Lincoln Campus Sweeps Systemwide Awards

PILL-SOON SONG, Chemistry	ROSS THOMPSON, Psychology
BARBARA DiBERNARD, Women's Studies	HELEN MOORE, Sociology

For the second time in three years, faculty and a department from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have swept all five systemwide academic awards.

Pill-Soon Song, chemistry, and Ross Thompson, psychology, received the Outstanding Research and Creative Activity award. Barbara DiBernard, English and women's studies, and Helen Moore, sociology and women's studies, received the Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award. The Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design received the UniversityWide Departmental Teaching Award.

The award winners were recommended by committees of faculty members representing all four campuses of the University of Nebraska. The awards, the highest accolades bestowed by the University of Nebraska were announced by Lee Jones, the university's executive vice president and provost.

Song, Dow Chemical Professor of Chemistry, joined the faculty in 1987, having previously served on the faculty at Texas Tech University (1965-87). He also has been a visiting professor and consultant to a number of major institutions of higher learning, including the University of Munich and Michigan State University, and corporations such as Shell and Dow Chemical. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry from Seoul National University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis.

Thompson, professor of psychology, has been a member of the faculty since 1986. In the 1989-90 academic year he was a visiting professor at the Stanford University School of Law. He earned his bachelor's degree from Occidental College in 1976, and his master's (1979) and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

DiBernard, professor of English and women's studies, has been on the faculty since 1978, having been a faculty member at the University of Minnesota for two years (1976-78). She was director of Nebraska's Women's Studies program from 1992 to 1998. She earned her bachelor's degree from Wilson College in 1970, and her master's (1975) and Ph.D. (1976) degrees from the State University of New York, Binghamton.

Helen Moore, professor of sociology and women's studies, has been a member of the faculty since 1979. She was the director of the Bureau of Sociological Research from 1981 to 1983, and director of the Women's Studies program from 1982 to 1987. She was chair of the department of sociology from 1992 to 1997. She earned her bachelor's (1974), master's (1976) and Ph.D. (1979) degrees from the University of California, Riverside.

The Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design became a distinct entity in 1921, when the Department of Home Economics (now the College of Human Resources and Family Sciences) was divided into two areas of study. Beginning in 1945, students could major in clothing and design.The department is the home of the International Quilt Study Center, and the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery.

Department faculty are: Patricia Crews, professor and acting chair; Catherine Daly, assistant professor; Robert Hillestad, professor emeritus; Rita Kean, professor and interim dean; Joan Laughlin, professor and associate dean; Shirley Niemeyer, professor; Vince Quevedo, senior lecturer; Kathleen Rees, associate professor; Lois Scheyer, assistant professor; Carol Thayer, professor; Rose Marie Tondl, associate professor; Barbara Trout, associate professor; Diane Vigna, senior lecturer; and Wendy Weiss, associate professor.

The individual awards each carrry a $3,500 stipend. The departmental award provides $25,000 for use in further enhancing instructional programs within the department.

KAREN KUNC in her Woods Hall studio. Photo: Richard Wright

Artist Kunc Sees Awards as Validating Creativity

By Kelly Bartling, Public Relations

Honored in February as the 2000 Governor's Arts Awards Artist of the Year, University of Nebraska-Lincoln art professor Karen Kunc's creativity has propelled her to the height of her career, and she is enjoying every minute of it.

The award, a surprise, she said, helped "validate" her work­a signal from others to "keep doing what I have been doing."

"My sketchbooks are pieces of paper that I keep circulating and mixing up and keep refiling in a very loose file. There are so many ideas in there," she explained. "I have thought 'I would love to make this image or that image' and just never get to them. I go on to other things."

Inspirations come from observations of nature, a fleeting thought, a random movement.

Kunc's medium is reduction wood cut print, a process that works in negative and in stages. Using a variety of tools to extract layers of wood, creating patterns and strokes and lines, the technique prints in stages, color by color. Time-consuming and challenging because of its extractive nature, Kunc describes her art-making as ranging between chaotic and eloquent; mental vs. physical.

Kunc's prints are bold, dramatic, calculatedly puzzling.

"My work is actually very recognizable. People know my work and they know what it looks like," she said. "I can't make it look like anything else. It's actually a wonderful attribute to have something that's very unique-looking, very striking in color and arrangement, and in medium."

Kunc is a Nebraska native, and proud. Born in Omaha, she said she "always knew" she wanted to be an artist.

"I knew before I was in kindergarten I would be an artist," she said in her makeshift printing studio at Nelle Cochrane Woods, surrounded by metal plates, etchings, paper, vibrant colors, and her characteristic prints. A degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1975 led to a Master of Fine Arts degree from Ohio State University. It was there she developed her unique style of woodcut printmaking. She came back to Nebraska and joined the faculty in 1983, partly out of longing, partly of necessity in finding a job niche that allowed her to create, explore, do and learn.

