Electrical engineering professor John Boye examines a problem in class with student Eric Penne. Boye earned the honor of 2000 CASE Nebraska Professor of the Year.

Boye Honored as CASE Nebraska Professor of the Year

Teaching, Love of Math Inspire NU Alumnus

By Kim Davis, Public Relations

As an UNL undergraduate in 1964, John Boye remembers the dirt parking lot located where the Walter Scott Engineering Center now stands. In the middle of the lot was a small shack occupied by a man who raised chickens.

"The challenging thing about parking there was trying to avoid hitting one of the chickens," Boye recalled, reflecting on a memory that seems far removed from the NU campus and technology of today.

After nearly 30 years at the University of Nebraska, Boye, associate professor and interim chair of electrical engineering, has been honored for his teaching and influence on students. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching this week named him the 2000 Nebraska Professor of the Year, out of 16 nominees from the state.

"Wow," was Boye's reaction. "I knew I was a candidate, but I didn't really expect that I would get it, so I was very pleased, very happy."

As a student at Lincoln Southeast High School, Boye said his favorite class was math.

"I had a couple of really good math teachers. I was good in math and I liked math." He said when he came to UNL, he knew he wanted to study a math-related subject and that turned out to be electrical engineering. Boye said the teaching bug bit him when he had a chance to instruct labs as an undergraduate.

He received his bachelor's in electrical engineering in 1968, and his master's in 1973, and left Nebraska to work for the Hughes Aircraft Co. in Culver City, Calif., for one year. He returned to Nebraska in 1974 and earned his doctorate at NU in 1984. He was an instructor all the while, from 1970-72 and 1974-84, a visiting assistant professor from 1984-85, an assistant professor from 1985-91 and and associate professor and assistant chair from 1992-2000, becoming interim chair in July. He is also the author of a history book on the department.

Over his 29-year career at the university, he has taught more than 4,000 electrical engineering students. His teaching philosophy is simple.

"I try to look at the material as if a student looking at it for the first time," he said. "What am I assuming that the student may not understand or may not have the background enough to assume? Bringing forth the potential of our students outweighs most anything else that I can do. It is what will have the most lasting effect."

His approach to the complex subject has earned him a reputation with his students.

"I've had a lot of teachers that were always really smart, but weren't very good at relating the information to students," said Christopher Lawson, a senior engineering major. "Dr. Boye made it easy to follow and he talks to you as you're a person. He actually interacts with the class."

Boye said teaching excellence depends on three things: "...Thorough preparation, understanding that learning is dependent on building on previous knowledge, and sensitive, aware and dedicated relationships with students both in the classroom and one-on-one." Boye also has contributed to curriculum changes in the department by developing numerous courses and labs.

Boye said he can't think of a better job and he enjoys the student interaction. Because many take several of his classes, he gets to know them well.

"The hardest part of my job occurs twice a year and that's in December and May when students graduate and leave. I hate to see them go," Boye said. But he does take a lot of satisfaction in the successes his students have once they leave Nebraska. "Generally speaking, (the graduates) will go to larger companies like Intel, Motorola or perhaps power companies like NPPD, OPPD, LES."

In addition to this most recent honor as 2000 Nebraska Professor of the Year, Boye has also received numerous awards in his career, including the University of Nebraska Distinguished Teaching Award in April 2000 and Outstanding Departmental Faculty Awards for 1999-2000 and several other previous years.

"The university is very pleased and proud that Professor Boye has been recognized for his teaching skills," noted interim chancellor Harvey Perlman. "His recognition emphasizes again that quality teaching remains an important ingredient in the UNL experience."

The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education established the Professors of the Year program in 1981 and works in cooperation with the Carnegie Foundation and various higher education associations in the award's administration. CASE is the largest international association of educational institutions, with nearly 2,900 colleges, universities and independent elementary and secondary schools. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, a policy center in Palo Alto, Calif., is devoted to strengthening America's schools and colleges.

Glacier Bay Lakes Shed Light on Lake Aging Process

By Tom Simons, UNL Public Relations

For years, many ecologists have thought that the natural aging process for a lake is for it to become more nutrient-rich over time, eventually filling with sediment and turning into a bog or wetland.

