Honoring Excellence This is the second in a three-part series profiling the winners of the 2002 Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award, the 2002 Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award, and the Universitywide Departmental Teaching Award.

Hilda Raz, English professor and editor-in-chief of Prairie Schooner, is the 2002 winner of the universitywide Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award. She's also a writer and poet and says that while her work is influenced by her life, it's not autobiographical.

Professor's schedule full with writing, teaching, 'Prairie Schooner' and much more

Raz's work rewarded with NU ORCA Award

By Kim Hachiya, University Communications

American poet Robert Lowell was one of the first to use his private life as a subject for his poetry. Among his students is Hilda Raz, whose body of work is drawn from and informed by her own life experiences.

Raz is a writer, an editor, a poet, a mother, a teacher, a wife, a daughter. And her body of work is influenced by the human body. Among her more recent collections: Divine Honors, a book of poetry influenced by her personal experience with breast cancer; Living on the Margins: Women Writers on Breast Cancer, a collection of works that she edited; and Trans, a book informed by her experience as the mother of a transgendered son.

In a reading April 4 for the Humanities in Medicine program, Raz read from all three collections and said she did not expect to discover the "underlayment of medicine" in her work but now sees the parallels.

She's quick to point out that her work is not autobiographical in nature.

"My work is filled with lies and distortions," she said. "It's made work. It's not autobiographical, but it is informed by my experiences. I'm speaking about the unspeakable, maybe the job of the artist."

Raz, professor of English and editor-in-chief of UNL's literary magazine Prairie Schooner, received a universitywide Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award earlier this year. The award, bestowed by the NU Regents, recognizes research and creative activity of national and international significance.

"I write and I have always written; it's been a part of my world since I was very young, and I expect to do it until I die," she said. And Raz the writer is different from Raz the editor. The desire to write is innate, but the editing is a learned skill.

She is only the fifth editor of the 75-year-old literary magazine, and she is pleased to continue its traditions.

"A separation between myself and the magazine exists," she said. "Hilda's Quarterly would be quite different from Prairie Schooner. I'm the fifth editor of Prairie Schooner rather than the first editor of Hilda's Quarterly. Prairie Schooner prevails. It belongs to and is owned by the University of Nebraska.

"I'm fortunate to have inherited a magazine of high tradition and to see it expand, change and bring new writers to our list and to see them triumph."

As editor, Raz makes choices among the thousands of manuscripts sent to Prairie Schooner each year. Each writer, no doubt, is filled with hope that his or her work will earn publication in one of the most prominent and respected literary magazines currently publishing.

"I'm the representative reader, I have weak boundaries," she said of the editing process. "I'm willing to be convinced by a text. I have eclectic taste and the changes in my own taste have reflected changes in wider literary culture.

"The woman who writes has strong opinions," she said. "The woman who reads is eager to give over her opinions to those of others.

"I've been lucky to have a job that challenges my interests and abilities. I'm lucky to work in academia."

Raz's reputation has put enormous demands on her time. She's conducting a program review for the California State University's Consortium MFA program. She sits on the board of Goucher College's MFA program. She teaches in UNL's Ph.D. program in creative writing. This semester, she's teaching Women in Poetry 253A, a class filled with second-semester freshmen, which brings new challenges to her teaching. She sits on the Arts & Sciences' dean's executive committee.

"Every one of these jobs has it own specific, sometimes exclusive requirements. One pleasure in these jobs is being able to adjust to the requirements of each. I bring the same fascination in meeting these new requirements to my work as a writer. The call is different every day. I want to meet that call with the same passion for flexibility, for detail. The challenges of the job inform all my work as an academic writer."

One challenge, of course, is finding time.

"I can't complain. I have this model of my life as being infinitely expandable. I would rather build from a life of many challenges and opportunities than not to have them in my life. I think I'm better suited to a life with many calls."

Her greatest calling is language. "I'm interested in language the way some people are interested in clay or in political systems."

Crisis, such as the diagnosis of breast cancer several years ago, robbed her of her language, she said.

"I make a whole world of talk and suddenly, I grow silent. Because I lost my own language, I began to listen more carefully to others. And I realized their language was trying to convince me of something I didn't believe." At the time, those others were doctors, scientists, clinical writers on cancer and books written from a "survivor" or "victim" perspective, which she rejected.

