Larissa Schmersal, top, a freshman dance and psychology student, was chosen to participate in the Charles Weidman Centennial performance at the State Capitol Rotunda in October. She was given a Nebraska Young Artist Award in 2000.

Young Artist Awards attract gifted students

By Kathe Andersen, Hixson-Lied College

The Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts is accepting nominations for its Nebraska Young Artist Awards. These annual awards recognize 11th-grade students who are talented in art, music, theater and dance.

As the college begins soliciting nominations for the fifth presentation of these awards, the efforts to recruit these talented students to UNL has shown success.

The awards program began in 1998. Analysis was made of all of the students who were both nominees and awardees in 1998, 1999 and 2000. (Because the award program recognizes juniors, last year's 2001 participants are seniors in high school this year.)

From 1998-2000, 400 students were nominated for Nebraska Young Artist Awards, representing more than 100 high schools across the state. Of those, 218 received Nebraska Young Artist Award recipients during those three years.

Of the 400 nominees, 71 are enrolled at UNL, or 17.8 percent; 34 of the 218 awardees are currently enrolled, or 15.6 percent. Overall, 167 of the 400 nominated either applied and/or have enrolled for at least one semester at UNL, or 41.8 percent.

"While it is impossible to conclude that these students' experiences with the Nebraska Young Artist Awards program was the reason they are at UNL, we feel the awards program is an important opportunity to get these talented students on campus and to learn about the university," said Peggy Holloway, the college's assistant dean for student affairs. "It also gives us the chance to develop relationships with teachers in the arts across the state and to identify students who might be interested in careers in the arts."

High school juniors are nominated by their high school teachers, counselors or private instructors. Nominations are reviewed by UNL faculty. Award recipients are invited to campus with their parents and teachers for a day in April, where they participate in classes, attend a panel discussion on careers in the arts, take tours of the campus, and meet with UNL faculty and students. An awards ceremony concludes the day.

For some Nebraska Young Artist Award recipients, the award program was a deciding factor in their decision to attend UNL.

"It was that event [the Nebraska Young Artist Award Day] that made up my mind to come to UNL," said Tim McCaslin, a BME junior from Broken Bow who was a 1998 award recipient in music. "It was my first extensive contact with UNL. Having the chance to spend time on campus, I really fell in love with it. It felt like it could become home."

McCaslin had moved to Broken Bow from Maryland before his award nomination; the award meant much to him.

"It meant recognition in Nebraska and was one of the higher recognitions I received," McCaslin said. "My mom never had as big a smile as she did that day. I was honored to be a part of it."

Pam Grell, a junior in the College of Architecture from Louisville and a 1998 award recipient, also said her Nebraska Young Artist Award visit helped persuade her to attend UNL.

"I had never really considered UNL as an arts-minded university," she said. "I was considering schools like the Chicago Institute of Art and the Colorado Institute of Art. I had also visited campus for the A Festival. The combination of the two helped me make the decision to attend a university."

The Nebraska Young Artist Award program gives students the opportunity to meet with students and faculty in their area of interest.

"Meeting the staff and students was a big influence because they gave me a first-hand account of the art program," Grell said. "The thing that stuck in my mind the most was when a student told me that the college (of fine and performing arts) was different than, say, the business or arts and sciences colleges in that it is far more intimate. I would be able to have a relationship with the professors and other students."

Larissa Schmersal, a dance freshman from Lincoln and a 2000 award recipient, said it wasn't until she attended the Nebraska Young Artist Awards Day that she considered coming to UNL.

"I was really nervous that day because I knew I would be taking some classes," she said. "I got to meet a lot of people, including [Professor] Lisa Fusillo and a student who is still here now. I hadn't even considered coming here before that."

Schmersal is now pursuing a dual degree in dance and psychology. She was chosen this fall to participate in the Charles Weidman Centennial performance at the State Capitol Rotunda in October.

"I thought attending a really big school would be hard," she said. "But we have a lot of individual attention, and I'm getting to take classes like Modern Dance that I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. Everything is going really well and there are just so many opportunities."

Katie Lundgren, a junior from Morrill who was a 1998 recipient in dance, transferred back to UNL because of family circumstances after starting her career at another university and is now a psychology major in the College of Arts and Sciences. While winning the award did not influence her decision to attend UNL, it was an important achievement.

"I was very honored to be a Nebraska Young Artist Award recipient," Lundgren said. "I felt that I was finally being recognized for all the hard work I had put into dancing and practicing. I was elated that all of the recipients were being recognized. It seems that during high school, sports are what is emphasized and accomplishments outside of sports are not noticed. I felt this award brought needed attention to students who are dedicated and talented in activities not always recognized as important by schools and peers."