That sequence, however, is not always the case, according to research published by University of Nebraska-Lincoln geoscientist Sherilyn Fritz and three other scientists in this week's issue of Nature, the international weekly journal of science.

Fritz and her colleagues studied lakes that have formed following the melting of glaciers in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska.

"Three hundred years ago, ice still covered the tail end of this long fjord system, but since then the glaciers have been retreating northward, exposing new landscapes," Fritz said. "Today you have places abutting the margin of the ice that are only a few years old and places at the mouth of the bay that are several hundred years old. What we did was we compared lakes along this so-called 'chronosequence,' or age sequence, to see how they aged or changed.

"In this part of the world it's clear that lakes actually become more acid over time, so the natural sequence is to go from alkaline waters to more acidic waters."

A major significance of the finding that lakes can become more unproductive over time, Fritz said, is it provides another way for scientists to measure how human activity is affecting the world around us.

"In the 1960s and '70s, probably the biggest environmental issue with respect to lakes was the nutrient enrichment of them because of human activity," Fritz said. "One of the arguments made under the standard model was that all lakes become more nutrient-rich as they age, so what we were doing as humans in terms of clearing landscapes, applying fertilizers and putting sewage into water bodies, was just sort of accelerating a natural process. I think we need to understand whether or not that is really the case.

"If we're going to understand how we as humans have modified landscapes, we need to understand natural processes and how the landscape changes in our absence. We see the climate warming and we need to know what portion of it is due to human activities and what portion of it is due to natural causes."

Fritz said the study published in Nature, "Chemical and Biological Trends During Lake Evolution in Recently Deglaciated Terrain," also contributes to scientific knowledge about what happens to landscapes after a disturbance. She said it adds to work done by other scientists studying landscape recovery following the eruption in 1980 of the volcano Mount St. Helen's in Washington State, and following the large fires that have burned in the western United States in recent summers.

"What geologists and others who work at long-term processes do is try to figure out what are the natural factors at play and what is the human overprint on top of those processes," she said. "All this is trying to model what landscapes do and help us predict what will happen to them."

Fritz said the study was based on research performed over three summers in the early 1990s with two former fellow graduate students at the University of Minnesota, Daniel Engstrom and James Almendinger, now of the Science Museum of Minnesota's St. Croix Watershed Research Station. The study's fourth author is statistician Stephen Juggins of the University of Newcastle in England.

New UNL Home Page Up and Running

Visitors to the UNL Web page will find a colorful new look, more fresh and frequently updated information "up front," and some new high-tech features after a redesigned and revamped homepage went on line Nov. 11.

Designed to meet site visitors with fresh content and news from UNL, the original punch list has been replaced with a screen displaying feature items from "today" and "the week ahead." The punch list links have been redirected to the top of the Web page on interactive file folder, or navigation bar headings.

New features include a Web cam that shows the Nebraska Union Memorial Plaza and Broyhill Fountain, updated every 60 seconds, and several 360-degree virtual reality scenes from campus.

Also on the front page:

o Immediate weather update and forecast including a National Weather Service link.

o Quick links pull-down menu

o Site-search, full search and e-mail search functions

o Rotating art and graphics celebrating Nebraska's history and culture, and a color palate of red, cream and gold.

In addition, many of the top-level layers have been updated with a goal of being user-friendly, newsy, informational and interactive, giving visitors to the Web site more easy information and more reasons to stay on the site and visit it often.

Improvements and additions to the Web page will continue.

The new Web address is: http://www.unl.edu/unlpub/in dex.shtml, but continues to be accessible at http://www.unl.edu.

Law professor Peter Hoffman returns to Montenegro as part of a three­year international exchange project.

Law Professors Offer Hand to Montenegrans

By Kim Hachiya, Public Relations

Ever a globetrotter, law professor Peter Hoffman is set to pack his bags again, this time for Montenegro, one of the provinces that once comprised Yugoslavia.

Hoffman is the College of Law's contact with a three-year international exchange project with a law school in Podgorica, Montenegro. The program, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, is administered by the American Bar Association's Central and East European Law Initiative.

The goals of the exchange are to help former Soviet-dominated countries establish a system of law distinct from former socialist policies, to help train lawyers to be more zealous advocates for clients, especially in human rights, and to help these countries implement commercial law as they move toward market economies.