"Nebraska is my home and I have that real sense of pride of being here. It's a loyalty, it's crazy, I know. I can't help it."

Settled on a remote farmstead near Avoca with her artist-husband Kenny Walton, a glassblower, Kunc expresses her joy about home, place, heritage, isolation and "particularity," in her works, a critic said.

Kunc, widely traveled, exhibited, and often referred to as a master in her field, sees the good and bad that come with her choice to keep Nebraska as her home.

"I feel like I've always been able to have the best of both," she said. "I get to have the kind of life I want to have here, and then I get to go to all those places, but I don't have to live there. I can always come home."

Kunc's work has earned her the ability to travel, study and exhibit in numerous corners of the world: the Czech Republic, Italy, Iceland, Finland, Poland, Japan and Bangladesh. She has had visiting professorships at the University of California, Berkeley, was a research fellow and lecturer at the Kyoto Seika University; guest professor at Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in Reykyavik; participated three times in the UNL Study Abroad program at the Santa Reperata Graphic Art Centre in Florence, Italy; and won the Fulbright Scholar Award for research travel to Finland.

The presenter of more than 60 one-artist shows throughout the world, she has had exhibitions throughout the United States: New York, Lubbock, San Francisco, Honolulu, Washington, San Antonio, Omaha, San Francisco, among others; and throughout museums and galleries abroad: Munich, Moscow, Prague, Reykyavik and Lyubljana, Sarajevo, Vilnius, Quebec, Toyko, Taipei.

"I go for the experiences: creativity, ideas and inspiration. Certainly, I do go for many levels of reasons and one is the artistic connection, and that's been wonderful," she said. "And then the travel. That's my time to just let my eye absorb and see how the rest of the world lives."

Kunc learned long ago that the secret to her happiness is to remain challenged. She teaches because it is difficult, she said; and she has grown to love it.

Looking back at her career, she sees mileposts. They are in the works completed that were different, reaching.

"My art gets better all the time," she said, reflecting, but looking to the future. "It always has a profile like peaks and valleys, and there are pieces that I know were very important that I will always go back to as highlights. But I can't make that work again.

"I've traveled too many miles. I've lived way too much."

Michael Josephson, Character Counts! founder, waits to be introduced before a news conference in the Nebraska Union Auditorium.

Six Pillars of Character Universal Starting Point

Character Education Called Part of University's Duty

By Kim Hachiya, Public Relations

Michael Josephson knows that selling character education on a college campus is a tough job. As a former law professor, he knows that some faculty take a cynical view, see character education as someone else's purview or think that by the time students are 21, values and character are set in marble.

Still, his arguments for why universities should be involved are highly persuasive and he brought those arguments to campus Feb. 28 during day two of a three-day conference on character education sponsored by the university and by 4-H/Cooperative Extension.

As the founder of the Josephson Institute for Ethics, Josephson talked about the institute's premier program, Character Counts. Established in 1993, Character Counts promotes six "pillars" of character, which Josephson said are universal values prized by all cultures since history was recorded. They are trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, citizenship and caring.

Universities have cast a jaundiced eye on character education, he said, because some are suspicious about whose values will be taught.

"But which of these six pillars are you uncomfortable with?" Josephson asked about 150 faculty and staff assembled in the Nebraska Union auditorium. "The fact that you have influence over young people means your influence should be fully dimensional. If a young person leaves your classroom and has adopted a more trustworthy attitude, wouldn't you feel good about that? That's a far greater legacy to impart than any set of facts."

Character education is responding to a need, Josephson said, adding that it does not dilute the academic mission of a university to respond to a public desire for education in this arena.

Josephson said that the most significant period of moral development in people's lives occurs between ages 17 and 23, not coincidentally the traditional college-age years.

But, he said, for the most part universities strive to be "values neutral," a stance which he said is a significant values judgment and turns out to be say that values are negative.

"But we exude values through our actions; everything we do conveys our values," he said. "As educators we should be proactive because you never know when you are going to reach someone or when you are touching a life."

He related a story about how a man whom Josephson does not remember meeting told him that their conversation changed the man's life. Josephson said that was troubling to him until he realized it indicated how powerful actions, words and behaviors can be for people.

The Character Counts program, he said, provides a structure or framework for character education, but even absent that structure, character can be modeled and taught.

"Don't try to rate and measure character. Rather encourage, affirm and prize it. Set up an environment where people of character flourish."

During a news conference earlier in the day, Josephson said he was impressed by the unique efforts made by the University of Nebraska to spread the Character Counts message.

"Our theory is not to invent a delivery system for our message but to integrate our message into existing systems, like 4-H," he said.

Nebraska is fertile soil for the message, he said, because the values resonate and ring true. But powerful external messages can override tradition, he said, which is why character education is necessary.

"Don't take it for granted; we need to be vigilant, not complacent," he said.

"The University of Nebraska has said character development is a central part of its mission; no other university has been as actively involved," he said.