Lisa Fusillo, professor of dance, said it is encouraging to see a former Nebraska Young Artist Award winner like Schmersal succeed at UNL.

"When we saw her videotape for the awards program, she was very strong in classical ballet and obviously one of the more talented students," Fusillo said. "Now that she's on campus, she is fulfilling the potential we saw on the videotape. She is excelling both academically and in dance. It's very rewarding to see a talented student that is also very bright gain confidence as she has."

Students, parents and teachers attend a panel discussion that day on careers in the arts featuring faculty and alumni. That discussion is also important to the award program.

"One of the most important aspects of the day is to make sure the students become aware of the dance program and its viability within an academic department," Fusillo said. "We want them to see that getting an education and a degree while continuing to do something in the arts is a reality."

Award nominations High school juniors who are talented in art, music, theater or dance can be nominated for the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts' Nebraska Young Artist Awards. Nominations are due by 5 p.m. Jan. 4. Awards day is April 10. More information and nomination materials are at http://www.unl.edu/finearts/Y AA.html or call 472-9355.

Chemistry Professor Andrzej Rajca stands in front of an inert atmospheric glove box in Hamilton Hall. Rajca and his research partners have created the world's first plastic magnets, after 13 years of investigation.

Chemists produce plastic magnets

By Tom Simons, Uuniversity Communications

Andrzej Rajca cannot repress a broad smile of satisfaction, and who could blame him after his team of UNL chemists created the world's first plastic magnets.

It took 13 years of painstaking investigation, but Rajca, a professor of chemistry; Suchada Rajca, his wife and research partner as a research assistant professor at UNL; and doctoral candidate Jirawat Wongsriratanakul finally achieved success earlier this year. The results of that research, funded by the National Science Foundation with support from NU's Center for Materials Research and Analysis, were published in the Nov. 16 issue of Science, the weekly journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"There are already known organic magnets, but they are based on crystals of small molecules," Rajca said. "What is unique about this research is this is the first organic polymer that can be said to be magnetic."

A polymer is a large, often chainlike molecule that may consist of repeated linked units of relatively small molecules. An organic polymer is carbon-based and therefore an organic polymer that is essentially a plastic magnet, no metal required.

"This was predicted more than 30 years ago and a large volume of work has been done on this, especially in Japan and Europe," Rajca said. "We have worked on this since 1988 when I was an assistant professor at Kansas State. We essentially made larger and larger molecules with different arrangements of unpaired electrons in order to figure out how to make this polymer. It was a gradual approach, one step at a time."

Rajca, who moved his laboratory to UNL's Hamilton Hall when he joined the Nebraska faculty in 1992, said no one should expect to stick a plastic magnet to a refrigerator door any time soon, however. That's because the magnetic polymers are unstable unless they are in an oxygen-free environment at temperatures below 10 degrees Kelvin (more than 440 degrees below zero Fahrenheit; absolute zero, the point at which all motion stops, is zero degrees Kelvin).

Nevertheless, he said he's relatively confident that the problems of stability and low temperatures can be overcome, if only because his team has already succeeded in proving one of the predictions made by Japanese theoretical chemist Noboru Mataga in 1968.

"Mataga predicted that it should be possible to do it (create organic magnetic polymers). He also predicted that it can be done at room temperature," Rajca said. "But theorists are always ahead of experimentalists and although it's possible to predict, it does not mean that we immediately know how to do it."

Rajca said he can only speculate about possible uses for the new polymers if (or when) the problems with stability and temperature are solved. To illustrate the point, he compared his team's discovery to the discovery of the first organic conducting polymers more than 20 years ago by a team that included Nebraska graduate and eventual Nobel Prize winner Alan Heeger.

"At the time they were discovered, people thought they could be made into very light conducting wires that could replace metals as conductors of electricity," Rajca said. "But about 10 years ago, it was discovered that they can actually be used in a completely different way, as light-emitting diodes, and now several companies are actively working on that particular application. It turned out that these conducting polymers are not competitive as conductors.

"The real satisfaction for us at the moment is having made this discovery - that it is possible to make an organic polymer that is magnetic. This is the nature of basic research. We try to go after something completely new, that was not thought possible."

Barbie re-do supports real-life body images

By Kelly Bartling, University Communications

Jan Deeds doesn't hate Barbie.

She just thinks the perky-looking blonde doll should - as today's students would say - "get real."

Deeds leads a "Reconstructing Barbie" workshop that lets students and faculty deconstruct and make over the popular cartoonish doll and at the same time challenge common cultural images of beauty.

"We wanted to free the Barbies. Rescue them and make them look like normal people," said Deeds, assistant director of Student Involvement.

