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Associate Professor of Entomology Marion
Ellis prepares to
shake off his beard of bees in front of a
hive April 18 at the
bee keeping area of East Campus. Ellis
wore the beard of bees
as part of a demonstration on swarm
biology during his bee-keeping
class.
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Downtown Tech Fair highlights UNL connections
"Making Connections" is the theme of the second
annual
Downtown Technology Fair from noon to 7 p.m. today at
various
sites
Ed McVaney, founder and retired CEO of the J.D.
Edwards Co.
in Denver and founder of the J.D. Edwards Honors
Program and
Kauffman Center at UNL, will speak at the fair's
kickoff luncheon
at noon in the Nebraska Union.
Other
fair events involving UNL are tours of the Kauffman
Center, which
houses the university's J.D. Edwards Honors Program,
beginning at
1:30 p.m., and project displays by seniors of the
Engineering
College from 3-6:30 p.m. in Gold's Galleria, 11th
and O streets.
The university's new "Super Computer"
also will be open
for tours at 3 p.m. at the Lincoln Square building,
13th and O
streets.
The fair also features a trade show featuring
technology businesses,
educational seminars through the afternoon,
and a networking
party.
One seminar,
"Professional Communications in a Networked
Environment,"
will be presented by Jill Morstad and Rich
Evans of the College of
Business Administration and the J.D.
Edwards Honors Program at at
2, 3 and 4 p.m. at Gold's Galleria.
Another session,
"What does the 'New Economy' Mean for
Lincoln's Future?"
will be presented by Chuck Henderson,
executive director of the
University of Nebraska Technology Park.
It will begin at 2 and 3
p.m. at Energy Square.
Degree Grade Rosters Due April 26
Degree grade rosters
identifying May 11 degree candidates
must be returned to the
Graduation Services Office in 109 Canfield
Administration Building
by April 26.
Scarlet
schedule
The last edition of the Scarlet for the academic
year will
publish on May 9. During the summer, the Scarlet will
publish
once a month, on June 6 and July 11. The Scarlet will
resume
publishing weekly on Aug. 22 for the 2002-2003 school
year.
Please submit items for publication to scarlet@unl.edu,
by mail to
321 Canfield Administration Building, 0424, or call
472-8518. Items
must be received by the Scarlet at least one
week before the issue
in which you'd like the information published.
E-news process for e-mail to all
E-News is a weekly compilation of notices distributed to all
faculty and staff and replaces the "e-mail to all"
system. The deadline for submission is 5 p.m. Monday; E-News
is
distributed Tuesday evenings. Submitted items must be sponsored
by
a UNL department, program or organization. No commercial or
personal announcements are allowed. Announcements must have news
rather than opinion content. Submit items to: http://www.unl.edu/e-news.
To view a sample submission, see: http://www.unl.edu/e-news/sa
mple.html.
Previously announced URL links are still
active but the above
are updated links.
Museum Director Candidate to Give Talks
Lawrence J. Flynn, candidate for director of the University
of
Nebraska State Museum, will present two talks during his campus
visit May 6-8.
He will present a scientific lecture from
4-5 p.m. May 6 at
the Nebraska Union and a public talk from
5:30-6:30 p.m. May
7 in Morrill Hall. A public reception will begin
at 5 p.m. before
the lecture. Faculty, staff, students and friends
of the Museum
are invited to attend one or both talks.
Flynn is the assistant director of Harvard University's Peabody
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He has a Ph.D. in geology
from
the University of Arizona in the area of vertebrate paleontology.
His special interests are mammalian systematics, especially Neogene
fossils; biogeography and biodiversity trends; fossil assemblages,
species richness, community change and turnover; patterns of
evolution above the species level; Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrates;
and tooth histology.
Phi
Beta Kappa Dinner May 1
Lawrence Lipking, professor of
English at Northwestern University,
will speak at the Phi Beta
Kappa dinner on May 1 in the Nebraska
East Union. Social hour is at
6 p.m. with the initiation ceremony
at 6:30 p.m. Initiation is
followed by a dinner honoring the
new members. Lipking will speak
after dinner.
Lipking is well-known in the field of
comparative literature,
having founded the program in comparative
literature and theory
at Northwestern. He is a member of the
American Academy of Arts
and Sciences and is the author of many
books and articles. Lipking's
speech topic is "The American
Scholar: Poetic Reflections
on Staying Alive."