At the news conference, Lincoln Mayor Don Wesely said the city has embraced the program because the universal values help bring people together during a time when arguments about values tend to drive people apart politically.

Chancellor James Moeser said finding common ground on values is a way to help return civility and respect to conversations and controversies.

Tribal Representatives, University Near Accord

Native American Memorial Plans Moving Forward

After a final round of input from tribal representatives, a Native American memorial at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln could be under construction by summer.

The memorial will be located near the Nebraska East Union in an area of lawn surrounded on three sides by redbud and spruce trees. Plans call for constructing a circular path of stones and a low stone seating wall set into the circle's arc with an area of grass in the center.

The university began soliciting input in 1998 from tribal representatives, spiritual leaders, members of UNITE (University of Nebraska Inter-Tribal Exchange) and Native American students on campus. Letters requesting comment were sent to tribal representatives in February and September 1999. Preliminary design sketches were included in the September mailing.

A revised design was developed based on these recommendations. The latest plan was mailed to tribal leaders Feb. 28.

"We hope that after this final comment period, which ends April 3, we can finalize the design plans and begin construction this summer," said Priscilla Grew, NU coordinator for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Japanese Agricultural Trainees Learn In Nebraska

By Sandi Alswager, IANR news assistant

Seventeen students from Japan are learning about American agriculture and culture as they participate in a three-month-long Japanese Agricultural Training Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Marilyn Stadler, JATP program coordinator, said the program is unusual in that it combines cultural and academic elements.

"I plan opportunities for the trainees to meet and talk with Americans. They get to experience what they are learning about by visiting farms and agricultural businesses and talking to farmers and business people," she said. "They also are given opportunities to meet students and other Americans."

During the program, students take classes in animal science and agricultural economics and participate in meat, live animal and computer labs. Field trips are another important part of the program with one trip per week planned to local farms and trips to Kansas City and the Sandhills.

Tom Konecky's small, family-owned dairy farm is one of the stops the JATP students will make. Konecky, who has been letting the Japanese students visit his farm for more than 30 years, said they learn more by visiting a smaller farm than a larger one. Most farms in Japan are very small-scale, he said.

"For some of the students, it has some real value," Konecky said. "It is always interesting to talk and visit with the students."

The program's participants are 21 to 29 years old. Some are high school graduates, while others are college graduates, most with a two-year agricultural degree.

One Nebraska trainee, Hiroshi Nishi, 26, said the program has been "wonderful" so far.

"Everything looks like a dream, but it's not," he said referring to the United States' vast size.

Nishi's parents run a beef farm in Japan. He said he didn't have a lot of knowledge about beef and agriculture and wanted to learn more so he can help his parents.

"I wanted to go to the United States. I need more experience," he said.

Hisanori Yokota, 22, said a lot of differences existed between the United States and Japan, including size.

Yokota's parents have a four-acre rice farm in Japan and own three beef cattle. The Illinois farm on which he worked during the 18-month work/training phase of the program had 6,500 acres and 1,500 head of cattle.

"Everything is big. Big tractor, big combine," he said.

From his training in the United States, Yokota hopes to run a beef ranch someday, he said.

While at UNL, the students also learn the technical vocabulary of animal science and agribusiness in English and learn more about American agriculture.

Participants live with host families and meet other Americans. Potluck dinners, school visits, church visits, weddings and funerals are some cultural events they experience, and the students celebrate holidays and birthdays that occur during the program.

During the students' last week at UNL, they present a comprehensive "Future Farm Plan," which puts their learning into a personal plan that will be used for their future in farming.

The JATP program, in its 33rd year, has trained 1,387 young men at the UNL campus in livestock production skills. The three-month animal science and agribusiness course at UNL is just one part of the two-year JATP program.

Trainees arrived in the United States at the end of June 1998 to begin their two-year stay. The program consists of three formal school phases with two on-the farm work/training experiences.

During the 18-month work/training phase, there is a three-month school break in the winter months where students interested in beef, dairy, poultry and swine livestock training go to UNL. The students' visit to UNL will end in early April.

Numerous trainees return to Japan to improve their family farms, begin new operations or find success in various fields of agriculture or business. Many trainees have returned to UNL and completed undergraduate or graduate degrees.

The JATP program is administered and coordinated at UNL by the Division of Continuing Studies Department of Academic Conferences and Professional Programs.

List of tour dates:

Feb. 25 - NU Research and Development Center, Mead; Konecky Dairy, Wahoo; Knobbe Feed Lot, Seed Enterprises, West Point; Waubaum's Poultry and Eggs, Wakefield; MPM Dairy, Wakefield;

March 8 - Excel, Schuyler; Wagonhammer Bulls, Albion; general small town visit, Erickson;

March 9 - Fred Morgan, Switzer Ranches, Burwell; popcorn production, North Loup;

March 10 - Pioneer Village, Minden; USDA-ARS United States Meat and Animal Research Center, Clay Center;

March 24 - DeTu Farm, Beatrice.