News In Brief         Students examine tractor museum for class project As a class exercise, fourth-year studio students at UNL's College of Architecture designed a new museum of agricultural technology. The 15 students in Architecture 410 - the architectural design studio class - presented ideas for a new Lester F. Larsen Tractor Museum to a jury on Dec. 7. The idea for using the tractor test museum for a class project came from architecture professor Chris Ford, who discovered the museum during an East Campus visit this fall, and approached the museum staff about letting his class work on ideas and designs. 'Although this is a completely academic exercise, the student work could spark an interesting dialogue about the feasibility of a such a premier facility in the coming years,' he said. The museum is a unit of the University of Nebraska State Museum. The collection of tractors and early agricultural tools is housed in a building built in 1919. The Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory is known around the world as the leader in tractor testing and is the only one of its kind in the United States. The building housing the museum was declared a historic landmark by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers and dedicated as a museum in 1980. The museum's director, Bill Splinter, said there is no plan at this time to replace the building with the students' ideas. 'We have no plans or formal ideas, so it's open territory,' he said. 'This is something that the College of Architecture does on a regular basis and they have previously worked with the State Museum, so we were excited to see their ideas.' As part of their research on the designs, Ford's class traveled to Moline, Ill., to tour the architecturally significant John Deere Headquarters built in 1964 and designed by Eero Saarinen, and the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, designed by British architect David Chipperfield and built in 2005. NEWS IN BRIEF HEADLINES FOR DECEMBER 15 Blackboard server to be upgraded Center offers seed grants Chilled water outage Dec. 18-23 Employees should ready for shutdown FAST FOOD Holiday Hours Libraries announce deadline for class reserves Limited mail delivery scheduled NET plans temporary tower to restart disrupted services Next Scarlet prints in January NU Skills events in 2006 Rawley memorial service Jan. 13 Regents request study on graduation rates Research program is recruiting sophomores Student leader nominations due Dec. 19 Students examine tractor museum for class project Transportation Services rescinds maximum speed limit policy 732295S35326X