Hoffman said Montenegro, like many European countries, has an inquisitorial system of law where judges ask the questions and direct the investigations rather than the adversarial system used in the United States where lawyers are more in control. The difference is the source of law, he said. Montenegran law relies heavily on statutes, rules and regulations; American law is case-based, with precedents set by individual cases governing how cases are decided.

Hoffman visited the country in September and taught some classes on negotiation and developing case theory. He was supposed to return in October, but the elections in nearby Yugoslavia in which former leader Slobodon Milosovic was ousted, caused some tensions, so the trip was postponed. He plans to return in December.

"I saw this as a chance to help a country in desperate need of help," he said. "Montenegro is trying to break free of the Milosovic government. It also gives us a chance to see a civil law system in action."

As part of the program, UNL professors and students will participate in exchanges with Montenegran professors and students over the next three years. The program makes heavy use of translators, he said, although many Montenegrans know rudimentary English.

One sharp difference in legal training is that in Montenegro, law preparation is an undergraduate endeavor, he said.

"Lots of people who get legal training do not ever become lawyers," he said.

One goal is to develop a legal system that's more compatible internationally, Hoffman said. While the populace is well-educated, the current training model is probably not very effective in training lawyers for new democracy, he said. Developing practical legal skills, updating curricula, gaining Internet access, modernizing library administration and developing stronger student associations are some outcomes the program hopes to attain.

Hoffman said Montenegro is a beautiful country of some 750,000 residents. The country is mountainous and somewhat undeveloped with Adriatic beaches, stone houses and medieval walled cities. It was a distinct country until World War I when it fell under the sphere of Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union.

He predicts the country will become a tourist destination once its politics have stabilized.

While he felt safe during his September visit, the United States does not have a representative in Montenegro. "So you are at some peril," he said. Still, there are few overt hostilities toward Americans and the country seems eager to get on with the process of joining the 21st century.

Montenegro is the seventh country that Hoffman has taught in during his career, including a stint in Palau, where he served on the territory's Supreme Court from 1994-96.

"I really like seeing how other countries solve problems and live," he said. "I live the insight into other cultures. And I enjoy the food!"

Hoffman said he's interested in understanding how other people solve the kinds of problems that "cut across all cultures." The problems are the same but solutions differ, he said.

"It teaches you a certain humility. Every society has its virtues and faults. Every legal system has its virtues and faults. One needs to approach these things with an open mind and put away ideas that our culture is superior. If you go in with that attitude, your assistance is rejected pretty quickly."

Hoffman said he learns much from his overseas experiences.

"I always feel that I come back with more than I've given. I get a different perspective on my own culture. It's very easy to fall into a smugness until you look at (American) culture from outside," he said.

Other UNL faculty assisting with the program include Brian Lepard, Kevin Ruser (shown at right) and Matt Schaefer, Hoffman said. Ruser is attending a meeting in Slovenia in December at which all 10 cooperating Balkan and U.S. schools will be represented.

It's quite an honor to be able to participate in the exchange program, Hoffman said. Other universities involved in the CEELI experience are the University of Idaho College of Law, the University of Baltimore School of Law, the South Texas College of Law and the Chicago-Kent College of Law.

An adult albatross and a chick live in safety on Midway Island.

English Professor Encounters Albatross, Nature on Midway

By Kim Hachiya, Public Relations

In the epic poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's narrator tells of the grief he experienced after his encounter with an albatross.

Luckily, Barbara DiBernard's encounter with albatross was much more positive.

DiBernard, (shown at right), professor of English, spent a week in June 1999 and June 2000 counting baby albatross, thousands of them, as part of a Sierra Club study tour to Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean.

The experience reconfirmed her environmentalist beliefs, fueled her interest in research and has even informed her teaching. Not bad for a vacation picked from the pages of the Sierra Club magazine.

"I feel really connected to the ocean," she said. And as a birdwatcher, she is interested in nature and the lifecycle of birds. When she spotted the ad for the Midway Island study trip in the magazine, she thought, "Hmmm. Okay, that's where I'm going. It's a warm place and it's a time I can go." An e-mail to the organizer brought a quick and enthusiastic response which pretty much sealed the deal in DiBernard's mind.

