled Hate Will Never Win rally at the Coliseum on Valentine’s Day. The slogan was launched by the men’s basketball team and gained wide acceptance by the students.

What was the Hate Will Never Win rally all about?

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we’re all Huskers. We all want to help make the university a better place that everyone can be proud to call home; and that is what Hate Will Never Win is all about. When we allow ourselves to become indifferent and uncaring toward individuals and instead accept prejudiced generalities, we begin to plant seeds of hatred rooted in ignorance. In other words, people assume others don’t like them even though that person doesn’t even know them. When we say that Hate Will Never Win, we aren’t protesting individuals or principles, we’re simply asserting that we won’t allow ourselves to fall subject to ignorance that cultivates bigotry and narrow-mindedness.

Elk

I feel this movement has been widely embraced because our call to action asks activists and advocates alike to fight hatred with love. We understand that hatred is not the direct enemy of love in this instance, rather it is indifference and inaction — the tolerance of intolerance. We must act in the face of injustice not only with our words and actions toward others, but in the manner in which we carry ourselves as well. Our excellence must always speak louder than ignorance. To fight hatred and bigotry, we must stop validating the stereotypes of the prejudiced. We are charged with representing our own individuality and our own culture, not the stereotypes that exist. All students need to feel safe, embraced and heard by their own university. Thanks to the men’s basketball team, the Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center and many passionate students, we’ve taken great strides to make that happen. There’s a long road ahead to ensure that all who call themselves Huskers truly feel that this campus represents a home they can be proud of … and Hate Will Never Win is a great starting point to guarantee that happens. Maybe I can even get Arthur to wear one of the 15,000 T-shirts that were distributed on campus in the next episode. I’m certain he would. —Alex Chapman, JUNIOR MAJORING IN MUSIC AND BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Katherin

Lincoln

Tess

Alb

David Sch

West Poi

Charle

Pilg

Amber

Hosk

craig chandler

A: Growing up in South Dakota I spent many hours watching Arthur on television. In that a n i m a t e d c h i l d r e n ’s s h o w, 8-year-old Arthur — or more speci fica lly Zigg y Ma rley in the catchy, opening theme song — told viewers that “every day when we’re walking down the street, everybody that we meet has an original point of view.” It’s that recognition, acceptance and celebration of those differences that ultimately bring us closer together and unite us. This notion, while simple, r e s o n a t e s d e e pl y w i t h o u r students, faculty, administrators and alumni. We share the basic understanding that regardless of t h e c h a r a c te r i s t i c s t h a t make us different, at our core,

Ashley

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Stephanie Teten

Nathaniel Korth

Erica Pribil

Johnson, NE

Fayetteville, AR

Erica Marshall

Toluwalope Makinde

Lincoln, NE

Peru, NE

Emilie O’Connor

Stephanie Teten

Luverne, MN

Omaha, NE

Ariel Wong

Johnson, NE

Kaelyse Clapper

Omaha, NE

Justin Bakke

Nicole Berns

EdAlbion, Cornish has been helping students for more NE Lincoln, NE Shane Korte Kristen Drvol Geraldine Spinner Columbus, NE than 80Travis years, he died in 1938. Burger even though Omaha, NE Lincoln, NE Tessa Porter

Minden, NE

Columbus, NE

Bailey Harris

Lance Sorensen

Lincoln, NE

Kearney, NE

Ashley Bernstein

Nicole Berns

Elkhorn, NE

Crystal Pribyl Geneva, NE

La Vista, NE

Emily Williams

Aurora, NE

Blue Hill, NE

Lincoln, NE

Laura Hargarten

Albion, NE

David Schroeder

Weeping Water, NE

West Point, NE

Charles Caruso Pilger, NE

Heather Sasse Nebraska City, NE

Lori Rezac

Amber Talbott Hoskins, NE

Sally Steele Morrill, NE

Gothenburg, NE

Kathleen Sackett Gretna, NE

Pei Ang

Woodbury, MN

Travis Burger Columbus, NE

Kristen Cochran Omaha, NE

Bailey Harris Lincoln, NE

Jamie Eggerss

Overland Park, KS

Lincoln, NE

Albion, NE

Susan Hammons

Brooke Grossenbacher

Tessa Porter

Olivia Kunzman

Tessa Porter

Omaha, NE

Lincoln, NE

Clinton, WI

Katherine Drehs

Emilie O’Connor

Omaha, NE

Jennifer Pickering

Blue Hill, NE

Soon Lau

Steven Kaiser

Grant Wallace Craig, NE

Davey, NE

Amanda Walls Loveland, CO

Miranda Schurr Eustis, NE

Effie Epke Lincoln, NE

Travis Lucas Raymond, NE

Elizabeth Pfeifer Madison, NE

Natalie Souder Wilber, NE

Amber Cleveland Carson City, NV

Ed Cornish was one of the first donors to establish a scholarship fund for students at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The very next year, he passed away. But students have benefited from Mr. Cornish’s generosity every year since—including the students listed here. The legacy of Ed Cornish lives on. Yours can, too. To find out how, visit us online at nufoundation.org/giftplanning or call a gift planning officer at the University of Nebraska Foundation at 800-432-3216.

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COMMUNITY

ROTC Commissioning with Chancellor Ronnie Green

The Chancellor’s Review takes place each spring wherein the Reserve Officers’ Training Corp performs a colorful, traditional military ceremony. Held April 26 at Cook Pavilion, the cadets and midshipmen were reviewed by Chancellor Ronnie Green and honored with awards and scholarships for individual achievement and scholastic success. In addition, the alumni association’s ROTC/Military Affiliate group hosted a Salute to Seniors dinner and presented red, white and blue military cords to seniors to wear at graduation.

Senior Sendoff in the Holling Garden

Bailie Satthoff of Waverly enjoys the Student Alumni Association’s Senior Sendoff. The alumni association reinstated this former Husker tradition by bringing those graduating in May together one last time. Nearly 100 attendees gathered in the Holling Garden outside the Wick Alumni Center to celebrate their collegiate accomplishments with peers. Seniors enjoyed live music, hors d’oeuvres, beverages and yard games on a beautiful spring evening. The event formally welcomed the graduates to the Nebraska Alumni Association of their now-alma mater.

Find Archie! Morrill Hall’s famed Archie is hiding somewhere in the magazine, like only a 20,000-yearold mammoth can. Find him on a subsequent page, email us at alumni@huskeralum.org and you’ll be entered into a drawing for a fabulous Husker prize! Congratulations to Leigh (’99) & Maxwell Batten (future class of 2033). They found Archie promenading with the May Queen on page 15 of the spring edition.

craig chandler; mackenzie zaruba; charley morris

Google News Lab at the Wick Alumni Center

It was a Daily Nebraskan reunion of sorts when Mike Reilley (’89, second from left) presented Google tools to campus communicators and students. Reilley’s fellow ’80s journalists who attended and swapped stories were, from left, Dorothy (Pritchard) Endacott, Mark Derowitsch and Karl Vogel.

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SUMMER 2018

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YOUNG ALUMNI

ACADEMY

Network, reconnect and become a Nebraska ambassador. Young Alumni Academy brings young professionals back to campus for behind-the-scenes tours to view firsthand the university’s exciting progress while offering exclusive networking opportunities.

Members of this exclusive group:

• Hear from leaders about UNL’s progress and status as a Big Ten Conference university • Tour premier campus facilities • Network with fellow and former YAA class members • Become UNL and alumni association ambassadors by learning more about NAA outreach and programs

Apply now at huskeralum.org/yaa-apply-18 by September 1.

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16 18 22 25 ARCHITECTS

SHOWTIME

COMPOSER

DEVOUR

Students design community structures.

Student Union hosts annual drag show.

Philip Glass spends time on campus.

Dairy Store adds meat products to its menu.

SUMMER AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Hopped Up On Hops

The Nebraska Hops Project is testing the viability of eight hop varieties at five locations statewide.

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from left: craig chandler; josh fiedler photography

r o m f i e l d a n d l a b to b r ew k e t t l e a n d marketplace, university research is helping further the Cornhusker State’s burgeoning craft brewing industry. In the field, Stacy Adams is leading the charge, guiding a multi-year study to see if hops can be grown locally and if the resulting pinecone-like blooms are viable as a niche revenue crop for producers. The work is funded through a grant from the Nebraska Department of Agriculture. “The big news is that we’ve shown popular varieties of hops can be grown in Nebraska and that they can hit important production targets,” said Adams, associate professor of practice in agronomy and horticulture. “The next step is to see if Nebraska-grown hops can, from year to year, consistently hit those targets that are important to craft brewers.” Launched in summer 2016, the Nebraska Hops Project is testing the viability of eight hop varieties at five locations statewide. The plants are a perennial that sprout fast-growing bines and produce small cones that, when properly dried, add flavor to and provide a stabilizing agent in beer production. Hops are also used in the floral industry and for making pharmaceutical products. Zeus, a hop with an aroma profile that is spicy and herbal, has been the most consistent in hitting key production targets — including the number of blooms harvested and the levels of alpha and beta acids, which provide much sought-after bitter flavors. Other varieties showing promise after the 2017 growing season (the project’s first full production year) are Chinook, Cluster, Crystal and Willamette. “The numbers we are seeing in those five varieties look really good,”

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ZI PL INE BR E W ING FOUNDERS Marcus Powers, Tom Wilmoth, and James Gallentine founded Zipline Brewing Co. in 2012 with a strong belief in the premise that local beer brings people together. WHAT’S IN A NAME? The name “Zipline” was born from the founders’ innate sense of adventure and their desire to connect with the thrill-seeking spirit in all craft beer fans. NEW BREW A seasonal Mimosa White, pictured above, is a farmhouse ale brewed with oranges and white grapes.

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SUMMER BIG BRAG The university has partnered with four Big Ten institutions to launch a system that will provide rapid responses to cybersecurity threats.

Stacy Adams examines hops on bines growing on Nebraska’s East Campus. Adams is leading a multi-year, state-funded study to see if hops can be reliably grown and used as an alternative crop for farmers in the Cornhusker State.

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to determine if they can grow hops for profit as an alternative crop. “We’ve received a number of phone calls from people in Nebraska and surrounding states who are interested in hops production,” Adams said. “It’s the new, cool, hip thing to grow.” Nebraska brewers are excited to have the university helping lead the charge in experimentation in hops production and providing expertise in other areas of the field. “The university is in the best position to lead

craig chandler (2)

Adams said. “Our plot in the Panhandle has actually been the most promising, where all the key targets on all hop varieties grown have been remarkably higher.” Other initial findings in the ongoing study show that the bines are resilient to damage from thunderstorms, disease issues and pests. Adams is currently working on a publication that will outline strategies on how to produce hops on a small parcel of land. The goal of the publication is to offer Nebraska producers the necessary information — from growing needs to equipment investments —

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Assistant Professor Prahalada Rao in the former loading bay at Scott Engineering Center that was renovated to house the 3D printers.

ENGINEERING

Going Big

research into working with different varieties of hops and educating growers and brewers,” said Marcus Powers, co-founder and chief of operations for Zipline Brewing Company. Based on figures from 2016 (the most recent available) craft brewing in Nebraska has direct economic impacts that include nearly 9,000 jobs and more than $235 million in wages. The industry, also in 2016, generated more than $80 million in state and local taxes. The total economic impact of craft brewing in Nebraska is $465 million. —Troy Fedderson

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With an investment of nearly $1.5 million and the recent installation of three unique hybrid 3D printers, the College of Engineering is working to provide opportunities for faculty, students and industry to enhance the focus on additive manufacturing in the state. The printers (roughly 500 cubic feet in size) allow for projects requiring highly reactive materials such as magnesium, titanium and aluminum and for combining materials to create graded material compositions. Possible applications include the printing of jet engine nozzles and dental or medical implants. Michael Sealy, assistant professor of mechanical and materials engineering, said the machines are unique, and the first of their kind at a university or lab in the United States. They can print a part and “come around and mill that part so you end up with a smooth, finished machine surface,” Sealy said. “This is incredibly rare equipment, and it will allow us to be unique.” Having such state-of-the-art technology gives the university and the college distinct advantages. Complex objects that faculty could only test in virtual environments can now be printed and tested in real-world situations, and companies can offset some of the high costs of metal 3D printers by testing new capabilities in additive manufacturing to learn how these technologies can benefit their business. The faculty are also working on new courses in additive manufacturing that give students in-depth experience that prepare them for solving next-generation problems. “We already generated demand from industry and from researchers to get time on these machines,” Sealy said. “We expect it to have a huge economic impact (at the university) and allow innovation that helps companies in our state grow in new ways.” —Karl Vogel

BIG BRAG Dale Grotelueschen, director of UNL’s Great Plains Veterinary Educational Center, has been named veterinarian of the year by the Nebraska Veterinary Medical Association.

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SUMMER OVERHEARD

“In your working life, about 35-40 years, you’ll have to produce twice as much food as my generation did, with the same amount of resources.”

ARTS AND SCIENCES

One and Done Flu Shot

—DONNIE SMITH, former Tyson Foods CEO speaking to students as part of the Heuermann Lecture series at Nebraska Innovation Campus

A strong education is the great equalizer in our society.