Deeds created the "Reconstructing Barbie" workshop after considering ideas for a hands-on, active program to address body image and self-esteem, media messages, gender stereotypes and sexism.

"Barbie isn't responsible for all of the messages out there today about these issues," Deeds said. "We're not boycotting Barbie. Most of us had Barbies and played with Barbie. But it's empowering to question what is special about us. We have participants make a doll that looks like what and who they are."

While encouraging participants to consider who Barbie is, Barbie-reconstructors can look at themselves as models for the new "real" Barbie and discover their favorite traits.

"We ask them to visualize or get an image of who they are and use adjectives to uncover a wider range of descriptions for beauty," Deeds said. Words like "confident," "secure," "powerful," "nurturing," and "voluptuous" become descriptors. Meanwhile, participants add clay or batting to fill out Barbie, cut and color her hair, change her clothes and make her look more like they look.

"Some of the participants make Barbie have bigger hips and say 'that's OK'. At the same time, they're able to look at Barbie's feelings. It's more than just the physical body."

Participants also write a description for their new Barbie, like "Bold, Black and Beautiful This woman reflects confidence and class," or "my Barbie is curvaceous. She represents beauty, kindness and has a free spirit. She is wise and open-minded. She is loved. She is genuine. She is free."

Deeds said although most workshops participants are women, men come to them, too, where they make over Ken. Today's multi-media image of the male physique is becoming nearly as outlandish as Barbie's, provoking similar body image issues for young men, she said.

Deeds has conducted workshops for student groups and in conjunction with Women's Week or other campus events. She estimates she has used about 200 Barbies, which she gets from thrift shops, although she buys some Kens or Barbies-of-color, which are harder to find. Some student groups have provided their own dolls.

"I'll take donations of Barbies, material, batting, clay, any of that," she said.

Deeds was asked to lead a workshop at UNO and has presented the project to a national counseling organization.

"It's a fun project," she said. "It quickly moves away from Barbie to sources of body image like videos, movies and magazines and how participants feel and why they feel the way they do about their bodies. In a two-hour workshop we won't change a lifetime of negative messages, but we can raise awareness and empower people to make changes."

Universitywide marketing plan launched

By Sharon Stephan, NU Director of Marketing

A new marketing campaign, funded with private dollars through the University of Nebraska Foundation, has been initiated by the University of Nebraska. The campaign, which will support and enhance individual marketing efforts of the four campuses, has four objectives:

a. Enhance the reputation and visibility of the university on a national level to support marketing, recruitment and fund-raising efforts of the individual campuses, alumni associations and the University Foundation.

b. Increase Nebraskans' awareness of and pride in the contributions made to the state by the University of Nebraska

c. Attract non-tax revenues to the university in the form of research grants, contracts and donations

d. Help the campuses attract and retain the highest-caliber students, faculty and staff to enhance the overall quality of university programs and research.

The campaign does not focus on any one campus or program, but promotes the university as a whole. It includes several components:

a. Visual identity: New logos for the university and the individual campuses are the first step in strengthening the overall brand of the university. New identity guidelines are being finalized that will address everything from letterhead and business cards to advertising, campus signage and forms.

b. Tagline and positioning: The new positioning statement for the University of Nebraska is: "We've always been pioneers. It's the frontiers that have changed." The new tagline is: "Pioneering new frontiers." These statements are the foundation for a more consistent and aggressive positioning of the pioneering work that is being done at the university, especially in the areas of medical research, information technology, agriculture, transportation and food safety.

c. Television advertising: Two new 30-second television spots are now running in both in-state and national markets. In keeping with our "pioneering" tradition, these very nontraditional spots for a university. One spot focuses on medical research in cancer vaccines, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The other focuses on technology - specifically on how business leaders helped design the curriculum for the Peter Kiewit Institute and J.D. Edwards (Honors Program in Computer Science and Management). Spots are running during Cornhusker football games nationally, in cable programs in major markets such as Kansas City, Denver, Minneapolis, Dallas and Phoenix, and during news and prime time programs such as ER and West Wing in-state.

d. Public relations and media relations: News articles, broadcast media contacts and increased contacts with influencers will supplement the messages of the TV campaign. Materials for trade shows and events will also carry new graphics and messages. A stronger emphasis will be placed on personal appearances, media relations and participation in national professional meetings and seminars.

e. Radio advertising: An in-state radio advertising campaign will complement the television campaign. Spots will focus on areas of pioneering research.

f. Direct mail: A series of direct mail postcards will be targeted to key audiences nationwide, especially alumni. Direct mail will be timed with other events such as alumni celebrations and recruiting days.

If you have questions about or suggestions for the new campaign, please do not hesitate to contact me at 472 7554 or via email at: <sstephan@uneb.edu>.