Instead, she turned to the work of other literary writers, women whose business is language to find a commonality of experience.

"I wanted those voices to help me speak of my experience," she said.

Living on the Margins is the product of that experience.

Writing about crisis seems to be a universal language, she said. Trans grew from but one "crisis" episode she's lived as a parent. She recounts another crisis, her older son's near-death experience in a car wreck.

"My work appears to grow more personal, but it grows less personal as I know more," she said.

But maybe she's ready to move on.

"I'm ready to be led by others' documents and their ways of thinking and making inquiry."

And she's looking forward to an academic leave that starts next fall.

The writing will continue.

"I write," she said. "It's my job."

Love Library celebrates end of renovations

Events are set for April 22 and 24 to mark the $12.6 million, three-year, state-funded renovation project of UNL's Don L. Love Memorial Library, which will be completed this spring.

At 10:30 a.m. April 22, Pepsi and cookies will be served to students in the current periodicals room on the first floor in appreciation for their patience during the renovation. At 11:45 a.m., Mary Ellen Ducey, special collections librarian, will provide a look at the unique treasures of the University Libraries in the library instruction room on the first floor. Visitors are invited to bring a lunch.

Formal rededication and celebration of the renovation begins at 4 p.m. April 24 in the second-floor reading room. The program will feature remarks by dignitaries including Lt. Gov. Dave Heineman, University of Nebraska President L. Dennis Smith, Regent Charles Wilson, M.D., Chancellor Harvey Perlman, Dean of Libraries Joan Giesecke and Truman Scholar Angela Clements.

"By making the Love Library ready for the 21st century and beyond, patrons, collections and the building itself benefit," Giesecke said. "Love Library is now able to change with technological advancements and still remain a comfortable and inviting place for the exchange of ideas, information and knowledge."

The renovation project began in 1999 when project architects The Clark Enersen Partners and contractor Sampson/Shanahan began to address critical deficiencies in mechanical and electrical systems and asbestos abatement. The library now offers a more comfortable climate because of new heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems. The building has also changed with the replacement of the original 1942 elevators, additional restrooms and the installation of fiber optic communications.

Despite the construction work and the fact that several services and collections were relocated, Love Library remained open during renovation. During this time about 1 million materials circulated, and more than 1 million people visited Love Library.

Visitors will also see new signs, fresh paint, improved lighting and new carpeting in the book stacks and public areas. Quiet study space was added with several new group study rooms and a new student reading room that was furnished by the UNL Friends of the Libraries.

Commissioned to create a glass sculpture, Stephen Knapp of Worcester, Mass., pieced together images from the history of the state, university and various cultural symbols of knowledge. The sculpture, "The Crystal Quilt," fulfills the Legislative requirement to spend 1 percent of the renovation budget on art and is a dramatic enhancement to the main entrance.

Don L. Love, former mayor of Lincoln, donated the funds to build the original university library in 1941. After the building's completion, it served as a military barracks during World War II. In October 1947, the building was dedicated as the Don L. Love Memorial Library. Since that time, no other major maintenance work has been done to the original building.

For more information, call the University Libraries Development and Public Relations Office at 472-6987.

Workers get on-the-job training at Utility Plant

By Anne Sumner, Nebraska Department of Education Vocational Rehabilitation

It takes specialized training to run the boilers at UNL's East Campus Utility Plant. Thanks to an on-the-job training partnership with the Nebraska Department of Education Vocational Rehabilitation, the utility plant has found qualified candidates for the jobs over the last 15 years.

"We've worked with Voc Rehab off and on since a couple of supervisors ago," says plant superintendent Glenn Martin. "It's been helpful for both of us we pretty much have to have ongoing training just to keep qualified people in the job pool. So it's worked pretty good."

Vocational Rehabilitation sets up on-the-job training partnerships, or OJTs, with businesses as a way for clients to develop specific job skills, for employers to develop prospective employees, and for both to decide if it's a good match. The business, in this case the university's utility plants, provides training and supervision, while Vocational Rehabilitation covers the trainee's wages and a training fee. Length of training varies according to the job's complexity, and at the end, employers have the option to hire the person.