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Prevention estimates that 40 million Americans contracted influenza during the 2015-16 flu season, and 970,000 people were hospitalized for the ailment. The agency estimated that vaccinations prevented about 1.9 million illnesses and 67,000 hospitalizations. “To put this in other terms, our current influenza vaccine programs and technologies reduce influenza infections and hospitalizations by 4.75 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively,” Weaver said. “There is no doubt that there is a need for more effective vaccine technologies.” Yet because the influenza virus mutates rapidly and because people, animals and birds often carry the virus without displaying symptoms, it’s been difficult to develop a vaccine with long-term effectiveness. Conventional vaccines have been shown to be less than 60 percent effective when they’re successfully matched to the currently circulating strain. They’re far less effective when mismatched. “An ideal influenza vaccine would be inexpensive, provide long-lasting immunity, require few immunizations and would work against all variants of the virus,” Weaver said. Some experts say it could take until 2020 or 2025 before a universal flu vaccine is available. —Leslie Reed

from left: scott chambers (2); thinkstock

—SEN. ADAM MORFELD at the NU for NE Advocacy Day at the state capitol in March

A vacc i n e c o m b i n i n g c e n t ra l i z e d ancestral genes from four major influenza strains appears to provide broad protection against the influenza virus, according to new research by a team from the Nebraska Center for Virology. Mice protected by the unconventional vaccine survived exposure to lethal doses of seven of nine widely divergent flu viruses. Those that received higher doses of the vaccine didn’t even get sick. In contrast, mice that received traditional flu shots or nasal sprays all sickened and died when exposed to the same viruses. The deadly pathogens were able to evade the immune responses triggered by the traditional vaccines. While it is too soon to say the approach could be successfully used in humans, it appears to be a promising avenue toward a universal flu shot, according to lead researcher Eric Weaver, an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences. Weaver said the study is the first to report on whether a universal flu shot could be created by using a combination of multiple genes shared at the ancestral level by flu strains circulating today. “The ultimate goal is to be able to vaccinate once and provide lifelong protection,” Weaver said. The Centers for Disease Control and

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The Sports Play-byPlay course gave students the chance to try broadcasting during the April 21 Spring Game.

BIG BRAG The graduate education program jumped three spots to be ranked No. 40 in the 2019 U.S. News and World Report national rankings.

JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATIONS

courtesy college of journalism and mass communications

Micro Classes Pop-Up “Journalism Goes to Hollywood,” “How to Get Your Drone License,” “Spring Game: Sports Play-byPlay” and “Be an After Effects Ninja” were all course titles for the college’s new series of pop-up classes offered during the spring semester. “The media environment is constantly fluctuating,” said Interim Dean Amy Struthers. “To prepare students for professional success, we must seek new ways to evolve and invigorate our curriculum. Pop-up classes are a great tool to provide students with a deep dive into new skills and new thinking, furthering our college’s goal of producing careerready, digitally-fluent professionals who can hit the ground running.” Pop-up classes are courses that provide 15 hours of

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instruction and one academic credit hour to students enrolled at UNL. The courses covered a variety of topics and were designed with flexibility in mind. “The college has an outstanding reputation for producing top-quality professional journalists and communicators,” Struthers said. “Despite the challenges faced by our industries, we remain committed to being a national leader in journalism and mass communications education. Pop-up classes are one of the tools we will use to ensure our students graduate ready to conquer their career.” The college will continue the use of pop-up classes in the fall to ensure that students have opportunities to reach beyond the basics and learn skills that will put them ahead of the game.

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SUMMER

Nebraska students work on the Baxa cabin at the Cedar Point Biological Station near Ogallala.

ARCHITECTURE

Building Blocks

BIG BRAG The speech and debate team won its seventh-consecutive Big Ten title at the Conference Challenge Tournament.

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munity-based and socially responsible building. “It is important we partner with Nebraska organizations, so the community sees and benefits from the outcomes,” Griffiths said. “It allows us to play a direct part in the state and in the communities we live in. It’s a mutually beneficial partnership.” The two most recent Nebraska projects were developed and built over two academic years and several design studio courses. Griffiths and the students started working on the projects in fall 2016, creating concepts and consulting with community partners. In spring 2017, the teams refined the designs and developed construction drawings before finalizing budgets, suppliers and site preparation. Construction of both projects started last summer. To accelerate the builds, students use cross-laminated timber, an engineered wood paneling system Griffith is an expert in. Using alternated layers of kiln-dried lumber, the timbers are engineered to be very strong and lightweight. They are ordered

courtesy photo

South Sioux City and Ogallala have had their landscapes altered with two new structures designed to expand their community amenities and enhance the quality of life of their citizens, all courtesy of the College of Architecture. Working collaboratively with local, state and private sectors, architecture students have completed the South Sioux City community orchard multipurpose facility and the Baxa cabin at the Cedar Point Biological Station near Ogallala. The structures are part of the college’s designbuild project. Led by Jason Griffiths, assistant professor of architecture, the projects allow students to get hands-on experience planning and building structures that benefit communities. Projects and partners are carefully selected by the college. Typically, the design research studio instructor collaborates with a nonprofit partner that is unlikely to be able to afford the expertise of a professional firm to construct a culturally significant, com-

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to exact builder specifications, delivered precut and ready to assemble, which saves the teams time and labor. Last fall, the students worked on furniture components, windows, doors, shutters and the remainder of the cladding. For the spring semester, independent students finished project details such as windows, stairs and external areas such as shutters and pavers. “Working with these students is great,” said Gene Maffit, South Sioux City parks director and project collaborator. “Seeing them work through all the different concepts and learning how to work together to get the best design is always a great process.” Adam Smith, forest products program leader with the Nebraska Forest Service, also heralded the collaboration with faculty and students. “They are very innovative and engaged,” Smith said. “We received a grant to continue cross-laminated timber work until 2020, so we are already planning future activities, and we hope to keep this partnership strong even after the grant is complete.”

Design-builds can have a transformative impact on a student’s education, reinforcing and solidifying knowledge gained in the classroom. This exercise is not about training builders but educating architects and designers about the building process and how to get something built. “As an architecture student, I have had a lot of experience with creativity, theory and application in the realm of computer modeling and scale models,” Aubrey Wassung said. “Design-build has taken my theoretical designs into a reality where those skills meet real-world applications. I have developed skills such as a better understanding of design vs. construction, learning hands-on techniques of building and the collaboration process between structural engineering, fabricators, suppliers, client relations, budgeting and even international customs.” Next up for the architecture students: creating concepts to turn an old main street grocery store into an art gallery/cultural center in Rushville, Nebraska.

BIG BRAG For the second year in a row, the university has been named one of the top 50 universities in the world for agriculture and forestry, according to the 2018 QS World University Rankings.

—Kerry McCullough-Vondrak

alley poyner macchietto architecture

FIRST LOOK On July 16, the new UNL student health center and University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Nursing Lincoln Division building will open along Antelope Valley Parkway near 19th and S streets. The 107,000-square-foot structure was built with both state and private funds and represents a partnership between the two institutions to better serve students, create efficiencies and expand university programming in a critical workforce area. One half of the space will replace the current health center (which has been located at 1500 U St. since 1958) for students with a state-of-the-art clinic with programmatic capacity to expand health-care services and to consolidate Counseling and Psychological Services into one location. The other half will house the new 53,000-square-foot UNMC College of Nursing facility. The current center has about 44,000 visits a year, a number estimated to reach 61,500 by 2020 based on expected enrollment growth.

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SUMMER

maddie washburn/daily nebraskan

Trent Battershaw transforms into Anastacia Shakers prior to the Kings & Queens drag show held in the Nebraska Union on April 20.

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PU T T I N’ ON T HE GL IT Z Dragging out the kings and queens Some two dozen past and current students participated in the annual fundraiser for Spectrum UNL and the LGBTQA Resource Center which hosted a Kings & Queens Drag Show on campus in April. “I think it showcases all of the diversity that the college campus has,” says former UNL student Trent Battershaw, now 22. “I’m a lot more lively and outgoing and I’ll talk to anyone,” he says when he dons a sparkly costume and morphs into his alter ego, Anastacia Shakers. “Drag shows are not this big, bad scary thing that some people believe they are. They are an artistic outlet and a great way to let go and have fun.”

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SUMMER OVERHEARD

“Welcome to the N Club. Your name and legacy will forever be woven into the rich tradition and history of this great university.”

EDUCATION AND HUMAN SCIENCES

Food Insecurity Abroad

—GREG AUSTIN (’06), football offensive line coach, addressing the first-time letterwinners in a March ceremony where 47 athletes were awarded a scarlet and cream jacket

—retired professor PATRICIA FREEMAN reacting to the news that a new bat species has been named after her. The researchers who discovered the bats named the species Freeman’s dog-faced bat, or Cynomops freemani, in honor of Freeman’s work.

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last five years, more than 600 students from the college traveled abroad in their studies. The benefits for Willis’ students have been plentiful. Besides a different perspective, they are gaining new skills as researchers and are applying their classroom learning in the field. They find out how small things can make huge differences in a community, and they get the satisfaction of knowing they have left children better off than when they first met. Perhaps the greatest value of education abroad is the résumé-building experience that can open doors to unimagined opportunities. “I have my first Peace Corps volunteer heading out to Belize in June,” Willis beamed. “Another is interviewing to work in Africa. After a study abroad trip to Ethiopia, one student wanted to learn more language. She applied for and received a State Department Boren Scholarship, spent a year in Mozambique, is now fluent in Portuguese, did an internship with an international non-governmental organization, is in a dietetic internship with an international focus and plans to earn a master’s degree in public health.”

from left: scott chambers (2); courtesy of mary willis (2)

“It’s wicked cool, right?”

t never fails, says Mary Willis. In the five years she has been taking undergraduate students to Africa to study and research food security, students come back with changed perspectives. As her students assess the growth of middle school-aged children in Ethiopia or Zambia, they encounter children whose bodies are stunted by food insecurity — not enough access to or availability of food. “Every year it is always emotional to realize people don’t have the basics to function in life,” said Willis, professor in the Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences in the College of Education and Human Sciences. “It makes our Nebraska students very grateful that they can go to college, and for most students, it makes them more committed. It helps them figure out what they want to do professionally, and in some cases, what they do not want to do.” Because of the life-changing experiences of education abroad, the college encourages all students to make international education part of their degree journey at Nebraska. In the

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Left, Wearing the traditional Zambian cloth, the chitenge, Mary Kroupa, measures a boy’s arm in Copperbelt Province, Zambia. Kroupa graduated in May with a bachelor of science degree in nutrition science from the College of Education and Human Sciences. Below, Anna Curry, who earned her master’s degree in community nutrition and health promotion in May, interacts with families in Zambia last summer.

All of these accomplishments can be traced back to an education abroad opportunity in Nutrition and Health Sciences. Each experience builds a résumé that creates more opportunities and makes students more competitive in an increasingly competitive job market. “Study abroad prepares you to live successfully in any place, and I think students gain a new appreciation for what culture means,” Willis said. “You can’t get that without an international experience. The context is important, because that’s what really shapes the way you live. Students understand that human beings — no matter where they come from — are all bound in some way by the resources available, by the context they find themselves in, and that we can learn from all of these populations.”

—Brad Stauffer

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BUSINESS

College Mash Up Joining forces with the College of Law, Nebraska Business is offering a collaborative law and business minor to undergraduate students starting this fall. The minor includes four courses taught by five Nebraska Law faculty, including former Chancellor Harvey Perlman. “This new program is a great example of out-of-the box thinking by two colleges about what makes for attractive course offerings for undergraduates,” said Donde Plowman, executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer. “It is a unique collaboration that pairs a graduate-only college with another college to teach undergraduates the fundamentals of law in the context of business.” Courses offered will build students’ familiarity with legal concepts for jobs that do not require a Juris Doctorate but require some knowledge of the law. They will also allow students interested in legal careers to experience law instruction as an undergraduate. “People in business fields operate in an environment where it is advantageous to have a familiarity with law and regulations,” said Richard Moberly, dean of Nebraska Law. “This minor will be beneficial to Nebraska undergraduates, building a certain level of expertise and allowing them to make positive impacts on the companies they work for after graduation.” The program may be the first to integrate graduate-level law faculty into undergraduate-level classrooms within a business college. Moberly said the concept is similar to an existing program at the University of Arizona, which offers a law major to government and public policy students within its College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Designed to complement any major, Nebraska’s law and business minor will provide students with the skills for additional employment possibilities. Many of these jobs are in growing fields such as regulatory compliance, human resources, accounting, financial services and securities regulation and real estate development. “Position descriptions for non-attorney jobs listing legal knowledge as a qualification have dramatically increased, with national job sites like Indeed.com currently showing more than 80,000 listings,” said Donna Dudney, associate dean of undergraduate curriculum and programs and associate professor of finance. “We see the minor being a natural fit for business majors, but non-business majors can also benefit from legal knowledge.” Moberly said that if the program is successful, the law and business minor may expand and be offered as a major in the future.

BIG BRAG Natalie Dettmer, a senior art major, won a national poster contest to create posters for the March for Our Lives event in Washington, D.C., on March 24. More than 15,000 copies of her poster were distributed at the event.

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SUMMER BIG BRAG The Biotech Connector, the state’s first wet-lab business incubator, is now open for business at Nebraska Innovation Campus. Companies already are using the newly completed 7,700-squarefoot facility.

Philip Glass meets composition students from the Glenn Korff School of Music following a rehearsal with the UNL Symphony. Professor Paul Barnes, at right, looks on.

FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS

Making Music Together

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on campus April 16-17 for A Celebration of Philip Glass. The Lied Center partnered with the HixsonLied College of Fine and Performing Arts to present the concert, which featured the world premiere of Glass’s new piano quintet Annunciation. The quintet, completed by the composer in February, is based on a Greek Orthodox communion hymn for the

intrepid visuals (2)

The performance was the culmination of a 24-year friendship between piano professor Paul Barnes and world-renowned composer Philip Glass. It is a friendship that began by chance, when Barnes noticed an empty seat on an airplane he had just boarded and sat down next to Glass. Glass, a three-time Academy Award nominee, was

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Native American flute player Ron Warren rehearses with the UNL Symphony in Kimball Hall.

Feast of Annunciation and was performed by Barnes and the Chiara String Quartet. Barnes also serves as head chanter at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Lincoln. “(Glass) has been so generous to me with his time, and the fact that he made himself available here in Lincoln — and only in Lincoln — I think that is a wonderful testament to his generosity as a composer and as a musician,” Barnes said. The concert also featured the vocal ensemble Cappella Romana performing an ancient Byzantine chant and a performance of Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (After Lewis and Clark) featuring

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Native American flute player Ron Warren and the UNL Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Professor Tyler White. Piano Concerto No. 2 had its premiere at the Lied Center in 2004 as part of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Celebration. Also on the program was Glass’s unpublished piano and violin work Pendulum with Hyeyung Yoon and Barnes as well as Glass’s choral work Father Death Blues sung by the University Singers under the direction of Peter Eklund. Glass has composed more than 20 operas, large and small; more than 10 symphonies; two piano concertos and concertos for violin, piano, timpani and saxophone quartet and orchestra; soundtracks to films; string quartets; a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He presents lectures, workshops, and solo keyboard performances around the world, and continues to appear regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble. He has been nominated three times for the Academy Award for original score for Kundun (1997), The Hours (2002) and Notes on a Scandal (2006). Following the premiere in Lincoln, Barnes and the Chiara String Quartet performed the piece in Hartford, Connecticut, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Chiara String Quartet concluded its tenure as Hixson-Lied Artists-in-Residence at the Glenn Korff School of Music with this concert. The group will end full-time work performing together in September. Although the members of the group are each planning solo performance and teaching careers moving forward, the group plans to reunite regularly for special projects and performance opportunities.