The initiation, dinner and talk are open to all. Those who
wish
to come for the talk only should be present by 7:15 p.m.
Reservations for dinner ($18) can be made by calling Monica McBroom
at 472-2891 or Don Jensen at 472-3144.
Lilac Collection Tours offered
The UNL Botanical
Garden and Arboretum will give tours of
the lilac collection at the
Maxwell Arboretum on East Campus
from 12:20-12:50 p.m. May 1 and 8.
The tours are free and open
to the public. The tours will be led by
Emily Levine, grounds
supervisor of UNL Landscape Services on East
Campus.
The lilac display, on the south side of C.Y.
Thompson Library
and part of the arboretum, began in the early
1980s with a donation
from Lola M. Flack to UNL in memory of her
husband, Milton L.
Flack. The collection of lilacs has grown from
the first two
dozen plantings to more than 100 shrubs that
represent seven
species and more than 40 different named cultivated
varieties,
or cultivars.
Participants are welcome to
bring a brown-bag lunch to the
gazebo in Maxwell Arboretum before
the tour begins.
For more information, call UNL Landscape
Services at 472-2679.
Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar April 26
"Nutrient Management in Dryland Systems in Western Nebraska"
will be presented by Jürg Blumenthal, assistant professor
at
the Panhandle Research and Extension Center in Scottsbluff,
at 2
p.m. April 26 in 327 Keim Hall. Refreshments will be served
at 1:30
p.m.
Call JoAnn Collins, 472-2811, for more
information.
Savings
Seminar
UNL Extension Family Economist Kathy Prochaska-Cue
will be
the featured speaker at the University of Nebraska Federal
Credit
Union's free "6 Steps to Six Figure Savings"
Seminar
at 6:30 p.m. May 2 in the Nebraska East Union. Learn how
you
can build wealth by putting a few fundamental principles about
money into action.
This free seminar sponsored by the
credit union. Call 472-2087
to reserve your seat.
UNL Tractor Museum Open House
The Larsen Tractor Museum will have an open house from 1-4
p.m.
May 4. The museum is on the east side of the tractor test
track on
East Campus.
The historic site, built in 1919, was used to
ensure that
tractor manufacturers met their advertised claims of
tractor
performance. The first Tractor Test Lab in the world, it
now
houses the original dynamometer and a collection of tractors,
animal-drawn and man-powered tools.
Ag Econ Seminar April 26
The Department of
Agricultural Economics will present a seminar
featuring Jean D.
Kinsey at 3 p.m. April 26 in the Nebraska East
Union.
Kinsey is professor of applied economics at the University
of
Minnesota. Kinsey is also co-director of the Food Retail Industry
Center and president of American Agricultural Economics Association
2001-02. The title of this seminar is "The Nexus of Farms,
Consumers and Science: New Codes of Conduct for the Food
System."
For more information, call Rocky Nelson,
472-1742.
Americorps
Programs Seek Members
The Nebraska Consortium for Service
Learning in Higher Education
is recruiting new participants for its
two AmeriCorps programs:
Nebraska Teacher Corps and Serving Others
Who Serve, or SOS.
Applications for TeacherCorps members will be
accepted through
June 1 and for SOS through mid-summer.
Nebraska Teacher Corps members are K-12 teachers who teach
in
rural or Title I schools or in Omaha's Federal Enterprise
Zone and
who earn less than $30,000 as a base salary. In exchange
for 1,700
hours of service implementing service-learning in their
classrooms,
members earn $4,725, which can be used to repay existing
student
loans or toward future college classes.
SOS places
undergraduate and graduate students in Consortium-member
schools
across Nebraska to strengthen and expand service-learning
infrastructure within the community. This means SOS members develop
resources for service-learning educators, assist with campus
coordination and establish partnerships with organizations such
as
public libraries. SOS members serve 300-900 hours over a three-to-nine
month period in exchange for an education award of $1,000 to
$2,362.50.
For information, call Rachael Robinson-Keilig at
Student Involvement,
472-4098, or e-mail teachercorps@hotmail.com.
TIAA-CREF Consultant on Campus May
3
A TIAA-CREF Consultant will be available on May 3 in the
Nebraska
Union for individual consultations. If you would like to
discuss
your investment choices, you may sign up by calling (800)
842-2009,
or by going to the Web page listed and choosing
Meetings/Counseling
http://tiaa-cref.org.