At the utility plants, the OJTs are set up in two three-month periods. After the first three months, everyone evaluates the situation and decides if it's best to continue. The candidates have worked well, partly because of Vocational Rehabilitation's knowledge of the plants' requirements and ability to recommend appropriate workers. Everyone who has gone through the training has gotten a job there or elsewhere and on average earns $10 an hour.

John Gilbert is one such worker who went through on-the-job training, says Tim Barker, UNL's City Campus Utility Plant superintendent.

"We had an opportunity to try John down here and it worked out well. I put him on the day crew with three other qualified operators and those three trained him on the boiler side, which is our entry-level side of the plant. We do a lot of water testing for all the water chemistries in the boilers, and John seemed to really excel at that."

Including the OJT, Gilbert has been there since March 2000 and is working toward his chief's license.

OJT participant Jamie Stromberg says that without the training and guidance from the Vocational Rehabilitation program, "I'd probably be going from job to job. A lot of employers probably wouldn't have put up with me like that at first."

A few years ago, Stromberg had an aneurysm that resulted in a brain injury; now he struggles with memory loss and insomnia.

"When I do a boiler test, if I need to make an adjustment, by the time I would walk around to the boiler, I'd forget what I was going to turn it to," he said. "So I'd have to make a note and carry it with me all across the plant."

By learning to compensate for his memory loss and getting support from co-workers, Stromberg has become a solid employee. Martin says Stromberg is dependable, eager to learn and interested in what he's doing.

Before trying the OJT in August 2000, Vocational Rehabilitation and Stromberg looked at several options and decided UNL would be the best place to start. He liked the challenge of working with the big units and learning new things. In addition, he had worked as a maintenance supervisor at a fish processing plant on the Oregon coast. He also says the night shift works well because of his insomnia. He has been a utility operator at the East Campus plant since February 2001 and wants to work up to chief.

Dermot P. Coyne, longtime IANR geneticist and George Holmes professor emeritus of horticulture, died April 12. He was responsible for scientific discoveries that have improved foods and helped curb food shortages worldwide.

Coyne, IANR geneticist, dies at age 72

Services were held Wednesday for world-renowned University of Nebraska-Lincoln geneticist Dermot P. Coyne, who died April 12 after suffering complications from a steroid treatment of a non-viral form of hepatitis.

The longtime Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources scientist was internationally recognized for his work on the genetics of disease resistance in dry edible beans.

Coyne, 72, was the George Holmes professor emeritus of horticulture at UNL. As a plant breeder and geneticist for more than 40 years, Coyne's scientific discoveries and improved varieties of beans have been used worldwide to help avert food shortages and curb world hunger.

In the Dominican Republic, for example, Coyne and NU Plant Pathologist Jim Steadman worked with Dominican scientists to control a virus that devastated the country's dry beans, a staple for the poor. Thanks to their non-chemical controls for disease management and new, high-yielding bean varieties, the country is self-sufficient in bean production. Findings from this effort have been adapted in other developing nations.

Friends and colleagues say Coyne was motivated not only by science and discovery, but by the opportunity to improve people's welfare and fight the problems of hunger, poverty and malnutrition.

"His science and his humanity were inseparable," said Vicki Miller, a science writer with IANR who worked with Coyne on many stories over the years.

Stephen Baenziger, UNL professor of plant breeding, credits Coyne with important contributions to both science and education.

"In his hands, the common bean was anything but common. It was a remarkable research species and one that provided producers with income and humanity with nutritious food," Baenziger said. "However, his greatest contribution may be the students he supervised and those he taught in his highly popular classes."

Coyne was dedicated to helping the many graduate students he advised and worked with over the years. He took pleasure in knowing that many foreign students were able to return home and work to improve food production in their own countries.

"There's a great multiplier effect with graduate students and great pleasure in seeing them develop, mature and accomplish great things in their work," Coyne said in an August 2001 article in the Scarlet.

Coyne, who joined the UNL faculty in 1961, retired last summer but continued to work part time until he was hospitalized weeks ago.

Coyne was born in Dublin, Ireland, and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the National University of Ireland before coming to the United States in 1954 at age 25. He got hooked on the science of plant genetics and breeding while doing his doctoral studies at Cornell University. That's where Coyne met and married his wife, Ann, who later became a professor of social work at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Coyne is survived by his wife of Lincoln; seven children, Patrick, Brian, Thomas, James, Catherine, Gerard and Karla; and three grandchildren.