BIG BRAG The Financial Times ranked the online Master of Business Administration program No. 1 in the nation and No. 3 in the world for best value for the money.

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SUMMER Nebraska Law will be instrumental in drafting the rules for armed conflict in outer space, ala Star Wars.

LAW

Stranger than Fiction

BIG BRAG

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outer space provide very little regulation of modern space activities.” U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson declared in 2017 that the United States must start to prepare for the possibility of armed conflict in outer space. President Donald Trump also recently made a call for a dedicated U.S. military space force. Jack Beard, associate professor at Nebraska Law, said the Woomera Manual will be drafted in the full tradition of other manuals that have been developed by legal and policy experts over the last 20 years, including the San Remo Manual on Naval Warfare, the Harvard Manual on Air and Missile Warfare and the Tallinn Manuals (1.0 and 2.0) dealing with laws applicable to cyber operations and warfare. “Such manuals have proven to have a significant impact in their respective fields, and we envisage that the Woomera Manual will have the same impact for the military uses of space,” Beard said. The manual is named after the Woomera township in South Australia, which has a long association with both Australian and multi-national military space operations. In 1967, Woomera was the site from which Australia successfully launched its first satellite, becoming only the fourth nation in the world to do so.

courtesy walt disney studios motion pictures

The Princeton Review cited the university as one of the nation’s top colleges for delivering return on investment to students. The rating is based upon the university’s challenging academics, its affordability and strong career prospects for its graduates.

Nebraska Law is joining forces with space and military law experts from Australia and the United Kingdom to take the lead on understanding how our Earth-bound laws will be applied in times of armed conflict in outer space. Some of the best legal and policy minds at the University of Adelaide, UNSW Canberra, University of Exeter and Nebraska Law will draft the definitive document on military and security law as applied to space. The Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations is to be completed in 2020. It will draw on the knowledge of dozens of legal and space operations experts from around the world. The founding leaders of the Woomera Manual are: Melissa de Zwart and Dale Stephens, of the University of Adelaide; Rob McLaughlin of UNSW Canberra; Michael Schmitt of the University of Exeter; and Jack Beard, of Nebraska’s Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program. “Conflict in outer space is not a case of ‘if ’ but ‘when,’” said de Zwart, dean of the Adelaide Law School. “However, the legal regime that governs the use of force and actual armed conflict in outer space is currently very unclear, which is why the Woomera Manual is needed. The few international treaties that deal with

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DEVOUR IN HUSKER COUNTRY

Eat

Join

Meat from UNL Dairy Store The UNL Dairy Store on East Campus has expanded its product selection to include frozen meats in conjunction with the universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s animal science department. Selection in-store varies, but products include steak, bratwurst and lamb.

Curling Club Eyeing the 2022 Winter Olympics? The university boasts a curling team through Campus Rec. All skill levels are welcome to join the team which competes locally and nationally in the strategy-centric sport.

Buy

clockwise from top: thinkstock; courtesy photo; craig chandler; courtesy photo; lauren farris

Tervis Tumbler Nebraska mascots and logos from all eras and generations are showcased on this insulated Cornhusker Tervis tumbler. You can even find a sippy cup version for the youngest or sloppiest of Husker fans. Retails: $15 at tervis.com

Drink

Pulp Fiction More than just a coffee bar, The Bay focuses on fighting poverty, homelessness and preventing sex-trafficking through the avenues of street outreach, skateboarding, art and music. Stop in to try the Pulp Fiction coffee drink, a spin on a cortado with hints of grapefruit and brown sugar.

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Rent

Bike LNK Lincoln has implemented an urban bike share program throughout the city. The transportation system allows cyclists to rent a bicycle 24 hours a day from 19 kiosks, many of them on campus. Info: @BikeLNK on Facebook.

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A D VERTISEMENT

NEBRASKAAUTHORS Featured books by Nebraska alumni, faculty and staff

FLOOD ON THE TRACKS Living, Dying, and the Nature of Disaster in the Elkhorn River Basin

Todd M. Kerstetter Foreword by James E. Sherow

The Language Immersion Life

The Clearwater House Tammy Marshall

Todd M. Kerstetter (M.A., ’92, Ph.D., ’97)

Explore the goals and lifetime benefits of immersion education. See how fluency is acquired in both English and a second language, and also competency in global and cultural understanding. Gain tips for helping with schoolwork and participating fully as families through this guide that navigates the path through the language immersion life.

Lillian Chase, a struggling Omaha artist, inherits a mysterious old Clearwater farmhouse from a woman she doesn’t know. Lillian visits the house to learn why and discovers secrets of the past through her own paintings. In finding the truth, she also finds herself and much more. Available on Amazon.

From Plains Indians to pioneers to the 21st century, this history of the Elkhorn Basin explores how people organized their lives around the river, suffered its floods, and tried to tame it. Putting roads, towns, and crops near the river has changed the nature of disaster.

Millie Park Mellgren

CHARTING A NEW COURSE A Practical Modification Process for Students with Special Needs … Kathy Nathan, M.A., and Janine S. Wahl, Ed. D.

Crisis on the Ice

Flood on the Tracks

Scott McPherson

Kathy Nathan and Janine S. Wahl

Charting a New Course

Your Book Here

UNL Professor Gabe Hunter braves the harsh conditions of Antarctica searching for ancient viruses hidden deep in the ice. When he and his students stumble onto a secret Chinese station they are confronted with a threat not only to themselves but possibly to the whole world.

Grounded in the conviction that all students are capable of learning with proper support and expectations, this handbook offers a practical guide for modifying curriculum courses for secondary students with special needs. A three-step process creates a basic modification plan adaptable for specific individuals. Available on Amazon or www.teachingspecialstudents.org

Approximately 275 characters will go here to describe your book. You can provide the copy block or we can work with you to write something scintillating and drive interest toward your project. This is a terrific way to expose your prose to a highly-educated audience.

Your Name Here

To advertise your book in our next edition of Nebraska Quarterly, email jchapin@huskeralum.org or call 402-472-8915.

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photo ©sheldon museum of art

SHARING THE VIEWPOINTS OF OUR ALUMNI, FACULTY AND STUDENTS

William Glackens often depicted leisure scenes in cafés, parks and at the beach. He painted this canvas in summer 1910 when he and his family vacationed on Nova Scotia’s Mahone Bay, a popular destination for American tourists. Around this time the artist adopted the colors of French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

WILLIAM GLACKENS MAHONE BAY Oil on canvas, 1910, 26 × 32 inches SHELDON MUSEUM OF ART, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA–LINCOLN, ANNA R. AND FRANK M. HALL CHARITABLE TRUST, H-193.1938

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Regulations

The Drone Age is Here, and We’re Screwing It Up Disagreement about how to regulate the growing field is limiting the Drone Age’s potential in the United States BY MAT T WA I TE ( ’ 97) Professor of Practice College of Journalism and Mass Communications

ike many technological innovations, this one captured our imaginations and made us a little uncomfortable at the same time. Imagine: A camera that goes with you wherever you go. It’s small. It’s easy. In a snap, you can capture moments like never before. No more bulky equipment — just push the button and create a memory. Consumers were amazed, and began buying them by the truckload. But many were also ill at ease. If people can take it anywhere, then I can be photographed in places I don’t expect a camera. I could be photographed in a private moment. Or without me ever knowing. If you’re thinking about camera phones that were introduced in 2002, think earlier. Think a century earlier. It’s 1900, and the camera is the Kodak Brownie. And while people were buying them in the thousands, society was convulsing with how to deal with them. A brief 10 years earlier, a Harvard Law Review article called “The Right to Privacy” written by future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis laid out the foundations of what we now understand as privacy law. So the concept of a legal framework around privacy was brand new when the Brownie came along.

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With the Brownie, people worried about being photographed on the streets, in their homes through windows or elsewhere without ever knowing. In fact, cities posted armed guards at swimming beaches to keep Brownie clutching sun-soakers away so they couldn’t photograph people in their bathing clothes. While it’s fun to look back through our modern eyes and snicker at people getting so upset about commonplace cameras, we aren’t so innocent. From my vantage point, as the founder of the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of NebraskaLincoln, it looks like we’re repeating the same mistakes our ancestors did. Our forebears overreacted with cameras, and they overreacted when people first started flying airplanes. Today, technology has allowed us to put cameras on a flying thing — we call them drones — and we’re behaving much like those people we were just laughing at. We’re repeating almost the same mistakes. Three years after the Brownie arrived, the Wright Brothers took off from Kitty Hawk, and again set the world’s imagination on fire. And just like the Brownie, the idea of flight set off a series of decisions that, in hindsight, weren’t very smart. The first? The federal government punted regulating flight from state-to-state, and for more than 20 years, each state developed its own rules for flight. What that meant was if you took off in one state and went to another, you might be required to have two different licenses, follow different rules and register your aircraft in both states. It turned the country into a patchwork of rules that held flight back. It was too hard to go from point A to point B in the air, so few did. It wasn’t until Congress passed the Air Commerce Act in 1926 that a nationwide set of rules went into place. The modern day FAA didn’t come into existence for another 30 years. While the government sorted out the regulatory side of things, people worried about noise, about airplanes falling from the skies and they worried about pilots dropping by to peer into private places, like backyards. Airplanes revived the argument about who owns the skies that started in 1783 when the first hot air balloon launched. The Romans said, “he who owns the land owns the skies above,” and that was the basis of property law for centuries. But was that ever true? And if it is, isn’t that airplane flying over my property trespassing? The answer came in 1947: No. In a case over World War II era bombers and suicidal chickens, the Supreme Court said that claiming ownership of the skies “has no place in the modern world.” Airplanes can’t make a property unlivable — that’s called a taking — but they aren’t trespassing when they fly over.

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VOICES Everyone needs to take a deep breath and learn a lesson from history. When we get into a legal arms race with technology, we end up looking a little silly. and learn a lesson from history. When we get into a legal arms race with technology, we end up looking a little silly. The Republic carried on after cameras. Indeed life got better with airplanes. Drones, too, will take their place as a useful tool in society. Like all technologies, it’s not the technology we need to worry about, it’s what people do with it that matters. An invasion of privacy or the enjoyment of our property is an invasion, no matter how it’s done. Worry about that, not how it happens.

anthony freda

Fast forward to today. The FAA has been slow to regulate drones, so the states and even cities have stepped in, creating a patchwork of rules — some of them clearly unconstitutional — that will take years to unravel, just like we did after Kitty Hawk. States and cities, fearing a swarming drone menace that has yet to emerge, are considering (or have already passed) laws that criminalize children with toys. In Texas, if you photograph your neighbor’s house with a drone, even if by accident, and post it on Facebook, you’re a misdemeanor criminal. A bill in Nebraska would have made flying over your neighbor’s property with a drone — any drone, no matter how small — a trespassing crime. Children used to worry about losing a football over the fence. Now if the drone crashes over the fence, it’s prima facie evidence of a crime. My advice? Everyone needs to take a deep breath

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VOICES

Poetry

We Were Pushed to These Ends

Terry Pettit as head volleyball coach in 1998.

B Y T E R RY P E T T I T

The Players Arrive for Practice BY TERRY PETTI T

With each step, they lift their heads like antelope and zebra, listening for the slightest movement. They acknowledge their coach with the attention and indifference a springbok gives a lion lying several hundred yards away in the sun.

There is something beautiful about this place, where players risk everything for the ball. They call for it. They touch it. They scold when it ignores them. Sometimes the ball rises like a blossom as a setter watches the white skin barely rotating above her outstretched hands, effortless as moonlight.

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We dug six feet deep To seine his blood from the sand Before the rain helped us to finish.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: For 23 years, Terry Pettit was the head coach of the womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s volleyball team leading the Huskers to six final fours and the NCAA National Championship in 1995. He has written two books on coaching and leadership, and in 2017 he self-published Trust and the River, a collection of selected poems, which is available at terrypettit.com.

courtesy university of nebraska athletics; courtesy terry pettit

The court is their river. Slowly at first, the balls begin to rise. Some like shorebirds dip and dive. Others are pelicans that swoop in predictable rhythms. Later, the balls never rest, but move from player to player, startled doves before a storm.

One was the first to die From our high school class One dropped bombs in Cambodia and Laos One worked at hospital in Chicago One became a preacher in Ohio One died from agent orange One lived two years in a swamp and Wrote a novel about the smell of death One played basketball for the Air Force One kept helicopters off the ground One drove a semi stuffed with clothes For the homeless One trained pilots in Texas One wrote stories for the church About peace and resistance One lived with a tribe in Africa One died too soon in a car crash One was a medic killed by the Viet Cong One died by the Platte river On the eve of his deployment â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

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Your family’s wellness has been at the heart of our mission for more than 10 years. That commitment has grown to serve over 161,000 alumni with a vast portfolio of coverage — including Long-Term Care Insurance.

8P7

Life • Dental • Vision • Pet Health • ID Theft • Travel • Long-Term Care SPRING

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The Good Life The stars aligned when scribes Matthew Hansen (â&#x20AC;&#x2122;03) and Sarah Baker Hansen (â&#x20AC;&#x2122;01) met at the Daily Nebraskan. But it took a six-month road trip years later for them to fall in love with their home state.

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Merritt Reservoirâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Snake Campground in Cherry County hosts the Nebraska Star Party each August. This year will mark the 25th edition.