"I also kind of was thinking of the literary references to albatross. And I'd never seen an albatross, so I thought, well, let's give this a try."

She also was intrigued by the service aspect of the trip, which was to help biologists learn more about the elusive seabirds.

Midway Island, site of a World War II U.S. Navy base, is 1,200 miles from Hawaii and part of its chain of islands. About 150 people live on the three islands that comprise the Midway federal wildlife refuge. On the main island, just 1.8 miles long and 1.2 miles wide, some 387,000 pairs of albatross breed annually. It's also home to a number of other tropical and oceanic birds who use its isolated shores as a safe haven to raise chicks.

Midway's human population consists mostly of U.S. Park Service Rangers, biologists and scientists and some Filipino, Sri Lankan and Thai men who serve as cooks, groundskeepers and fulfill other service positions. Flights come in from Hawaii about once a week, dropping off necessities and people, she said.

A typical day on the island, DiBernard said, involved an early morning swim, meals in the former Naval barracks now serving as housing, and mornings spent catching and banding chicks. In the afternoons, DiBernard and the others in the group helped check nesting sites for other birds on the island. Lectures and other activities filled the evenings.

The young birds, born in February, were getting ready to fledge by June, she said. Adult albatross stand between two and three feet tall and look vaguely like penguins. But they have six- to seven-foot wingspans that make them superior flyers. Adult pairs share the rearing of the chicks. It appears, she said, that one adult will be out for three to five days, flying as far as the Aleutian Islands to feed before returning to regurgitate food for the single chick raised by each pair. At times, both adults will be gone for long periods from the nest, leaving the young birds alone. They are safe because there are no natural predators on the island.

By June, many of the chicks have been abandoned by the parent birds who rely on the chicks figuring out how to fly and swim on their own before taking off for their own five- to seven-year flight at sea before they return to the island to mate and raise young.

"Of course, it's really easy to anthropomorphize, but we saw chicks who seemed to be thinking about leaving. We saw them open these enormous wings and kind of start to learn how to fly," she said. "We saw some make it to the lagoon, where they land on the water and then have to learn how to take off from the water."

Not all make it, she said. DiBernard has a photo of a shark trying to capture a chick, which somehow escaped the toothy jaws.

"As a non-scientist, it was interesting to me to see how labor intensive the biologists' research was," she said. "The scientists were very upfront about how the way they had structured their research would yield certain bits of information but not others. It made me think about concepts of objectivity, because in English, we know that who are are affects how and what we get out of our research. It's interesting to see those similarities between science and the humanities."

DiBernard also spent some time last summer helping a biologist study dolphins in Midway's lagoons. The biologist said she relies a lot on help from study groups because she needs to use a boat to track the dolphins but she cannot drive the boat and make her observations alone. She also uses the study group folks to help her input data into the computer and sort slides, and the fees the study group pay also fund the work.

"The scientists let us know that we really were making an important contribution. I was glad that I was able to help another scholar with her work," DiBernard said.

The learning-by-doing aspect of the vacation was appealing, DiBernard said, and it convinced her that the service-learning projects she uses in her teaching at UNL are helpful.

She's now a fount of knowledge about albatross, red-tailed tropic birds, sooty terns, invasive non-native weeds and trees on Midway, invasive non-native scarab beetles on Midway, the geography and geology of Midway, the behavior of spinning dolphins and a number of other things.

"I learned so much being out there. Yes, I could have learned the same things from reading books, but I wouldn't have had the same learning experience," she said, adding that she doubts she would remember it as well.

She came away with what she calls "the big environmental message." DiBernard has a Zip-loc bag filled with plastic junk, like a toy soldier, a toothbrush, a Bic lighter, bottle lids, barrettes and other assorted things. These items were all regurgitated by adult and immature albatross, she said.

Albatross feed by skimming the oceans' surface and floating plastic is swallowed as eagerly as tiny fish and eels. Only the plastic isn't digested and the birds vomit the stuff back up.

"It was a big environmental message for me. I think now, 'what's going to happen to this when I throw it away?'" she said. "It makes everything seem so global because something that's casually tossed away, like a pop bottle lid, can affect the albatross."