Travel Workshop
UNL Travel
Services will present a travel workshop in two
sessions on May 1.
The first session is from 9-10:30 a.m. in
the Nebraska Union. The
second session, a repeat of the first,
will be from 1:30-3 p.m. in
the Nebraska East Union.
Penny Watermeier of UNL Travel
Services and Jim Vogel of University
Services will present a
variety of topics about the travel contract
and process at UNL.
For more information, call Rhonda Zugmier, 472-7907.
Correction
Katya Koubek's
native country was incorrect in a story in
the April 11 Scarlet.
She is originally from Russia.
Parking committee suggests fee for riding buses
By
Kelly Bartling, University Communications
In an effort to
increase transportation revenue, the Parking
Advisory Committee is
recommending that UNL faculty, staff and
students next fall begin
paying $20 monthly to use campus busing
services.
Those services, provided through UNL Parking and Transit Services
and Lincoln's public bus system StarTran, have been free to campus
users.
The Parking Advisory Committee voted 5-4 April 19 to
recommend
the new fee to Christine Jackson, vice chancellor of
business
and finance. The fee-based bus pass, under the
recommendation,
would take effect in August.
The bus
passes would enable students, faculty and staff to
use UNL's
"red and white" shuttles, as well as the
StarTran buses
that operate between campuses and along campus
routes. Those who
have UNL parking permits would be offered bus
passes under the
proposal at no additional cost.
Tad McDowell, director of
UNL Parking and Transit Services,
said bus fees have been discussed
previously as a way to increase
revenues. Currently, approximately
$900,000 is spent to operate
the UNL shuttle system, and $270,000
to fund StarTran. Because
bus transportation has been free to its
users, other fees - mainly
parking permit fees - have subsidized
the bus system. With increased
busing costs from higher fuel
prices, equipment costs, wages
and benefits, the best ways to
offset higher costs are to reduce
services or increase revenue,
McDowell said.
"We have finally reached a service
level that is really
reliable and we would hate to digress back to
past years,"
McDowell said. "We're doing everything we
can to keep from
drastically reducing services."
McDowell said about 8,000 StarTran bus passes were issued
to UNL
faculty, staff and students this year, and 6,000 the previous
year.
Many of those are to parking permit-holders, but many are
also to
students, faculty and staff who are riding the buses
for free. Even
though, under the proposal, many at UNL may choose
to go ahead and
pay for a parking permit instead of the $20 monthly
bus permit,
McDowell hopes that as many as 2,000 bus permits
are sold.
Even though bus transportation benefits the entire campus
community through decreased traffic, congestion and the need
for
fewer parking spaces, McDowell said that it isn't necessarily
right
that the cost should go only to those paying parking fees.
Another
option could be a student transportation fee.
"There
are very few universities that offer free transportation
these
days, especially in our peer group," McDowell said.
"In
fact we are the only university in our peer group that
relies
solely on system revenue and parking revenues to subsidize
this
transportation."
Jackson said she is awaiting the PAC
recommendation.
"The PAC has identified a structural
issue at the heart
of our parking program," she said.
"UNL operates parking
and transit programs for our campus, but
funding for both programs
comes from UNL parking permit holders and
visitor parking. The
PAC is recommending that individuals who do
not purchase UNL
parking permits but who ride UNL buses pay a fee
for the service."
Jackson has asked staff to build
scenarios that identify options
available to the campus. With these
scenarios completed, further
campus discussions with PAC and campus
constituent groups will
be pursued before finalizing a decision,
she said.
Fidelity
Consultant
on Campus April 30-May 2
A Fidelity
Consultant will be available for individual consultations
April 30
and May 2 in the Nebraska Union, and on May 1 in the
Nebraska East
Union. If you would like to discuss your investment
choices, you
may sign up by calling Reservation Systems in Boston
at (800)
642-7131.
Mathematician to Speak
Ron Graham, Jacobs endowed
chair of computer and information
science at the University of
California at San Diego, will give
the sixth annual Howard Rowlee
Lecture in Mathematics at 3:30
p.m. April 25 at 117 Bessey Hall.
The lecture is free and open
to the public.
Graham
will discuss the problem of searching for the shortest
possible
network between a collection of points. This area of
study has many
practical applications, including how to most
efficiently construct
telecommunication and oil pipeline networks,
heating and
air-conditioning ducts, and the layout of circuits
on integrated
circuit chips.