Star Party HIGH PLAINS HOMESTEAD

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ast year, MMGY, a giant marketing firm, did its annual survey of American travelers. As it does every year, it asked people the following question: Which state are you most interested in visiting during an upcoming vacation? Care to guess where Nebraska finished on this survey question? When I pose this quiz during appearances for our new book about Nebraska, a thoughtful person in the crowd usually thinks hard and guesses 42nd. A comedian yells out, “No. 1!” and people laugh. A cynic follows with “Last!” and people laugh again. Then I deliver the answer. “The cynic’s right,” I say. When you ask Americans that question, Nebraska finishes 50th. Dead solid last. In fact, on this same question in this same survey, our state has finished dead last for four straight years. That’s a problem, Nebraskans. It is also, strangely, an opportunity.

Omaha World-Herald and then a book sponsored by the Nebraska Community Foundation. We traveled to or through each of the state’s 93 counties. We stopped in dozens of towns, as big as Omaha and as small as Sacramento, a ghost town. We were looking for lovely restaurants. We were looking for interesting main streets, historical sites and craft breweries. We were looking for Nebraska stories that had never been properly told. I think we found all that — you can find ’em in our book, The Better Half. But Sarah and I discovered something bigger, too. We realized that, after decades of being told that small towns are dying, and after decades of internalizing negative outside views of our state, Nebraskans themselves are missing much of the good stuff happening within our state lines. In 2018, in a time when virtually everyone and everything is overexposed, the Cornhusker State, particularly the parts off Interstate 80, remains shockingly undiscovered. The opportunity is that it’s not too late to rediscover it.

Last year, my wife Sarah and I started a serious road trip. For six months, we drove to every corner of Nebraska for a newspaper series in the

People who think Nebraska is flat and ugly have never driven down the dusty one-lane road past green bluffs and sand-brown peaks and valleys

omaha world-herald (3)

Sow Belly Canyon NEAR FORT ROBINSON

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Matt Dennis, left, and Michael Stepp make and sell high-end copper mugs around the world from inside a barn near O’Neill.

“We couldn’t do this in Brooklyn, the small-town support is what helped make this real.” leading to a place called High Plains Homestead. You will not have cell phone reception on this road. You can’t watch TV when you reach your destination, because there aren’t any TVs there. You will be a good half-hour drive from the nearest town, Crawford, pop. 961. You will be three hours from the interstate. Your GPS won't work. There are many reasons why you should visit this place, High Plains Homestead, including the biscuits-and-gravy for breakfast, the BBQ ribs cooked over a roaring fire for dinner and the slice of strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert. But the best reason is the land itself. Rugged. Half-tamed. Wildly, undeniably gorgeous. “I always say that this place is beautiful, when it ain’t tryin’ to kill you,” says Mike Kesselring, who co-owns High Plains Homestead with wife Linda. Toadstool Geologic Park is three miles from High Plains Homestead. It looks a bit like the surface of Mars. There’s a breathtaking drive you can take, down Pants Butte Road and through Sow Belly Canyon and then over to Fort Robinson as the blazing sun sets over the unending horizon. We have made this drive three or four times now. It never fails to fill us with joy.

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Handlebend O’NEILL

Yes, Nebraska has no oceans or mountains. Yes, the I-80 drive can be mind-numbingly monotonous. But when you get off the interstate, and get to places like High Plains Homestead, or the Niobrara River, or the Valentine area, or the Scotts Bluff National Monument, or the Sandhills, or the rolling prairies of south-central Nebraska — this land can really take your breath away. Nebraska is only as flat and boring and ugly as your imagination makes it. People who think Nebraska is stuck in the past have never awoken in O’Neill at 4 a.m., rolled out of their comfortable beds and groggily driven to

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a shop on the outskirts of town. There you will find Michael Stepp (’08) and Matt Dennis (’08) wordlessly chopping, molding and buffing copper. In north-central Nebraska, these two late 20-somethings have started an online company, Handlebend, that sells high-end copper mugs all over the world. In one way, it is a uniquely 21st century endeavor. These young business partners are selling to a market willing to spend top dollar for a copper mug. It’s a market that doesn’t exist without a global reach. Matt and Michael couldn’t get by selling these at the O’Neill general store. In another way, it’s a timeless Nebraska story. This

Where’s the Beef? Nebraskans love to eat, but nobody knows it. If you were to ask a traveler what foods Nebraska is known for, they might say beef. They might say corn. And if they’ve been here, they might know the legend of the Reuben sandwich, invented in Omaha in the 1920s, or of the Runza, brought here by immigrants and now as legendary as our football team. But outside of those one or two dishes, Nebraska isn’t known for its food. As the food writer at the Omaha World-Herald, I spend a lot of time thinking — and writing — about food. Last summer, my husband, Matthew Hansen, and I were sent on the road to discover our home state’s undiscovered stories. What I found during our many road trips were cooks updating classic Midwestern recipes for modern diners; a new generation of chefs sustaining classic steakhouse food while maintaining small town charm; and an Indian couple serving Punjabi-style food along Interstate 80. —SBH

There is no denying that Nebraska’s current demographic and agricultural challenges are oh-so-real.

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Speakeasy

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only works if they awaken in the pre-dawn hours and do several hours of work, then return home, help their wives get their kids ready for school and only then head to their full-time jobs. Michael is an HVAC guy. Matt is in ag commodities. Both, like so many other people we met on our journey, are proud graduates of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who have moved back to their hometowns. “We couldn’t do this in Brooklyn,” Matt told me. “Here you go down to the hardware store, the guy works with you, talks to you about your business for 15 minutes, slaps you on the back and tells you he hopes to buy a set soon. The small-town support is what helped make this real.” When we focus on Nebraska, we tend to focus so much on the past. That’s not meant to demean our past. We actually have several stories in the book that showcase Nebraska’s vibrant history: Sarah’s story on how the Runza became a Nebraska staple, mine on a Ponca Indian toddler named White Buffalo Girl and a little town, Neligh, that takes care of her final resting place 140 years after she died. And my personal favorite, a story about a famed Nebraska lawman and prohibition agent who called himself Richard “Two-Gun” Hart, but near the end of his life was summoned to a Chicago courtroom. “What’s your name?” the prosecutor asked. “Richard Hart,” he said. “No. What’s your given name?” the prosecutor asked. “Vincenzo Capone,” he said. Richard, aka Vincenzo, was in fact Al Capone’s older brother. The U.S. government didn’t know that as he worked as a prohibition agent. His own wife and children didn’t, either. So, we did focus on history, but a lot of what we found in Nebraska wasn’t our past. It was our future.

Osso bucco braised pork shank

If there was one thing Ryan Puls knew, it was that he didn’t want to sling eggs at his father’s restaurant during the Sunday brunch buffet. “I ran away from the restaurant,” Ryan says. “I had to get out of there.” He didn’t want to be a chef at the Speakeasy, 35 minutes southwest of Kearney, in Sacramento, essentially a ghost town now. So, Ryan left Nebraska and the restaurant behind to pursue a career in the music business in Seattle. He ultimately found himself

studying at some of Seattle’s top restaurants. He soaked in the city’s food scene. In 2012, he came back to Nebraska and found himself doing the thing he’d said he would never do. He found himself staring down the giant, outdated menu at his family’s restaurant and wondering what to do. The first thing he did was cut down the number of dishes — a decision that both the long-time staff and small-town crowd wasn’t thrilled with. And the second thing he did was update it, a move that garnered a similar reaction. Those new dishes, in his mind, became

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the food that might redefine the Speakeasy, changing it from his father’s restaurant to his own. Speakeasy diners were, at first, hesitant. They didn’t recognize the names of the dishes, so they avoided them. But instead of backing off, Ryan had a realization. Farmers from Holdrege and Kearney might not know what pork belly is, or how good it tastes. He taught his staff two simple words: “It’s bacon.” Now? “It’s one of our biggest sellers,” he says.

Indian dishes aloo tikki, chhole bhature, gulab jamun and shahi paneer are served at Jay Bros. Truck Stop.

DODGE

EAT The combo basket is as much a staple of small town cafes as Husker memorabilia and Bud on tap. I’ll admit, I hadn’t really appreciated its brilliance until I first went to Red Cloud and my mother-in-law ordered the table a heap of fried cauliflower, fried mushrooms, onion rings, french fries, cheese balls and fried pickles. What was this madness and why did it taste so great? Fast forward to Dodge, Nebraska, a decade later. By now, I’ve surely eaten more combo baskets than I care to remember, but I’d never encountered one like the one Michael Glissman makes at his restaurant, simply named Eat. At Eat, they call it the “country inspired, city influenced” combo basket. It’s whatever vegetables Michael can get that are in season — when we visited last May, it featured green beans, portobello mushrooms and fragrant, locally-raised onions. Michael breads all the vegetables in airy tempura. He hand-batters the onion rings. He serves the basket with tangy homemade buttermilk

ranch dressing. Eat serves a $6.50 lunch special that includes coffee and also a morel mushroom bucatini topped with a runny quail egg. It serves his mother’s homemade pie but also from-scratch rabbit fricassee with lamb meatballs. And this all happens on the brick main street of Dodge, a town of 600. Michael, who spent most of his career cooking in Napa Valley, remembers the curious folks who poked their head in the door when he was working on the restaurant in Dodge. “The scuttlebutt was there,” Michael chuckles. “The fact that I was coming from California. They knew I was working in Omaha. And we weren’t from Dodge. They kind of didn’t know what to expect.” His mother and business partner, Lin Schwanebeck, was as nervous as the townspeople might have been. “I’d drive down the big hill over here and come inside,” she remembers, referring to Dodge’s long brick street on which the building sits. “I’d say ‘Michael, we are opening a restaurant here and there’s not even a car on Main Street!’ ”

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NEAR OVERTON

Jay Bros. Truck Stop

Take a seat at a central Nebraska truck stop, and you’re likely to be surrounded by burly truckers looking for a quick bite. What’s different at this particular stop, though, is the menu doesn’t contain cheeseburgers or pizza slices. Truckers still get their grub delivered with a smile and a reasonable price, but it’s anything but ordinary. This most unlikely food lover has discovered a central Nebraska secret: the Jay Bros. Truck Stop. So goes every day at this watering hole along the road east of Lexington, near Overton, where there are no houses. There is no Subway or Starbucks, and hardly any people. There are only Shelley and Harry Chaudhary and their most unlikely version of the American dream. In 2007, the couple bought the abandoned truck stop, which was filled with trash, its windows busted and its pipes leaky.

Their dream: To open an authentic vegetarian Punjabistyle Indian restaurant. Let’s consider all the reasons this shouldn’t have worked. Their restaurant would be inside a truck stop near Overton, for starters. Many Nebraskans are suspicious of spicy “foreign” food. Many Nebraskans love meat. And yet Harry and Shelley forged ahead. They rebuilt the truck stop themselves. They hired a cook from California, who eventually convinced them to add lamb and chicken dishes to the menu. And they did, indeed, open up a Punjabi-style Indian restaurant inside a burntout truck stop near Overton. Here’s the craziest part: It worked. A few truckers started coming. Then a few more. Then people from Kearney getting takeout. Then travelers from all over, people tired of the same old interstate fast food, people who wanted something different and had learned about the Jay Bros. Truck Stop by word of mouth. The house specialty is chole bhature: a bowl of chana masala — a saucy chickpea dish with big hunks of freshchopped ginger.

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The National Willa Cather Center RED CLOUD

I returned to my 1,000 person home town to watch a former First Lady officially open a $7 million center that reshaped Main Street while preserving Willa Cather’s legacy for generations to come.

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I graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1998 and left for college, convinced of one thing: my hometown was screwed. Not even Red Cloud’s most famous native resident, author Willa Cather, could save it. I certainly couldn’t either. I didn’t feel any particular animosity to the place. In fact, I loved it and many people in it. But I saw no path forward for the town. No future. Fast forward 19 years to last summer. I returned to Red Cloud to watch Laura Bush cut the ribbon on a new National Willa Cather Center. I want to repeat that: I returned to my 1,000-person home town to watch a former First Lady officially open a $7 million center that reshaped Main Street while preserving Cather’s legacy for generations to come. How in the heck did that happen? Well, starting two decades ago, the Willa Cather Foundation raised millions to restore the historic Opera House, turning the abandoned building of my youth back into the place where a teenage Willa Cather gave her high school graduation speech. The local community foundation hired the area’s first heritage tourism director. A group of parents, frustrated by the lack of quality child care, raised millions to build the Valley

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The copper mug guys, melding the low costs and helpfulness of a small town with the Internet Era reality that you can make and market your product from anywhere. Take a look at Scratchtown Brewing Company in Ord, where they serve their own IPAs and stouts instead of Busch Light and where they are part of that town’s renaissance. We met a young Sandhills banker, two Christmasloving entrepreneurs in Atkinson, an organic buffalo rancher in Rose and the family that started a combination cafe/coffee shop/bookstore/art gallery/art studio/gift shop/concert space/community center/sawmill on Lewellen’s Main Street then gave it the perfect name … The Most Unlikely Place. There is no denying that Nebraska’s current demographic and agricultural challenges are oh-so-real.

But it’s also true that there is serious action — serious hidden energy — inside the unlikeliest places in Nebraska in 2018.

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Child Development Center, which recently opened and is already getting national notice as a model for rural high-quality child care. And the Cather Foundation, led by Red Cloud native Ashley (Nolan) Olson, who graduated in 2008 with a business degree and returned home, raised $7 million and completed the renovation of The Moon Block. Now it’s a museum, an archive to store Cather memorabilia, a bookstore, three apartments and three refurbished storefronts. The National Willa Cather Center, they named it. I like the sound of that name. I like its audacity. All these big moves have spurred a bunch of smaller but crucial development in Red Cloud: A new wine bar, a new bed-and-breakfast, a new pizza place, a new coffee business and, soon, a sparkling new hotel in a long-abandoned building on Main Street. My hometown’s resurgence is just one of several such stories we found last summer. Nebraska City. Shickley. McCook. Valentine. Ord. O’Neill. Red Cloud. In all these places, the work has been slow and frustrating, the path forward littered with potholes. None of these people think the fight to save their Nebraska towns will be easy. All of these people think it’s a fight worth having. Watching that fight as we traveled the state was both awe-inspiring and a little transformational for

Scratchtown Brewing offers an indoor taproom and outdoor patio frequently packed with 30-something professionals — in Ord, a town of just 2,100 people.

us. It made us excited to find these sparkling Nebraska success stories, hold them up to the readers of the Omaha World-Herald, point and yell, “Look at this!” Now, when I come back to my hometown, I do not see a small town dying. I see a small Nebraska town that has a shot. And after this journey, I no longer see a state that is ugly, or old, or all the things that outsiders are forever telling us to believe about Nebraska. I see a state that will surprise you, again and again, if you let it.

