Luschei's gift to endow editor of Prairie Schooner

By Gary Reber, NU Foundation

The inspiration for Glenna Luschei's recent $500,000 gift to benefit the University of Nebraska-Lincoln all started with a brother's love in the form of a $1,500 grant.

Luschei's recent gift to the University of Nebraska Foundation endows the editorship at Prairie Schooner, UNL's literary quarterly, and provides flexible funds to support the publication and encourage literary contributions.

This gift had humble beginnings when the UNL graduate accepted $1,500 from her brother - Lincoln attorney John Stevens Berry - to create her magazine, Café Solo. Thirty-five years later, she can trace her philanthropy to that original gift.

"I was able to return it a hundredfold to the place where it belongs," Luschei (shown at left) said.

The success of her magazine led her to publish more than 40 books since establishing her publishing company, Solo Press. Luschei, herself an accomplished and recognized poet, has published 19 books of poetry and is a poet laureate of the city and county of San Luis Obispo, Calif.

"We are pleased that alumni such as Glenna Luschei support programs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln like the Prairie Schooner," said Harvey Perlman, UNL chancellor. "A literary gem like the Schooner helps define the university as an intellectual and cultural hotspot. Luschei's experience as a staff member for Prairie Schooner during her collegiate days helped shape her career. We are thankful that by her generous contributions, she has ensured a solid financial footing for Prairie Schooner, and also ensured that top editors and contributors are rewarded for their scholarship and commitment to literature and the humanities."

Luschei earned bachelor degrees from the University of Nebraska in English, Spanish, education and philosophy -graduating with high distinction - and a master's degree in English. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa at UNL and was a Prairie Schooner staff member. Her close ties to Prairie Schooner and the creative writing process led to Luschei's gift.

"I wanted to endow Prairie Schooner in its vision, vigor and resources with means to carry on our inspiration, especially since it was (former editor) Bernice Slote who fortified me with her words, 'You will be heard' and (retired professor) Robert Knoll who made me know that literature was the most exciting thing in the world," Luschei said.

Luschei also cites family ties when explaining her gift. Her great-grandfather arrived in Red Cloud in a covered wagon and was voted into the Nebraska Legislature. Her grandfather, John Stevens, helped dig sod for his home, read law and became a practicing attorney in Beaver City. He also published a newspaper in Edison. It was at his print shop that Luschei first developed her fascination with the printed word. Her love for the small Nebraska town led to her master's thesis on the work of Nebraska writer Wright Morris. Her uncle Wade Stevens was a lawyer in McCook and was the state's first commercial aviator, and Luschei's mother taught school in a one-room schoolhouse in Arapahoe. Luschei delivered her first child, Linda Glen, in an apartment on G Street in Lincoln.

"With all these memories, how could I not give back to Nebraska?" Luschei asks.

Her gift creates the Glenna Luschei Endowed Editorship for the Prairie Schooner and the Glenna Luschei Fund for Excellence at the Prairie Schooner. A portion of the income from her endowment will provide a stipend to supplement the editor's salary at Prairie Schooner. The other income from her gift will provide flexible funds to train, encourage and reward staff and contributors of the publication. It also creates the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Awards to be given annually for outstanding poetry or prose by a contributor to Prairie Schooner.

Prairie Schooner is a literary quarterly of national and international renown. As the oldest American literary quarterly west of the Mississippi River, the magazine has published the works of eventual best-selling authors, Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners, including authors Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz. It serves as a venue for creative writing in the form of fiction, poetry, essays and reviews.

Hilda Raz, professor of English and editor in chief of Prairie Schooner, said the gift helps the publication, which celebrated its 75th year in 2001, build on its success.

"Glenna's philanthropy not only assures Prairie Schooner another 75 years and more of continuing vibrant life but makes possible creative and interdisciplinary projects previously impossible to publish," Raz said.

PrairieFire computer revs up research capacity

PrairieFire, a 256-processor computer installed this week in a new University of Nebraska Computer Science and Engineering facility in Lincoln's Miller and Paine building, brings one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world to Nebraska.

This machine is estimated to perform computations at a peak rate of 250 GFlops (250 billion floating point or arithmetic operations per second), and will contain more than 100 gigabytes of collective RAM and 2 terabytes of collection hard drive storage - enough to store every book in the Library of Congress. The machine is 400 times faster than a Pentium III desktop PC.

The system will be dedicated to collaborative scientific computation, with priority going to research that would otherwise have been impossible to conduct using other Nebraska resources.

The Research Computing Facility, a campuswide entity that supports researchers in developing scalable, high performance code, will administer this machine. This cluster will augment and complement an existing 32-processor system. The latter machine is a more traditional architecture, consisting of a single integrated operating system, while PrairieFire is a cluster, meaning many otherwise independent machines are networked closely together via a high-speed interconnect.