Graham has wide research interests in
mathematics and computer
science, from number theory to
computational complexity. He has
a doctorate from the University of
California-Berkeley and five
honorary doctoral degrees.
DCS offers performance reviews
seminar
The Division of Continuing Studies will offer a
"Positive
Performance Reviews" seminar from 9 a.m. to 4
p.m. May 1
at the Nebraska Center for Continuing Studies at 33rd
and Holdrege
streets. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m.
For many managers, the performance review is a least-favorite,
high-stress activity. This seminar will discuss how to improve
performance reviews by identifying key ingredients for positive
reviews, beginning long before the interaction with the employee
and lasting throughout the year. The seminar will be led by Tom
Workman, who has a doctorate in communication studies from UNL.
It
is recommended for anyone who conducts performance reviews.
Workshop fee is $109, which includes lunch. Organization sending
three or more participants, as well as university employees attending
the workshop, will receive a $10 discount. To register, call
472-2176 or visit http://dcs.un
l.edu/positiveperformance/register.html.
For more
information, call 472-5053, e-mail kmuthersbaugh2@unl.edu
or
visit http://dcs.unl.e
du/positiveperformance/index.html.
Web Search Engine Policy
More and more public
university information is being distributed
via campus web pages.
In order to ensure that the university
community is able to access
all available information, the campus
policy on searching web pages
has been changed.
Effective May 1, all web servers on
campus will be included
in the "UNL Full Search" results
when using the search
option from the http://www.unl.edu
pages. Up until
this time, units and/or departments had to request
that their
information be included in this search index. Now,
all publicly
available UNL web server information, with the exception
of the
student residence hall sites, will be scanned and added
to the
search index on a daily basis.
Note: Publicly Available Web
Server Information is defined
as any web page that has
<unl.edu> in its page address,
and access to the information
is not limited based on passwords
or other types of restriction
schemes.
If you believe that the information on any of your
web pages
should not be included in the search engine results
(based on
web page content or other factors), please send an email
to cwis2@unl.edu and you will be
contacted for more information.
This policy change was
initiated by the Chancellor's Office
and approved by the
Campus-Wide Information System Advisory Board.
For more Information
on the CWIS Project, go to http://www.unl.edu/cwis
_team/webpolcy.html
Advertise Summer Jobs Now
Advertise your summer
work-study jobs through UNL Career Services,
students' one-stop
shop for employment opportunities and information.
Send a brief job
description, with qualifications and contact
information, to Sheryl
Augstums in Career Services through campus
mail at 230 Nebraska
Union, City Campus 0451; by fax to 472-0200;
e-mail to: saugstums3@unl.edu;
or leave a
voice mail at 472-6299.
Jobs will be posted on the Student
Job Boards, 2nd Floor Nebraska
Union, and on Career Services'
homepage at http://www.unl.edu/careers.
Please contact Career Services when your job has been filled.
EHS News
The April 2002
E-Newsletter is on the EHS site, http://
bifrost.unl.edu/ehs/Newsletters/ehs_newsletter.html.
Supervisors with employees who don't have Internet access should
print out a paper copy of the newsletter to be posted. If you
have
any questions, call EHS at 472-4925.
Verbatim
Gallup
to conduct campus climate survey
This e-mail was sent
April 19 by Chancellor Harvey Perlman.
Dear
Colleagues:
A continuing concern within our university
community has been
the climate we encounter and create in our work
environment.
Is it one that maximizes our contribution to both
meeting our
own professional goals and to the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln's
role and mission? Is the environment in which we
work a supportive
one - regardless of the demographic group to
which we belong?
In response to this challenge, I have decided to
conduct a campus
climate survey to assess the degree to which the
environment
on campus supports all employees' feeling of engagement
with
our university.
Attention to climate is an issue
brought into focus by the
many employee groups protected by the
Board of Regents' anti-discriminatory
policy. For their
accomplishment in providing this focus, I am
most appreciative.
However, I believe that climate issues impact
all faculty and
staff, regardless of their "protected class"
status. It
is also my hypothesis that the climates in which we
work are
largely determined at the local level. That is, departments
or
comparable units that are truly supportive of the most established
members of our community also do the most to enhance the efforts
of
those who feel the most vulnerable. Let me emphasize that,
in
scientific jargon, these are hypotheses - not conclusions.
