Michelle Mills is admissions representative for northeast Nebraska. She and other reps travel thousands of miles each year to recruit students to UNL.

Admissions reps on the road again

By Andy Schadwinkel, Admissions Marketing Specialist

You thought the commute in Lincoln was bad. As part of her daily grind, Michelle Mills, UNL admissions representative for northeast Nebraska, travels hundreds of miles for high school visits and college fairs in her assigned region. To her, the drive from home to campus is a piece of cake.

Eleven red-clad representatives, referred to as "reps," will log thousands of miles this year, crisscrossing the state and beyond to cover territories varying from the Nebraska Panhandle to the metropolitan Dallas area.

Most reps are based on campus. Others are part-time university employees who recruit for the national team in their home area. In the heart of the fall recruitment season, which runs from Labor Day to Thanksgiving Day (spring recruitment is February through April), these reps are the face of the university to high school seniors. For Mills and fellow rep Kelley Winter, who covers southeast Nebraska, it's time to hit the road.

"I leave Monday mornings and try to get back to the office on Friday. Three visits a day, plus three Sunday college fairs during the semester. Just me and my Chevy Malibu," said Mills, who's been a recruiter for 15 months.

Breakfast is a Diet Mountain Dew or Diet Coke. Maybe a bagel. Almost always, it's eaten on the way to the first visit, 10 minutes or two-and-a-half hours away, depending on the day. Lunch is fast food. Exercise and free time are minimal. Family is for weekends and calling cards only, unless they're on the way to the next visit. Life is behind a wheel - and in front of a crowd. Reps will see anywhere from five to 50 students at a time, an average of 1,100 students each semester. Sometimes they meet for an hour, sometimes just 20 minutes. The venues include auditoriums, classrooms, lunchrooms and hallways. It all depends on the school and the guidance counselor.

Winter, who has held her job for two years, has favorite schools on her list. "I like going to Friend and Daniel Freeman (high schools) because the guidance counselors are very supportive. It also helps when students have a lot of excitement for UNL - and questions to ask," Winter said.

To keep tabs on interested students, reps carry pre-printed information cards for those already in the Admissions Office database so students don't have to waste time re-entering information already on file. Of course, reps also pack blank cards for new inquiries, plus hundreds of scholarship pieces, travel-sized viewbooks and the all-important applications for admission. Reps personally contact students who show interest an average of seven times a semester through postcards, letters, phone calls, e-mails and notes in campus visit packages.

"If a student asks for something specific such as info on a major, I take notes and send the information to them once I return to the office," Mills said. "I also make sure I take along materials on things like housing, Greek life and Honors, too. This year, we're giving out book covers, which have been a hit."

More publications mean more weight in the reps' hard-sided carryall bags.

Even after lugging their slightly lighter bag out of the day's last visit, the work isn't done. Reps spend evening hours checking their office e-mail and voicemail and writing postcards to students, thanking them for the visit. When it's time for bed, it's time to start thinking about the next day's trip.

"I think we'd all tell you that working with the students, helping them understand the opportunities at the university, is the best part about this job. And like Michelle said, travel season is never boring," Winter said.

As long as you don't mind the commute.

Number of minority-owned businesses growing

But they are underrepresented among state's population

By Tom Simons, University Communications

Although the number of minority-owned businesses in Nebraska increased rapidly in the 1990s, they continue to be underrepresented in comparison to the state's level of minority population and national rates of minority business ownership.

Writing in the October issue of Business in Nebraska, economist Charles Lamphear used the most-recent data available from the U.S. Bureau of the Census to show that the number of minority-owned businesses in Nebraska increased by 48 percent to 4,678 from 1992 to 1997 while employment in those businesses increased by 142 percent to 8,558.

Further, the percentage increase in the number of minority-owned business was four times the total state increase in nonfarm businesses for the period, and the employment increase was eight times the state rate.

Lamphear, director of UNL's Bureau of Business Research, said African Americans owned the largest number of minority-owned businesses in the state in 1997 with 1,565, up 16 percent from 1992, while the number of Hispanic-owned businesses increased 25 percent to 1,437. Businesses owned by American Indians/Alaska Natives and by Asians/Pacific Islanders were counted together by the Census Bureau in 1992 for a total of 670. In 1997, there were 877 businesses owned by Asians/Pacific Islanders and 799 owned by American Indians/Alaska Natives.

The businesses in 1997 were concentrated geographically in Dawson, Douglas, Lancaster, Sarpy and Scotts Bluff counties. They were spread across the spectrum of industries, but there were some concentrations by industry, as Hispanics owned 58 percent of the 408 minority-owned construction firms, African Americans owned 48 percent of the 2,097 minority-owned service industry firms, and Asians/Pacific Islanders owned 43 percent of the 354 minority-owned retail trade firms.

However, Lamphear reported, most of the minority-owned businesses were in the smallest business size group, with most firms in each minority group having no employees. Despite the gains of the mid-1990s, minorities (who accounted for 10 percent of the state's population in 1997) owned just 3.4 percent of the state's nonfarm businesses, accounted for 1.2 percent of nonfarm employment, and had 0.4 percent of nonfarm business receipts.

"Nebraska's proportion of minority-owned businesses to the state's minority population was substantially below the national average in 1997," Lamphear added. "If Nebraska's average had equaled the national average ratio, then the total number of minority-owned businesses in 1997 would have been 7,421 instead of the actual number of 4,678 - a 59 percent increase."

Nevertheless, Lamphear said the number of minority-owned businesses in Nebraska will continue to grow.