"Conceptually, it is similar to the difference between a console and a component stereo system," said David Swanson, coordinator at the Research Computing Facility. "The former is easier to install and use; the latter is more powerful."

Faculty, computer vendors and students completed the installation this week of the system, which consists of six refrigerator-sized racks of machinery in the downtown building. Its final cost nears $500,000, and its size is near No. 100 in the "Top 500 Supercomputer sites," an international list by the University of Mannheim and University of Tennessee (viewable at <www.top500.org>).

The challenge in using PrairieFire is keeping each processor busy doing useful work and minimizing the cost of transferring information among the computers that comprise the system, said Rich Sincovec, Computer Science and Engineering chairman.

"Computer scientists are actively involved in developing algorithms and tools to enable others to solve their problems more easily on PrairieFire," he said. "The goal is to make the hardware details of the underlying architecture transparent to the scientific programmer, much as an Internet browser simplifies searching for information on the World Wide Web. It is a small conceptual step to extend the idea of a computational cluster beyond the walls of a localized machine room to utilizing the abundant computers available via the Internet."

PrairieFire will promote inroads in this emerging area of research, known as grid computing, Sincovec said. It will enable advanced simulation to perform product analysis, design, development, testing and manufacturing in a virtual environment. It will also provide the computational capabilities required to make advances in bioinformatics, crises management, drought risk management, groundwater movement and remediation, combustion, and climate prediction.

A variety of researchers have already begun utilizing cluster computing at UNL, including those studying molecular dynamics computations of RNA folding, electronic structure calculations of novel biological and energetic materials, and machine learning algorithms.

The use of PrairieFire by graduate and undergraduate students will be promoted in coursework, especially in class and research projects involving large-scale simulations and computations as well as in class work involving the installation and administration of these machines.

"As a result, it is anticipated the technology behind PrairieFire will spread rapidly from downtown Lincoln, to the rest of the state of Nebraska, and beyond," Sincovec said.

Most of the funding was secured through a National Science Foundation grant jointly submitted by Information Services and Computer Science and Engineering through the Nebraska EPSCoR office. Substantial funding has also been received from Information Services, the University of Nebraska Foundation, Center for Communication and Information Science, Bioinformatics Research Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Center for Materials Research and Analysis, the Vice Chancellor for Research Office, College of Arts and Sciences, and the College of Engineering. A smaller scale prototype version of PrairieFire is in a former mass spectrometry laboratory in Hamilton Hall (Department of Chemistry).

Lawson, Coffey, Ed Psych Committee to be honored

By Tom Simons, University Communications

Merlin Lawson, dean of graduate studies and of international affairs, and Bonnie Coffey, executive director of the Lincoln-Lancaster Women's Commission, and the Department of Educational Psychology's Ethnic Minority Affairs Committee will receive chancellor's awards during the university's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday ceremonies.

Lawson and Coffey will receive the fifth annual Chancellor's "Fulfilling the Dream" Awards, given to those from the campus and Lincoln who have helped fulfill King's mission and goals. EMAC will receive the Outstanding Contribution to the Status of People of Color Award.

Lawson is credited with playing a leadership role in the university's efforts to create a more inclusive student body and faculty. He initiated and led programs such as the Multi-Cultural Teaching Fellowship Program, the Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, the Ronald McNair Program and agreements with traditionally black colleges and universities that have increased minority representation among graduate students at UNL and enhanced the quality of the university's academic and cultural offerings.

In her five years as executive director of the Lincoln-Lancaster Women's Commission, Coffey has been active in alerting citizens and leaders to issues that affect women, including wage inequities, new cases of sexual harassment, teen pregnancies, violence against women, health care concerns, affordable child care and the increase in families headed by single women. Under her leadership, the commission has worked to recognize the accomplishments of women. She also developed the "Show Me the Money" program for women entrepreneurs, which provides technical resources and information for women to start their own businesses or expand their present ones.

Since its formation in 1976, EMAC has recruited people of color into programs within Teachers College. It has also provided special support services to focus on retention of students of color, including an active role in the revision of faculty course evaluations within the college to reflect more questions pertaining to instructor multicultural sensitivity. The committee provides support services such as multicultural sensitivity retreats and opportunities for universitywide discourse on issues related to students of color. It has also taken an important role on behalf of advocacy for students of color, taking part in departmental efforts to address issues regarding actual or perceived racial inequities.

To attend The Chancellor's King Day Celebration begins at 2 p.m. Jan. 21 in the auditorium of Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery. A reception will follow in the Sheldon's Great Hall.