Scratchtown Brewing Company ORD

Co-owner Caleb Pollard, left, and Shay Reilly pour beers at Scratchtown.

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Nebraska Innovation Campus has created a talent pipeline from the university to innovative companies, helping convert the state’s brain drain to brain gain. BY TIFFANY LEE (’07, ’10)

PHOTOS BY CRAIG CHANDLER

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W Harkamal Walia checks the progress of a rice plant growing in the LemnaTec High-Throughput Phenotyping facility at the Greenhouse Innovation Center on Nebraska Innovation Campus. The magenta glow is caused by custom LED grow lights.

hen the University of NebraskaLincoln acquired the historic state fairgrounds in Lincoln in 2010, leaders envisioned a thriving research campus with private companies working side-by-side with Husker scientists and students. Through this innovation hub, university leaders and state lawmakers aimed to attract companies to the state, fuel job growth, retain young talent and bolster campus research. Fast forward eight years, and the dream is reality. Nebraska Innovation Campus is home to more than 30 private and public sector partners. Its 380,000 square feet is already 100 percent leased, and at full build-out, NIC is expected to occupy 2.2 million square feet and employ up to 5,000 people. Things are going so well, in fact, that the Association of University Research Parks recognized NIC’s fast start with the 2017 Emerging Research Park Award, which recognizes research parks less than 10 years old that excel in commercializing laboratory research, attracting business partners, spinning off new businesses and sparking job growth. One of NIC’s greatest contributions is helping Nebraska conquer a longstanding problem: the flight of well-educated, highly skilled college graduates who take with them the potential for tax dollars that would expand the state’s economy. Census data captured this phenomenon in 2016, showing that between 2011 and 2015, 2,300 more highly educated people moved out than moved into the state. By creating a talent pipeline from the university to innovative companies, NIC helps convert brain drain to brain gain. “Globally, there is a huge scramble for talent,” said Dan Duncan, NIC’s executive director. “By creating an environment at NIC that is attractive to young talent, especially students coming out of the university, the campus provides a culture where companies are able to compete with other areas of the world for the employees that fuel their growth.” Take Alex Heine, for example. When he moved to Lincoln for college in 2012, he figured he’d spend

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“There’s been so much growth in the young professional sector, and at NIC, you’re always around peers who are also building businesses. There’s no shortage here of mentorship or access to resources.”

Carla Schwan, a former graduate student from Brazil, looks over culture dishes of salmonella in the food science and technology lab.

four years in his new home, study for his degree in animal science, then take his diploma back to his hometown of Yankton, South Dakota, and get to work at the family feedlot. Those plans changed when Heine, as a UNL student, took an internship at Quantified Ag. The NIC-based startup develops patent-pending smart technology for cattle ear tags that gives producers real-time information about livestock health. Not only did Heine love the job — a perfect blend of his dual passions, technology and feedlot operations — it also gave him an inside view of Lincoln’s emerging business culture, enhanced by NIC’s top-notch facilities, collaborative environment and location adjacent to campus. “I did not think Lincoln would be at this caliber,” Heine said. “There’s been so much growth in the young professional sector, and at NIC, you’re always around peers who are also building businesses. There’s no shortage here of mentorship or access to resources.” In addition to Heine, there is one more internturned-employee at Quantified Ag, and three Nebraska undergraduates currently interning at the

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12-member company. Founder Vishal Singh, a 1997 alum and a former university employee, said the company is refining and expanding the reach of its patent-pending technology, which gathers behavioral and biometric data from cattle, including body temperature, that helps producers detect ill animals and curb disease before it spreads — a “Fitbit for cows” of sorts. The company is even building international ties in other places with large feedlot populations like Australia and Brazil, where tighter production regulations boost demand for Quantified Ag’s services. Locating at NIC helps the startup launch those partnerships, Singh said. “Moving from the Haymarket to NIC in 2015 put us among other like-minded people focused on agriculture and food technology,” he said. “As we’ve grown, we get more interest from potential collaborators, and several of them have said they like the fact that we’re on a research campus.” Bolero Information Systems, the university’s first staff spinoff at NIC, also got its start in developing tech tools for researchers. Tim Savage, Bolero’s managing director and head

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startup companies to lift Nebraska’s biotechnology of operations, said the web application and design sector and create jobs. The facility — a partnercompany chose its home base partly to help cultiship between NIC, the university, Bio Nebraska, vate relationships. Invest Nebraska and the Nebraska Department of “It was a strategic decision, as we wanted to Economic Development — also offers young comshow prospective clients that we are located in a panies access to expertise and networking. research park with close ties to a major research “The availability of wet lab space is what drove institution,” Savage said. “We aren’t just a team of my decision to bring Adjuvance to NIC,” Martin developers working out of someone’s garage.” said. “When you need a specialized laboratory, Bolero is a five-person team that includes four there are not many options.” University of Nebraska alums, one of whom is a forPerhaps no NIC-based commer intern. Its signature product, pany has tapped into the univerOneRamp, is an electronic research sity’s resources as effectively as administrative portal designed IT ALL ADDS UP Spreetail, an e-commerce comto ease research administration pany that sells everything from and automate business processes. housewares to baby gear to elecSavage and colleagues designed the tronics. CEO Brett Thome, a system while they were university Nebraska Wesleyan University employees, and its popularity grew MILLION graduate, said approximately via word of mouth. of economic impact from the 80 percent of his 180 full-time They licensed the technology operation and investments of business, employees are Husker graduwith NUtech Ventures, Nebraska’s organizations and conferences ates. In this year’s intern class of technology commercialization located at NIC 55 — the company’s largest ever arm, and officially became a uni— about 50 percent are Nebraska versity spinoff in 2016. Bolero’s u n d e r g ra d u a t e s . E a c h ye a r, clientele includes the Lincoln, roughly 50 percent of Spreetail Omaha and Kearney campuses interns join the company followof the University of Nebraska, ing graduation and stay in the Tulane University and companies diverse private and public sector Silicon Prairie. in London and Chicago. partners located on the campus “By coming to NIC, we really NIC also serves as a talent magincreased our access and visibility net, drawing out-of-state entrewith the university and our ability preneurs to Cornhusker territory. to build out recruiting pipelines,” This was the case for Tyler Martin, square feet constructed said Thome, who hopes to add CEO of Adjuvance Technologies, and leased another 400 employees over the a privately held biopharmaceutinext three years. Most will work cal company focused on vaccine in business development, softdesign and manufacturing. ware engineering, sales, customer Martin, a Hebron, Nebraska, experience and human resources. native with degrees from the Last year, Spreetail’s revenue University of Nebraska at internships funded hit a high-water mark of $250 milKearney and the University lion, a key target toward its goal of of Nebraska Medical Center, $1 billion. To accommodate rapid returned to Lincoln in 2013 after growth, the group is doubling its a successful career in Silicon square footage within NIC this year Valley, where he played a key role and opening office space for about in launching startups and managjobs NIC has created statewide 100 new team members in Omaha’s ing established biotech compaAksarben Village, another growing nies. Back home, Martin needed and thriving community. what’s known as wet laboratory To attract young professionals, space — a facility enabling the Spreetail offers perks ubiquitous safe study of chemicals, drugs and MILLION at coastal startups: unlimited vacabiological materials — to advance impact in annual state/local income, tion, destination trips, sabbaticals Adjuvance’s goal of creating molsales/property tax revenue for five-year employees and comecules that improve patients’ pany matches to employees’ charresponses to vaccines. Building itable donations, to name a few. a wet lab and acquiring the essential specialized “I know that for some of our employees, Spreetail equipment is cost-prohibitive for most startups. is what kept them in the state,” Thome said. “We, Martin found the perfect solution in NIC’s along with some other great companies, have Biotech Connector, which launched last year offerturned Lincoln into a great place to be.” ing wet lab space and equipment to small and

$143

380,000

57 860 $3.2

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ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHAN BARTLETT

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CULTIVATING THE NEXT GEN OF

Nebraska Extension has long supported 4-H in the state and understands the importance of growing the organization to focus on more than cows and plows.

BY JANE (MENNINGA) SCHUCHARDT (â&#x20AC;&#x2122;74) ILLUSTRATION BY JONATHAN BARTLETT

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AS SUMMER ROLLS OUT in Nebraska, 4-H kids begin prepping their county fair entries — and, if all goes well, they will advance to the state fair in September. That said, the quaint image depicted in Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting, The County Agricultural Agent, does not encompass the entirety of the organization today. 4-H is changing as it continues to honor its storied past and the University of Nebraska’s Cooperative Extension Division plays a key role. In fact, the university believes in 4-H so strongly that when 4-H youth enter 8th grade they are pre-admitted to UNL. In order to complete their admission to Nebraska they must retain 4-H enrollment through high school, complete the Next Chapter

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“4-H is not just cows and plows anymore, though agriculture continues in importance. It’s now also STEM, robotics, nutrition education and more.” —RONNIE GREEN program and meet university entry requirements. This spring, 705 8th graders received pre-admission letters to the Next Chapter program inviting them to participate in career choice and college readiness educational opportunities throughout high school. Being the front door to the university all across the state is the responsibility of Nebraska Extension, explains its dean and director Chuck Hibberd, and one way that is accomplished is through 4-H, which he describes as “the youth development program of

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courtesy sheldon museum of art, university of nebraska–lincoln, gift of nathan gold, u–563.1969

Norman Rockwell’s The County Agricultural Agent is part of the permanent collection of the Sheldon Museum of Art and is on display through July 30. At right, youth learn many different skills through 4-H from robotics, to archery and vet diagnostics.

the university bringing science-based education to young people in creative ways.” Each summer the campus hosts weeklong Big Red Summer Academic Camps bringing youth to the university to interact with faculty on specific topics such as culinary arts, filmmaking, entrepreneurship, engineering and weather and climate science. Both Michael Zavodny, a junior from Malcolm, and Andrew Roberts, a senior from Omaha, attended summer film camps and are now working on majors in the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film. “We got to shoot and edit a one-minute movie and the whole camp was a blast,” Zavodny says. Roberts echoed that sentiment, “at the camp, I also met three amazing people who have come to be some of my best friends. We started a film company together called O-City Films.” Chancellor Ronnie Green says Nebraska Extension continually evolves to meet the educational needs of citizens to solve problems based on sound science. “Compared to others across the nation, we’re a leader in programming, especially with 4-H. No other state has as high a membership rate,” he said. “4-H is not just cows and plows anymore, though agriculture continues in importance. It’s now also STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), robotics, nutrition education and more.” Nebraska Extension, along with 4-H, started in 1914 with the passage of the SmithLever Act establishing Cooperative Extension as a formal part of land-grant universities. Since its inception, the foundation of 4-H has not faltered. Its goal of positive youth development is based on the essential elements of belonging, independence, mastery and generosity. The approach follows the 4-H slogan of “learn by doing” which consists of encountering, sharing, processing, generalizing and applying. This experiential learning model energizes volunteers and Extension professionals to prepare youth for a successful adulthood. The 4-H motto to “make the best better” emphasizes improvements in head, heart, hands and health, the four H’s in the emblem and pledge. Programs are designed to help youth become strong leaders and address at least one of the following: college and career readiness, community development, entrepreneurship, food supply confidence, healthy living, leadership development and STEM.

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clockwise from top left: vicki jedlicka, nebraska extension in lancaster county; craig chandler; courtesy photo; craig chandler; brad barker

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Will Abler Will Abler, 18, lives in Norfolk (Madison County) where he graduated from Norfolk Catholic High School. What he loves about being in 4-H, now in his 10th year, is the opportunity to give teaching presentations. Landscape photography also is among his favorite 4-H activities. “People skills, that’s what I’m learning through 4-H, and how to be a leader,” reports Abler. “Oh, and I probably should tell you that my teaching topic is reptiles.” Turns out he rescues pythons and owns seven of them. Abler says many of his 4-H colleagues bring chickens for their presentations, while he more commonly caresses a snake or lizard. This fall, he will attend Northeast Community College for general education courses and then wants to transfer to a university to study herpetology.

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Cole Meador, left, and Allison Leimer with Nebraska Extension 4-H Youth Development, showcase a piglet to fourth graders who attended the 2017 Ag Literacy Festival at the Lancaster Event Center.

The initial intent of 4-H was to instruct rural youth on farming and homemaking skills, but the organization in Nebraska offers much more today. Experiencing the bustle of pride, sweat, manure and grandeur of a county fair, and for some, the catapult to tougher competition at the Nebraska State Fair. However, today’s 4-H focuses on preparing youth to be successful leaders in many more areas. Tracey Jones, a 4-H alumna, volunteer and parent, knows this well, since her family has been involved for four generations. “My father worked with 30 kids to show sheep,” she said. “Today, members communicate using social media, use computer software for presentations, participate in robotics competitions, learn about entrepreneurship and get exposed to career options.” She’s so invested in her 4-H commitment that she has a separate building (techni-

Bailey Gocke

Bailey Gocke is a UNL sophomore majoring in architecture and completing her 11-year career as a 4-H member in York County. When asked why she stayed in 4-H, she said, “It’s cool to make things for other people and to give back to my community.” Gocke especially enjoys quilting. In the last four years she has created 30 quilts for the Quilts of Valor Foundation whose mission is to “cover service members and veterans touched by war with comfort and healing.” Each quilt is a math and design problem, a strong influence on her selection of architecture as a major.