"In the future, Nebraska likely will see a significant increase in minority business start-ups, especially by Asian/Pacific Islanders and Hispanics," he concluded. "As a result, the state's economy will become increasingly more dependent on the successful growth of minority-owned businesses. To support growth, more attention to innovative policies, programs and strategies likely will be needed to assure that an increasing number of minority-owned business start-ups make it to profitability and sustainability."

Business in Nebraska is the 10-times-yearly newsletter of the Bureau of Business Research.

Jeff Peake, UNO professor of geography and adjunct faculty with the UNL Center for Advanced Land Management Information Systems, performs a prescribed burn of vegetation from constructed wetlands at the ARDC in Mead, where America's Farm is located. These burns allow students to monitor wetland vegetation growth to answer questions such as how to balance agricultural production and environmental benefits, or how to manage wetlands for the public good and receive conservation payments from the Wetland Reserve program.

Watching the corn grow

Internet course offers real-time farming experience

By Charles Flowerday, Conservation and Survey

A new University of Nebraska Internet course that lets students look in on a working farm now offers real-time video of farming operations and natural resources data gathering via a Web-based camera, a much-anticipated feature of the farm.

Using the newest technology to connect them to humanity's oldest industry, "America's Farm" focuses on operations at NU's research farm at Mead and is offered to teachers of science, social studies and vocational agriculture as curriculum development. The course finished its second full semester last spring after a fall semester with a 100-percent completion rate, much greater than most Internet courses, said Paul Clark, grant coordinator for the College of Education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is collaborating on the project with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies.

The class has been used by educators teaching every age from kindergarten to high school, Clark said.

America's Farm is on the 9,500-acre NU Agricultural Research and Development Center near Mead, where CALMIT already conducts much of its research on remote sensing, geographic information systems and agriculture. Funded by a $700,000, three-year grant from NASA, the course also offers views of the farm from aircraft and satellites. Remote sensing involves airborne or satellite imagery, and geographic information systems are computerized means of displaying and analyzing spatial data.

"The idea is to give teachers and their students access to a real, working Midwestern farm and to deliver various kinds of data in a package that teachers can use, all over the Web," said Don Rundquist, director of CALMIT, which helped secure the grant and provides technical assistance. A program of the Conservation and Survey Division and the UNL School of Natural Resource Sciences, CALMIT is UNL's center for remote sensing and GIS.

"In the past, almost everyone in the country knew someone who farmed or knew someone who knew somebody who worked on a farm. Now, it's not like that," said Rick Perk, CALMIT education coordinator.

"It was good for my students to see how the farming community affects the economy of Nebraska. With the decline in the number of farmers, students are not exposed to farming and need to be aware of its influence and different topics that affect farmers," one student said in the course evaluation.

The course has included about 15 students but should eventually accommodate 20-25. Unlike some Internet classes, it is not self-paced, running roughly concurrent with each semester. This was done to facilitate interaction and a sense of community among the students taking it, sometimes lacking in Internet instruction, Clark said.

The class will also be cross-listed through UNL in the future. It is part of a new problem-solving teaching format designed to use open-ended questions as a way to tackle a number of related subjects, Perk said.

These "inquiry-based" scenarios require that students research a problem emerging from farm life or operations, develop questions leading to solutions, acquire and analyze suitable data and generate a set of conclusions. Examples include setting up an airborne imaging project or geographic information system for the farm; using remote sensing to assess crop residue from conservation, or reduced, tillage; soil compaction; irrigation efficiency or pasture quality; using remote sensing and GIS to analyze the spread of weeds; or linking yield results with soils quality. The Web camera also should tie into local climate data and help students see what field looks like under various climatic and cropping conditions, Perk said.

America's Farm also has resulted in a plan to incorporate the nation's first technology track into the curriculum at Mead High School, one of a select group of magnet schools for agriculture in the country. The track would allow students to specialize in high technology such as remote sensing and GIS, Perk added.

"There are about a half dozen agriculture magnet schools across the country, but none has a technology track," Perk said. "We are going to introduce the concepts of remote sensing and GIS through the magnet school and through America's Farm."

With information available to anyone who wants to look at the Web site, Perk said America's Farm was created to educate a public whose children tend to be curious about farms; take advantage of a recent emphasis on computer-assisted, site-specific farming known as "precision" agriculture; explore advances in remote sensing, GIS and global positioning systems; augment the teaching of vocational agriculture; educate producers and farm managers; and explore practical applications of remote sensing.

On the Web The Web site address for America's Farm is: http://ois.unomaha.edu/amfarm/< /B>.

More information Those interested in taking this course should contact UNO's Office of Internet Studies, (402) 554-3839. Conservation and Survey is part of the NU Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Nobel winner Heeger to speak Oct. 10

Nebraska alumnus and Nobel Prize winner Alan Heeger will discuss his landmark research into plastic conductors at 3:30 p.m. Oct. 10 in the Nebraska Union auditorium.

Heeger's lecture, Semiconducting and Metallic Polymers: The Fourth Generation of Polymeric Materials, will be followed by a reception in the Nebraska Union Heritage Room.

Before the lecture, Heeger will receive the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's inaugural Bessey Medal in recognition of his distinguished achievements in the sciences. The medal is named for Charles Bessey, a faculty member and chancellor at the University of Nebraska in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and one of the world's pioneers in botany.

Heeger and two colleagues received the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discovery of plastics that can be altered to become electrical conductors. Heeger's research has applications that range from smart windows that can exclude sunlight to the production of mini-format television screens. His work has also led to advances in the development of electronic components that consist of individual molecules. These will dramatically increase the speed of computers while further reducing their size.

A 1957 graduate in physics, Heeger joined two other University of Nebraska graduates, George Beadle and Donald Cram, as winners of the Nobel Prize.

To attend Alumnus and Nobel Prize winner Alan Heeger will speak at 3:30 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Nebraska Union auditorium.