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from top: vicki jedlicka, nebraska extension in lancaster county; tina gocke

MEMBER

cally a barn shared with her husband on their Omaha acreage), where she leads a 4-H club, brings in guest speakers and gives urban members a chance to understand agriculture. “I’ve watched shy 4-H kids change into bubbling, powerful communicators. City kids learn where their food comes from and leadership skills get developed,” she says. Another more recent change has been the move of 4-H into urban areas during the last 10 years, says Kathleen Lodl, state 4-H program administrator. Nebraska 4-H participation grew 13 percent during the past 10 years, with a 5 percent increase in urban participation. With the goal of reaching one out of every two age-eligible youth, an emphasis in urban and suburban localities will continue; but, as Director Hibberd readily points out, “not at the expense of providing 4-H access to youth in rural towns and on farms.” While needs assessment and program implementation at the local level is the basis of Extension, including 4-H, the statewide connection comes through the Nebraska Extension offices on the university’s East Campus. Nebraska Extension is administratively housed in the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources with strong program alliances to other University of Nebraska colleges and academic units. Nebraska 4-H is connected nationally to more than 100 land-grant universities in the United States. Nebraska 4-H continually leads the way with 4-H nationwide, which boasts a total membership of

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ALUMNUS

Jeffrey Wallman Jeffrey Wallman (’17) credits his public speaking ability to 11 years in 4-H. While he likely did a lot of talking to his cattle, goats and chickens getting them ready for showing at the Gage County Fair, his real dual passions discovered through 4-H are talking in front of groups and photography. Wallman is taking his UNL biochemistry degree to greater heights as a medical student at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. He believes that a 4-H presence in urban areas, such as Omaha, along with continuing a strong presence in rural Nebraska, is key.

VOLUNTEER

Keith Mandachit

6 million. In late 2017, 4-H National Youth Science Day featured Incredible Wearables as the science challenge for thousands of youth participants nationwide. Developed by Nebraska Extension through a nationwide competition, the program challenged youth to use engineering design protocols to develop a wearable fitness tracker leading to healthier lifestyles. With its one-in-three enrollment, Nebraska Extension beats the national goal to grow membership to one in five age-eligible youth. Nebraska 4-H also is a leader in science and technology education with multi-million-dollar grants from the National Science Foundation and others. Both Hibberd and Lodl agree 4-H must continually change to meet the needs and interests of contemporary youth. “We need to take 4-H to youth where they live. We need more opportunities for youth living in urban settings, youth from diverse backgrounds, first generation 4-H youth and really innovative ways to engage,” Hibberd said. The organization is doing just that. Nebraska Extension has created a mobile science lab that travels to neighborhoods in north Omaha where youth learn the relationship between DNA and food in a hands-on experience. Lodl said a program called WearTec has drawn increased interest, as well. More than 800 youth have been engaged in the Nebraska Wearables Technology project. A program called Connecting

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Keith Mandachit, an engineer based in Lincoln, is into his ninth year as a 4-H volunteer because, as he says, growing new leaders for tomorrow “requires exposure to STEM-related programs.” Though he was not a 4-H member himself, Mandachit is the father of two sons who wanted to participate in the First Lego League and that got him involved in 4-H. He helped start a 4-H club and coached a Lego robotics team in which youth in grades 4-8 are given real-world engineering problems, build a Lego-based robot and then program it to accomplish tasks around a theme, such as garbage collection or water security.

the Dots reached more than 1,300 youth wishing to make decisions for their future. One-third of participants reported that the program helped them learn about a college that will be a good fit for them. Hibberd insists Nebraska needs 4-H. “It provides experiences for young people to help them grow to be caring and competent adults,” he said. Every day 4-H administrators, educators and volunteers work together to grow new leaders for Nebraska. “From science to leadership to career and college readiness, there’s something for everyone,” Lodl said. If artist Rockwell were around today, he would need to include career readiness, robotics and wearable technology in his 4-H painting, something hard to imagine when his illustration appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in July 1948. From cows to computers, volunteers and Extension educators are on a mission to grow new leaders and adapt to current society. Our future depends on it.

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EMPOWERED WOMEN EMPOWER WOMEN. Join the Nebraska Women’s Leadership Network

Nebraska Women’s Leadership Network is a program of the Nebraska Alumni Association that encourages the success of female students and alumnae through mentoring, networking and professional development. Our conferences, online community, mentor/mentee partnerships and events provide access to renowned thought leaders and a network of women willing to offer advice and share experiences. How To Get Involved Mark your calendar for the Fall Conference, October 18-19. Visit huskeralum.org/nwln to sign up for network alerts. Follow us on social media. Nebraska Women’s Leadership Network

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56 57 58 59 61 64 ABROAD Dannebrog native follows trouble all around the world.

ALL IN This Scottsdale store will quench your Husker thirst.

QUOTES What was your most memorable summer job?

WHAT’S UP? With 1988 graduate and student leader Andy Pollock

OBITUARIES Former governor and congressman Charles Thone was 94.

LOVE STORY She was introduced to and fell in love with Goodrich Dairy Store.

BULLETIN

Events JUNE 23 DENVER Join fellow Huskers to watch the Colorado Rockies take on the Miami Marlins. Purchase tickets at: mlb.com/rockies/ tickets/specials/ themes/university-ofnebraska JULY 7 KANSAS CITY Husker fans will unite to watch the Kansas City Royals play the Boston Red Sox at Kauffmann Stadium. Game tickets include a Husker hat: mlb. com/royals/tickets/ specials/huskers JULY 20 LINCOLN Future Husker University This day camp brings grandparents and grandchildren together for a Husker experience. Participants will tour campus, eat lunch in a dining hall and participate in classroom activities. Register by July 6 at huskeralum.org/ fhu-2018

andrew lamberson

AUGUST 1

Giving Back

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Margaret Mezoff met Richard Holman in 1973 when they were both journalism students at the university. When the college moved from Avery Hall to its current location in Andersen Hall, they underwrote the courtyard. “Neither of us would have gotten very far in life,” Margaret says, “if we hadn’t gotten the kind of education that we got at the university.”

LINCOLN Young Alumni Academy application deadline. Be part of our next class of young leaders and university ambassadors. Network, reconnect and learn about UNL today. Apply by Aug. 1 at huskeralum.org/ YAA-18

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BULLETIN Alumni Profile

Young, Lasting Love BY COLLEEN KENNEY FLEISCHER (’88)

ithin Central Park there’s a special green bench. It’s Margaret (Mezoff) Holman’s favorite. She seeks it out some days and sits down. She looks around at the people and trees, the seasons, the sun. Sometimes, she thinks about her life and the long way she’s come from her days as a journalism student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She smiles. Within her heart there’s a special memory from those days: It’s 1973. She’s at a press conference on

campus her senior year, working hard as a public relations intern for the university. Her friend Linda introduces her to a sharp, young reporter from the Lincoln Star. He’s just a few years older. A Nebraska boy from McCook. The man who would become the love of her life. His name is etched on a plaque on that bench: In Memory of Richard Lee Holman … “He asked me out to have coffee, or go have a beer, and I agreed,” Margaret says. “But I couldn’t remember his name, and so I had to call Linda to find out who he was!” She laughs. “I didn’t tell him that until after we got married.” Margaret speaks by phone from her office in Midtown Manhattan, an easy walk to the southeast edge of Central Park. She talks about her life and why she gives back to the university. She gives back, she says, because the university helped give her and Richard — “Dick” — their great life. “Neither of us would have gotten very far in life,” she says, “if we hadn’t gotten the kind of edu-

On the far northwest side of Central Park sits a bench inscribed with these words: In Memory of Richard Lee Holman Beloved Husband and Son Journalist, Lover of Words and Tennis

andrew lamberson

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cation that we got at the university.” Dick died unexpectedly in 2016. In his memory, Margaret “adopted” that green bench. It’s near the tennis courts Dick loved, on the far northwest side of Central Park. She wrote the words for the plaque:

courtesy margaret holman

Beloved Husband and Son, Journalist, Lover of Words and Tennis And lover of the University of Nebraska. “People here are always curious about somebody who left Nebraska,” Margaret says. “Most people here and on either coast don’t think about Nebraska as being a wonderful training ground. So Dick was always a model of ‘Midwest nice’ for folks. He was really smart, he knew his stuff, and he always said those were the things he learned when he was at the university.” Margaret gives back, she says, because she and Dick both witnessed the power of philanthropy first-hand. Philanthropy actually became her career after the couple moved to New York City in the early 1980s. In 1991, she started her philanthropic consulting company, Holman Consulting. She co-wrote two important books in her field: Major Donor Fundraising and The Complete Guide to Careers in Fund Raising. She served as president of the Philanthropic Planning Group of Greater New York — a group that honored her last fall with its lifetime achievement award. While she moved up in the world of philanthropy, her husband moved up in the world of journalism. He wrote a column at The Wall Street Journal for years before becoming the editor of all the financial reports at Morgan Stanley. He ended his career as senior vice president for HSBC Securities, one of the largest banks in the world. Margaret says her career in fundraising taught her why people give back. It taught her that when people make a personally significant gift, whatever the amount, they tend to narrow their focus down over the years to two or three organizations. “When we start to think about philanthropy, we’re sort of scattered,” she says. “We have lots and lots of interests. Then as we get older, we get more — I don’t want to say ‘picky’ — but things narrow down to the organization and the missions that mean the most to us, that give us the most feedback and satisfaction from giving a gift.” For her and Dick, one of their top philanthropic passions became the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. They started with a small gift

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years ago. Then they created a scholarship. Then, when the college moved from Avery Hall to its current location in Andersen Hall, they underwrote the courtyard outside: Th e D i c k a n d M a rga re t Holman Plaza. The University of Nebraska, she says, was where they learned to write. (Although Dick, she says, was a much better writer.) It was where they learned journalism ethics. It was where they learned the importance of networking and teamwork — “an important lesson to learn in life.” After Dick died, Margaret asked people to send any memorials in his name to the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. “Dick’s will had the university in it, as does mine,” says Margaret, who’s a member of the University of Nebraska Foundation’s Burnett Society (for people supporting the university through a planned gift). “It’s for the College of Journalism, but it’s unrestricted.” Why unrestricted? While most people want to designate exactly where their gifts will go, she says, she prefers to give to unrestricted funds because they allow the university to use the money wherever it’s needed the most. Margaret also serves on the board of the University of Nebraska Foundation and has served on its Planned Gift Advisory Committee. Besides the university, she says, their other main philanthropic passion over the years became Central Park. Margaret sometimes thinks back to the days when she and Dick first came to New York City and they walked together in the park. They used it almost every day. But back in the early ’80s, she says, Central Park could be a scary place. You didn’t want to walk there alone at night, she says, maybe even in the day. She and Dick became supporters of the Central Park Conservancy, a private non-profit group formed in 1980 to improve the park. With the help of the city and all the people who wanted to give back to the park, that group restored it to what it is today. A special place. … Beloved … And within Central Park, there’s now a special green bench with a story.

Margaret Mezoff married Dick Holman on Nov. 3, 1973, in Blair, Nebraska, just six months after they met at UNL. “It was love at first sight,” Margaret says.

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BULLETIN Alumni Profile

Jumping Into Trouble BY KEVIN WARNEKE (’85, ’12)

Carl Kinkade, left, with Luke Bawo, of the Liberia Ministry of Health, confer in Libera in 2014 during the Ebola outbreak. Kinkade was explaining how to use Trimble GPS units to conduct surveys and collect GPS coordinates for Ebola contact tracing.

arl Kinkade (’93, ’00) seems to find trouble. It’s not that the Dannebrog, Nebraska, native looks for trouble. He simply follows it. As a first responder for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kinkade travels on a moment’s notice to wherever disaster strikes. He went to Haiti following the 2010 earthquake that killed 200,000 people. He deployed for Hurricane Katrina, Myanmar after Cyclone Nargis, Kenya for the Rift Valley Fever outbreak and to Saudi Arabia during its pandemic. His task is to work with the governments in affected countries to effectively respond to the latest catastrophe. His work has taken him to 50 countries.

These days, Kinkade is helping Liberia’s Ministry of Health recover from the Ebola outbreak that ravaged West African countries from 2014 to 2016. “If we do our job correctly, there will never be another large-scale outbreak in Liberia,” he said. Kinkade spends his days as a resident adviser, working with Liberians to rebuild their health system and to establish a real-time disease surveillance system. He understands the risk that comes with his job. “Not everyone wants to go to an Ebola outbreak. I kept raising my hand and kept coming back,” he said. He deployed 10 times to Liberia before moving his family there in September 2016. The key to stopping the Ebola outbreak, Kinkade said, began with proper management of the dead, which meant initially burning all bodies, even those of people who didn’t die of Ebola, as directed by Liberia’s president. Education also is critical. Telling Liberians they can’t touch their dead loved one is counter-cultural. “If the family didn’t get the chance to bury a brother, a sister, a mother — and if they didn’t die of Ebola, they were angry,” he said. Over time, he said, Liberians have come around. He

“Not everyone wants to go to an Ebola outbreak. I kept raising my hand and kept coming back.”

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courtesy of carl kinkade

works with Liberians throughout the country to track suspected cases and how to report them. After earning his undergraduate degree in 1993 in architecture, Kinkade figured he would practice his craft in a Midwestern city like Chicago. Instead, he headed to the Philippines, all because of a postcard from the U.S. Peace Corps. The card, featuring a solitary person walking a desolate path, encouraged Kinkade. His two years in the Philippines left him with a new focus — community — and a wife (Mel). “That was a bonus. I hadn’t planned on that.” He returned to UNL to pursue a master’s degree in community and regional planning. During his matriculation, Kinkade discovered how a tool he used in planning — mapping with geographic information system (GIS) — could be applied to public health. Rodrigo Cantarero, UNL assistant professor of community and regional planning, approached Kinkade about an internship with the Lincoln-

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Lancaster County Health Department. “They talked about mapping diseases. They wanted someone to review the city’s comprehensive plans from a public health perspective.” The internship led to a full-time position, and the department became one of the first in the country to realize the importance of using GIS to map public health plans. The state of Nebraska wanted his services, followed by the CDC. In 2005, he moved to Atlanta

and became a CDC first responder. Kinkade, who is pursuing his doctorate in public health, knows his worldwide assignments wouldn’t have occurred without Cantarero’s recommendation and encouragement. “He made that internship happen with the health department. If he hadn’t taken that active step…” Kinkade might be practicing architecture somewhere in the Midwest.

ALL IN

BIG RED DESERT You can take the girl out of Nebraska, but you can’t take Nebraska out of the girl. Just ask Caryl Peters (’67, ’72), a Nebraska City native running a Cornhusker shop in Scottsdale, Arizona. WHEN DID BIG RED OF THE DESERT OPEN? CARYL: I’ve been open for 25 years. When I opened my current location (former football players) Scott Frost and Matt Turman came to promote the grand opening. My store is only about 380 square feet, but I have 300 or so different Husker items. WHAT IS THE MOST POPULAR ITEM? CARYL: Guys love the caps, but T-shirts are probably the most popular. With Frost now in charge, it’s like a new awakening. My favorite shirt says: Nebraska Coaches: Bob Devaney, Tom Osborne, Some Other Guys, Scott Frost.

dave cruz

ARE YOU A FOOTBALL FAN? CARYL: I’ve been a season football ticket owner since 1967. Someone keeps the store running for me during football season so that I can return to Lincoln for every game. Aside from football weekends, I spend June and July at my cabin outside of Omaha — it’s too hot in Arizona in the summer. This gives me time to have T-shirts printed and buy new merchandise. Once my car is full, I head back to Arizona to reopen my store in August. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PETS. CARYL: I have a dachshund named Putzi and I also had a remarkable parrot named Cowboy who died in 2006. I would bring both to the store with me. I would wheel Cowboy’s cage in front of the TV,

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so he could watch the games. I taught him to say, “Huskers,” “Touchdown!” “You gonna watch the game?” and he could whistle the fight song. IS THIS YOUR FULL-TIME JOB? CARYL: My store is really a labor of love. Even with all the Husker fans in Arizona I can’t run the store full time, so I practice real estate on the side. A lot of the houses I have sold are to Nebraskans moving to Arizona who heard about me through the store.

Two-time alumna Caryl Peters along with her dog, Putzi, welcome shoppers to Big Red of the Desert in Scottsdale.

—Michael Mahnken

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BULLETIN

Class Quotes

QUESTION

What was your favorite summer job? 1955

“Early summer 1949, I was a part of an anthropological dig on a Republican Valley ranch near McCook looking for evidence of pre-Columbian Americans. Riding and roping, I helped the rancher roundup cattle. A rattlesnake managed to share my sleeping bag … always shake before entering.”

Bill Lippstreu, retired dentist, lives in Sun City West, Arizona.

1961

“I worked for the university’s Conservation & Survey Division during the summers of 1958-61 on its test drilling program to research groundwater resources. This statewide research was key to the development of groundwater irrigation in Nebraska. You could get a hotel room in rural Nebraska for $2 and a good steak dinner for $1.75.”

Jim Linderholm, of Lincoln, is the retired chairman and CEO of HWS Consulting Group and retired executive vice president of Benesch.

1967

“Orienting new students and their parents to campus in 1966 and 1967. All of us had been campus leaders and we knew it was an important job, but we didn’t know it was going to be so much fun. My co-leader for the parents, student body

president Kent Neumeister, and I toured them around the campus, putting our positive spins on making all those buildings come alive.”

Carol Bischoff enjoyed an extensive career in college administration and lives in Fort Myers, Florida. She and her husband find great satisfaction sailing on the coast of Maine in summer.

1971

“One of my duties as a copy boy at the Lincoln Star was to monitor the teletype machines and deliver wire stories to the news editor. One calm August night

in 1968 a startling bulletin clattered over: Soviet troops and tanks had entered Prague! I yelled at an editor that he’d better come and look. Soon the staff was scrambling to remake page one, hoping this wasn’t the start of World War III. That kind of rush hooked me on the newspaper business, where I spent the next 45 years.”

Joe Baldwin, retired copy desk

supervisor for the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, now finds time to read, prepare income taxes for seniors as an AARP volunteer and keep the yard presentable.

1977

Shelley Peterson Bishop

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“I grew up in Dundy County and our farm was north of Max, Nebraska. My father was a second-generation custom combiner. The day after school recessed for the summer our crew (which consisted of my older siblings and hired men/women) headed to Texas to cut and haul wheat. It was a blast, but hard work.”

Kit Powell, of Ashburn, Virginia, is a recruiting manager for General Dynamics IT.

1985

“My best summer job was serving as a new student orientation host at UNL. I made many friends and met my future wife there. But that’s another story.”

Kevin Warneke was named client advancement director for The Steier Group, a national capital campaign fundraising firm in Omaha.

quentin lueninghoener

“I worked as an archival assistant at Love Library which had just acquired the papers of renowned folklorist Benjamin Botkin (’31). I had to arrange the correspondence files. I learned that Botkin’s papers had been donated with the caveat that the university accept everything that was shipped to them. In addition to letters he received, there were letters he wrote to friends, family and, yes, even lovers. I spent the summer of 1978 living vicariously through the 1920s at Botkin’s side.”

1983

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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO?

ANDY POLLOCK

1997

“Girl Scout camp counselor.”

Mandy Alexander Greene, High Point, North Carolina

1998

“Working for my grandmother’s real estate business was a priceless opportunity learning to run a business.”

Sarah Goeller Olson, director of Aftermarket Product Engineering for Federal-Mogul Motorparts in Plymouth, Michigan, was lauded by Crain’s Detroit Business as one of the “Notable Women in Manufacturing.”

2004

“I worked for the National Park Service in the archeological department in the downtown Lincoln federal building. I spent that summer cataloging artifacts and assisting

the archeologists with their research projects.”

Monica Childs is employed by Wagento Commerce in Minneapolis as a project manager.

2006

“Camp counselor in several Peace Corps organized camps in Ukraine. I built hiking paths and was crowned the Touchdown Queen in flag football.”

Nina Murray is with the U.S. Foreign Service in the Environment,

Science, Technology and Health Department of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

2010

“As an alumni relations intern at the Nebraska Alumni Association the summer of 2010, I worked with great people all in the spirit of promoting the university I care about so much!”

Lindsey Spehn is a senior consultant at Gallup and was named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Omahans

by the Omaha Jaycees for 2017.

2014

“Congressman Adrian Smith’s staff assistant. The work experience and public service was invaluable and I met some truly amazing people.”

Bijan Koohmaraie, House Energy and Commerce staffer for Nebraska Congressman Adrian Smith, was recently featured in the Congressional Quarterly magazine article, “18 to Watch in ’18.”

SHARE YOUR INSIGHTS

What advice do you have for incoming freshmen? Do you want to be featured in the fall issue? Email your answer to this question to kwright@huskeralum.org.

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ndy Pollock (’88, ’92) has gone from running ASUN (Association of Students for the University of Nebraska), to running marathons, both literally and figuratively. An avid runner who grew up in Ogallala, Pollock loves running in the country and visiting his beloved Nebraska Sandhills, particularly the area south of Valentine. He and some fishing buddies thought the area would make an awesome marathon route, so on a whim, they clocked the distance of Brownlee Road, a one-lane blacktop road in Cherry County, and found it was 25.7 miles, just a half-mile shy of a full 26.2 marathon. The route moves through the starkly beautiful and pristine Sandhills, paralleling the Middle Loup River. At first it was just going to be Pollock and a couple of friends, but word of mouth expanded it to 20 runners in 2007. Now Race Director Pollock caps the field of full and half-marathoners at 200 to keep the l ogistics manageable and not overwhelm race headquarters, Valentine. Runners seeking a unique experience have come from all around the world. Some are looking to Circa 1988 run in all 50 states, others just enjoy a really different race atmosphere, Pollock said. They try to discourage spectators mainly because they “spoil the wide open experience of running in solitude,” Pollock said. Nearly every year runners encounter cattle in pastures next to the road — and almost always the cattle jog along with the runners. The porta-potties are actually portable — Pollock’s wife Dr. Kris (Jones) Pollock drives a pickup with a trailer loaded with two portable toilets; she stops as runners need to use them. Pollock graduated with a bachelor’s in journalism in 1988 and a law degree in 1992. Kris Pollock also is an NU graduate, including a DDS earned from UNMC. Andy is a lawyer in Lincoln specializing in government relations and lobbying, due in part to experiences as student government (ASUN) president from 1987-88. Prior to that, he was a member of ASUN’s Government Liaison Committee. The couple live near Pleasant Dale, and have four children, the oldest of whom is a junior at UNL. —Kim Hachiya

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BULLETIN

Alumni Profile

Trusting the Data BY CHARLYNE BERENS (’95, ’00)

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mckenzie ring

Kim (Lefler) Whittaker serves as president of First National Techology Solutions in Omaha.

hen Kim Lefler graduated from UNL’s business college in 1994, the internet was barely in its infancy, and “IT” meant nothing outside of a few academic circles. Since summer 2017, though, Kim Lefler Whittaker has been president of First National Technology Solutions, supervising about 90 employees who customize information technology solutions for FNTS’s customers. Although at graduation she couldn’t have imagined that she would be one of the first women to lead an IT company, Whittaker said it’s a good fit. At Lincoln East High School and at UNL, she was involved in team sports and said she enjoyed

being part of a team. She believes what she learned then has helped her coach and develop people throughout her career. A company that outsources its information technology for things like data analytics and cloud computing puts a lot of trust in its service provider, Whittaker said. “We see ourselves as an extension of our customers’ own IT departments.” She also played on the women’s golf team and was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She remembers traveling the country with the team and meeting good people everywhere. That kind of experience “helps form you into who you are,” she said. Whittaker said she got a great education at Nebraska and was well prepared for a job in business. After graduation, she went to Principal Financial Group in Des Moines, then to First National Bank of Omaha where she started as a management trainee. She took a job with the finance side of FNTS in 1996 when it was a start-up. “It was intriguing to be part of a new company,” she said. She could see that technology was rapidly changing how people did business. “I like to be challenged,” she said, “and technology always gave me an opportunity to learn about the next big thing.” She and her husband, Albert, and two children live in Elkhorn, just outside Omaha. In 2003, while working full time, she completed a master’s in business administration at UNO that included an emphasis in management information systems and a series of computer science courses. “I really wanted to get a better understanding of the technical components of what engineers do day in and day out for clients,” she said. That kind of understanding plus her experience with FNTS as head of sales led to her appointment as the firm’s president. She reports to Mike Summers, executive vice president for buildings and finance and chief financial officer of First National Nebraska. Summers said Whittaker had demonstrated her success with FNTS and had earned the right to lead it. “She’s a humble optimist about everything,” Summers said. “And she’s very good at what she does.” Whittaker encourages more women to consider jobs in IT. “There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity for women,” she said, “not only on the technical side but also in related roles like finance, sales and management. It’s an exciting industry to work in.”

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Obituaries 1935

Floyd D. Herman, Wilber, Feb. 19

1937 Fern Bloom Heim, Lincoln, Feb. 25

1941

Mary Lowe James, Lincoln, Dec. 28

1942

Lois Thompson Bartmess, Florence, Ala., Dec. 19; Joan E. Hall, Eureka, Mont., Jan. 6; Harold K. Scholz, Omaha, Jan. 16; Ralph F. Schroeder, Clear Lake, Iowa, Dec. 11

1943

K. George Hachiya, Lincoln, Feb. 23; Harriet Talbot Ludwick, Minneapolis, March 7; Allen H. Zikmund, Kearney, Jan. 29

1944

Rachael Lock Hamilton, Lincoln, Jan. 17; George M. Horner, Shawnee, Wyo., Nov. 25

1945

Joan Witt Davis, Grand Island, March 4; William N.

Fawell, San Pedro, Calif., Jan. 11

1946

Beverly Murray Kimball, Kearney, Dec. 23

1948

Neoma Reier Burton, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Feb. 11; Harry D. Fike, Davenport, Iowa, Dec. 19; Douglas D. Nelson, Fernandina Beach, Fla., Jan. 29; Barbara Marsh Schultze, Omaha, Feb. 24

1949

Ronald W. Ganzel, Leavenworth, Kan., Feb. 27; Leo H. Soderholm, Ames, Iowa, Feb. 1; Dora Niedenthal Starks, Dodge City, Kan., Feb. 16; Tan-Ju Lu Yien, Lincoln, Feb. 21

1950

John M. Brower, Fullerton, April 22, 2017; Thomas D. Brower, North Bend, Dec. 24; John A. Dewulf, Atlantic, Iowa, Jan. 12; Robert L. Dryer, Grand Island, Feb. 17; Marvin J. Eden,

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Fremont, Dec. 24; Dolores Greenwalt Eiberger, St. Paul, March 8; Bud L. Gerhart, Lincoln, Feb. 15; Thomas J. Gorham, Boulder City, Nev., Jan. 11; Donna Philpot Leffler, Holdrege, Jan. 16; Robert S. Pollock, Lincoln, March 11; Shirley Larkin Thompson, Parker, Colo., March 1; Charles Thone, Lincoln, March 7; Richard R. Todd, Lincoln, Jan. 31; Richard H. Williams, Lincoln, Dec. 13

1951

Wallace N. Bender, Santa Rosa, Calif., Dec. 25; Eugene A. Daniels, Lincoln, Jan. 22; Irving W. Fobair, Cottonwood, Ariz., Feb. 16; Donald L. Kendle, Lincoln, Dec. 24; Harriet Mortensen Lipe, Lincoln, Feb. 28

1952

Ray A. Casari, Omaha, April 16, 2017; Lawrence Belden Fuchs, Dec. 24; J. Eugene P. Jorgensen, Lincoln, Feb. 1;

Joan Raun Kopf, Minden, Dec. 30; John C. Rhodes, Hollister, Calif., Jan. 12; John A. Scharf, Curtis, Feb. 6; Jerry D. Schiermeyer, Kansas City, Jan. 8; Ruth Sorensen Singer, Falls Church, Va.,

Jan. 10; Mary Buck Suchy, Coronado, Calif., Jan. 8; Ina Yount Whitlock, Vashon, Wash., Feb. 7

1953 Leslie L. Chisholm, Lutz, Fla., Dec.

31; Arthur E. Hansen, Lincoln, Jan. 17; Gerald Liesveld, Coralville, Iowa, Jan. 29; Kathryn Baker Robson, Longmont, Colo., Jan. 3; Shirley

Watson Spitser, Pawnee City, Dec. 27

1954

Marthalee Miller Sherwood, Lincoln, Jan. 21

1955

Joy M. Keerans, Midlothian, Va.,

1924-2018

Charles Thone Charles Thone, former Nebraska governor and congressman, died March 7 in Lincoln at the age of 94. Born on a farm near Hartington in northeastern Nebraska, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army infantry during World War II and later graduated from the University of Nebraska College of Law in 1950. Thone was one of the five-member House committee selected in 1977 to investigate the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in light of recurring conspiracy theories. CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite twice saluted the Nebraskan as “the conscience of the committee” because he insisted on open meetings. Known for his affable nature, honesty and traditional conservative principles, his term as governor coincided with a national recession that battered Nebraska agriculture. Despite the conditions, Thone said he felt good in protecting the University of Nebraska during those trying economic times, acknowledging the crucial role it played and would play in the state’s future. “Education has been near and dear to me ever since it was drilled into my head by my mother when I was six or seven years old,” he once remarked. Reflecting the involvement with his alma mater, Thone was president of the Nebraska Alumni Association in 1961-62, a participant in the 1972 UNL Masters Week, recipient of an Alumni Achievement Award from the Nebraska Alumni Association in 1974 and, in 2000, was honored once more for his contributions to the association with a Distinguished Service Award.

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BULLETIN Obituaries 1943-2018

Z B Mayo Jr. Z B Mayo Jr., 74, emeritus professor of entomology, died March 25. Mayo joined the Department of Entomology in 1972. He led the department for 10 years, first in an interim role from 1993 to 1995, then as department head from 1999 to 2005. Mayo also served as interim associate dean and director of the Agricultural Research Division from 1995 until his retirement in 2010. In retirement, he continued to provide part-time support to the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources’ International Agricultural program. Mayo’s research programs at Nebraska focused on the development of bio-intensive pest management programs for field crops. He received many honors, including the National Educational Administrator of the Year.

Dec. 24; George W. Medley, Dothan, Ala., Oct. 11; James N. Norton, Ericson, Jan. 22; Anton P. Rasmussen, Edina, Minn., May 28, 2017; James W. Sire, Downers Grove, Ill., Feb. 6; Tillie F. Walker, Bismarck, N.D., Feb. 3; Lola Green Yocum,

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Spring Lake, Mich., Jan. 20

1956

Corrine Demaree Dorland, Chapel Hill, N.C., Dec. 23; Richard T. Hill, Fort Collins, Colo., June 23, 2017; Gerald A. Langemeier, Tucson, Ariz., Oct. 7; Robert J. Lavey, Vienna, Va., Nov. 9 ; Philip

SUMMER 2018

H. Patterson, Omaha, Dec. 15; Keith G. Pollard, Columbus, Jan. 18; Geraldine Lenz Rueter, Omaha, Feb. 7; David M. Solzman, Chicago, Feb. 19; Charles K. Tomsen, Minden, Jan. 4

1957

Michael D. Calder, Omaha,

Sept. 26; Roger L. Gohde, Lincoln, March 8; John L. Klingenberg, Hastings, Dec. 22; William E. Mooney, Union, N.J., Feb. 21; Mitchell F. Nielsen, Kingsville, Texas, Sept. 6; Edwin J. Penas, Lincoln, Dec. 18; Delbert C. Peters, O’Fallon, Mo., Feb. 9; Arvin S. Quist, Oak Ridge, Tenn., Feb. 1; James G. Reisner, Longview, Wash., Feb. 23

1958

Richard N. DeVries, Las Vegas, Dec. 8; Jim L. Haberlan, Lincoln, Jan. 22; Richard E. Jensen, Lincoln, March 5; Sylvia Wilber Mooney, Union, N.J., March 1

1959

Robert L. Dolezal, Tucson, Ariz., Oct. 25; John R. Hawes, Hastings, Feb. 28; Richard A. Johnson, Lincoln, Jan. 9; Willadean Spier Kaufman, Lincoln, Jan. 7; Robert L. Spale, Coarsegold, Calif., Dec. 30; Charles T.

Weatherford, New York, N.Y., Oct. 12

1960

Roger H. Barnard, Gainesville, Fla., Sept. 18; Mary L. Lucke, Moraga, Calif., April 22, 2017; John P. Solso, Tucson, Ariz., Dec. 6; Ward R. Svoboda, Chambersburg, Penn., Jan. 26

1961

William R. Holst, Borrego Springs, Calif., Jan. 19; Maurice L. Jay, Omaha, March 11; Marvin M. Maynard, Painesville, Ohio, Jan. 5; Eunice McCosh Peeks, Lincoln, Jan. 19; Douglas D. Sieler, Fort Worth, Texas, Jan. 30

1962

Sherrie Thomas Brandenburg, Fairbury, Feb. 9; Charles J. Burda, Saginaw, Mich., March 1; Richard L. Fleming, Lincoln, Jan. 17; John W. Gibson, Huntington Beach, Calif., Dec. 29; William D. Maly, Lincoln, Feb. 21; Aveline Nelson Marks,

Omaha, Feb. 27; Susan Hellmann Merriman, Columbus, Ind., Jan. 21; Marlene A. Napier, Colorado Springs, Colo., Jan. 23; John H. Wehr, Tempe, Ariz., Jan. 2; Catherine Masters Witt, Lincoln, Dec. 12; Kathleen Anderson Witte, Hilton Head, S.C., Dec. 10

1963

Donald B. Beerline, Lafayette, Calif., Nov. 26

1964

Pamela Haynie Allen, Hopkins, Minn., March 2; Jean Baxter Armbrust, Gretna, Jan. 30; William A. Harriger, Waterloo, Dec. 21; James F. Lewis, Edina, Minn., Feb. 18; Marjorie A. Lynn, Omaha, Jan. 26; Kenneth L. Reiner, Cheyenne, Wyo., Sept. 7; Thomas H. Wake, Burwell, Jan. 17; David M. Wardell, Kirkland, Wash., Jan. 1

1965

Elizabeth Falconer Dillon-

Peterson, Lincoln, Jan. 2; George R. Meredith, Wichita, Kan., Feb. 10; Karen Gunlicks Ridout, Raleigh, Feb. 1; Jerry L. Sandy, Livingston, Texas, Feb. 20; Ira P. Schreiber, Aurora, Colo., Jan. 9

1966

Kenneth L. Erickson, Ravenna, Dec. 27; Cheryl Lockhart Ogden, Lincoln, Jan. 27

1967

Fredric M. Beile, Crete, Feb. 18; Richard R. Holtz, Boise, Feb. 26; Ronald E. Hosbach, Omaha, Feb. 11; Clara Lowery Peacock, Valley, Feb. 17; William J. Shamblen, Lincoln, Jan. 16; Lynn H. Sundberg, Wildomar, Calif., July 26, 2017

1968

Lily Allard Diegel, Lincoln, Feb. 12; Wayne F. Fisher, Palmyra, Va., Feb. 27; Vance H. Hinrichs, Seward, March 5; Norma Johnasen Krumbach, Shelby, Jan. 20; Roger W. Lott,

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Naples, Fla., Sept. 25; Donald F. McLaen, Albuquerque, Nov. 30

1969

Ronald L. Colin, Lincoln, Jan. 11; Meri Strong Crampton, Omaha, Dec. 20; Vicki Evans Herzog, Bloomfield, March 10; Shirlea Putman Hollinger, Lincoln, Jan. 4; John C. Hurd, Lincoln, March 4

1970

James L. Condon, Lincoln, Jan. 14; Janice Zimmerman Kinney, Lincoln, Feb. 18; Christopher E. Kohout, Geneseo, Ill., Feb. 4; David T. Littrell, Lincoln, Feb. 15; Rosella Zimmerman Meier, Kearney, March 13; James A. Sandall, Tempe, Ariz., Feb. 18; Jeffrey S. Taylor, Greensboro, N.C., Feb. 6; Connie M. Thompson, Saint Paul, Jan. 7; Cornelius J. Witt, Holland, Mich., Dec. 14

1971 John A. Anderson,

Bainbridge Island, Wash., Feb. 12; Linda B. Carey, Norfolk, Feb. 10; Patricia L. Martin, Lincoln, Feb. 26

1972

Gerald T. Brant, Fremont, Jan. 21; David R. Evans, Omaha, Dec. 31; Patrick R. Keitges, Aurora, Colo., March 2; Donald L. Rogers, Pawnee City, Jan. 13; Robert L. Rose, Edgar, Jan. 6; Melanie L. Schwartz, Lakeside, Ore., March 1; Joseph F. Vrtiska, Lincoln, Jan. 15

1973

William R. Brandt, Las Vegas, Dec. 1; Marcia M. Freer, Johnston, Iowa, Feb. 15; Cynthia Sheldon Manzotti, San Antonio, Oct. 19; Douglas J. Moss, Columbus, Dec. 17

1974

Charles H. Linkugel, Lincoln, Feb. 12; Sharon Mueller Pasco, Louisville, Dec. 23; Glen E. Treptow, Ithaca, March 6; Donald L.

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Valalik, Grand Island, Dec. 4

Mary Hawkins Fell, Walton, Dec. 14; Cynthia A. Pool, Papillion, Dec. 29

1975

Lois Yelkin Dietsch, Seward, Feb. 14; Judith Vogel Glenn, Lincoln, Dec. 23; William C. Hicks, Lincoln, Dec. 18

1987

Julie D. Kasl, Elkhorn, March 6

1976

Kenneth H. Brand, Jefferson, Ga., Jan. 31; Steven M. Morrison, Lincoln, Feb. 19; Holly Killham Wittstruck, Martell, Jan. 31

1977

Kathryn Thoms Hilgenkamp, Chicago, Jan. 3; Jerry F. Kenny, Kearney, Jan. 19

1978

Norma Blunck Fuelberth, Little Elm, Texas, Nov. 4; Alan G. Stoler, Omaha, Feb. 5

1979

Holly Bonessi Cooper, Milford, Conn., Feb. 24; Norma Payne Heinicke, St. Petersburg, Fla., Nov. 25; Norman A. Jackman, Elkhorn, Dec. 24; Clayton E. True, Kearney, Dec. 27

1980 Paul D.

1988

1950-2018

Christy Horn Christy Anne Horn, 68, co-director of Nebraska’s Center for Instructional Innovation, died Feb. 7. A nationally recognized leader for her work in supporting students with disabilities, Horn served more than 30 years with UNL and NU central administration. As a graduate student, Horn was awarded a U.S. Department of Education grant that helped found the services for students with disabilities office at the University of NebraskaLincoln. She received the Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Women Award for establishing lactation rooms on campus for nursing mothers. Her work also led to the creation of the university’s Accommodation Resource Center, which was the first in the nation. Horn was also active in teaching, research and mentoring graduate students. Her most recent roles in the NU system included serving as the American Disabilities Act/504 compliance officer, affirmative action/equal employment opportunity officer and ombudsperson. Johnson, Shawnee Mission, Kan., Feb. 11; Charles J. Rosvold, Huntsville, Texas, Jan. 7

1981

Christy Johnson Horn, Lincoln, Feb. 7; Arlen G. Leholm, St. Paul, Minn., Oct. 16

1983

Stanley J. Harms, Lincoln, Dec. 23; Daniel F. Legband, Omaha, Feb. 2; Marilyn Dietrich Lockard, Lincoln, Dec. 31; Karen McMorris Murphy, Lincoln, Jan. 13

1984

Margery Marzahn Ambrosius, Lincoln, Jan. 30; Sara Dodder Furr, Lincoln, Dec. 27; Teresa March Hunzeker, Elkhorn, Jan. 23

1985 Kenneth L. Christianson, Omaha, Jan. 7;

Charles H. Bowling, Lincoln, Jan. 15; Kevin R. Cahill, Omaha, Jan. 8

1989

Roderick D. Lee, West Lafayette, Ind., Dec. 2

1990

Stephanie A. Stewart, Malcolm, Jan. 7

1991

Michael T. Miller, Bellevue, Feb. 5

1994

Rex A. Karsten, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Dec. 11

1997

Kathleen Karpisek Kubicek, Wilber, Jan. 15

1998

Jeffrey M. Engdahl, Omaha, March 11

2001 Jason M. Brolhorst, Lincoln, Jan. 5

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Love Story

The Elixir of Life These 1970s undergrads found the perfect potion to get through college and ace their exams BY KRIS (HANSEN) GALLAGHER ( ’ 81)

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SUMMER 2018

joe mcdermott

h , t h e Eli x i r of L i fe. S av i or of sleep-deprived, stressed-out, test-prepping students everywhere. Or at least it was, on the north end of campus in the late 1970s. I was introduced to this dreamy concoction by sisters at my sorority, Alpha Delta Pi, which at the time was located in former graduate student housing near the Harper-SchrammSmith residence hall complex. It was refreshing, delectable and a perfect treat for a hot day — or really any day. But it was the men of Chi Phi, a neighboring fraternity where I was a Little Sister, who revealed the magical properties and proper ingredients of this restorative potion. Late one night, after several of us had crammed for hours for a midterm in the same

class, one of the brothers threw himself on the floor. “I’m dying!” he cried. “I need the Elixir of Life!” “To the Fountain of Life!” cried the others. They bundled me and another startled Little Sister into a car and off we sped. I don’t remember the exact address, but I can picture the building in my mind. An unassuming one-story building with a typical storefront and a neon sign. Was this the place that Ponce de Léon sought for so long? We piled out of the car like clowns in a circus, racing to the door before the “closed” sign was flipped. We rushed the long counter and gripped it, panting. The floor-flopping brother was the first to order. “Chocolate malt. Real ice cream. With an egg in it.” A raw egg! Shades of Rocky Balboa! I simultaneously gagged and was thrilled. Could I do it? Would I dare? And then it was my turn. I took a deep breath and repeated the order: “Chocolate malt. Real ice cream. With an egg in it. And …” I looked sideways at my pledge brother and received a nod of support — “double maraschino cherries.” And there it was. Droplets condensing slowly on a tall frosty glass. Barely seen shades of light and dark brown twining mysteriously. Two fat cherries crowning a towering swirl of whipped cream. And a dangerously seductive straw daring me to sip. Was it the risk? The camaraderie? The exhilaration of our pell-mell trip across town, rather above the speed limit? Or was it indeed a magical concoction? All I know is that I have never tasted anything so rich, so creamy, so frothy, so restorative to my soul. I didn’t take another major exam without it. God bless you, Goodrich Dairy. I think I owe my diploma to you.

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