To respond to this issue, several proposals have been brought
forward. After careful consideration of the alternatives, I have
contracted with the Gallup Organization to conduct an assessment
of
the climate in the units in which we work. Several aspects
of the
Gallup proposal led to my acceptance of their response.
First, I
hope you will appreciate the research-based history
that has led to
Gallup's well-deserved international reputation.
Second, Gallup's
focus on the working neighborhood as the key
determinant in our
feelings about our jobs was critical to my
decision. Third, and
most importantly, our contract with Gallup
includes not only an
assessment component but also a plan to
help us improve the working
climate.
I understand the concern that this approach has
generated
among groups who do not feel fully enfranchised. For
example,
the Gallup approach does not ask specifically how each
group
protected by the Board of Regents anti-discriminatory policy
is dealt with. Rather, it asks all regular staff and faculty
for
their own assessment of their personal experience of their
neighborhood. By asking staff and faculty to identify their membership
in a variety of demographic groups, Gallup can aggregate the
responses of those groups protected by Board policy to conclude
what, if any, differences exist, for example, between the experiences
of women vs. men or white vs. persons of color.
In the
course of the next two weeks, you will receive e-mail
messages from
the Gallup Organization and me inviting you to
participate in the
survey. Each of you will be given a personal
access code to assure
that you respond only once and can participate
by logging onto a
Web site for this purpose. Data collection
for our campus is
scheduled for April 29 through May 18. Linked
from the UNL homepage
(http://www.unl.edu)
is a Web
page answering questions we anticipate about the survey,
including
a list of the survey items. You may access the page
directly at http://www.unl.edu/pr/chancllr/letterhead/20020417gallupqanda.html.<
/P>
Questions that arise that are not included in this Q &
A section can be posed to gallupsurvey@unl.edu.
They
will be answered in 24 hours.
I know that this comes at a
very busy time of the year, but
I assure you that the 10 minutes
you invest in taking the survey
will help this campus greatly in
moving ahead to further develop
the most engaging and inclusive
climate possible. It is critical
that we have as complete a
response from all employees as possible.
I, therefore, ask that you
give this a high priority among the
many tasks "on your
plate."
I do want to assure you that individuals'
responses will remain
strictly confidential with Gallup. No UNL
employee will have
access to individual responses - feedback to UNL
will be crafted
in a manner to ensure that no individual's
responses can be identified.
If this is an issue that concerns you,
I encourage you to read
the Q & A on our homepage.
Over the summer, Gallup will be analyzing the data, and we
will
be planning, in collaboration with Gallup, how to work most
effectively with departments to enhance our neighborhood environments.
Campus-wide results will be announced in conjunction with my
State
of the University Address in early September.
Finally, some
of our colleagues do not have individual e-mail
addresses. I know
that we have identified those individuals and
ask that persons
responsible for linking those without individual
e-mail addresses
actively provide a copy of this e-mail to those
individuals. Those
without e-mail will be advised by campus mail
of how to respond to
the survey by calling Gallup's 24-hour 800
number.
Again, I will appreciate your making every effort to respond
to
the survey and to encourage your colleagues to do so as well.
Sincerely,
Harvey Perlman
Road work near campus begins May 6
The City of Lincoln is planning to resurface R Street between
12th and 17th streets and 12th Street between Q and R streets
May
6-10. The city will be doing concrete work on curbs. No street
closings are anticipated. The contractor plans to have access
available to the university parking lots southeast of CBA, west
of
Canfield and southwest of the Nebraska Union.
Between May
13-18, the city will do street milling and lay
new asphalt. Access
will be available to the university parking
lots except for the six
to eight hours after each area of asphalt
installation. The visitor
parking lot on R Street between 13th
and 14th streets will be
accessible by the alley off 14th Street.
Parking and
Transit Services will be advising university parking
permit holders
for these lots of alternative choices for parking
during this time.
A detoured bus shuttle service will also be
announced.
Symposium to discuss election
polls
While concern over the role of pre-election polls in
political
campaigns is not new, there is a growing concern over the
accuracy
of poll results. A number of innovations have been
suggested
that may lead to improved pre-election poll accuracy.
The 2002 Nebraska Symposium on Survey Research will bring
together leading professional and academic researchers to discuss
recent pre-election poll performance and some of the recently
proposed innovations that may improve pre-election polling and
forecasting. "The Science of Pre-Election Polling, the Sixth
Annual Symposium on Survey Research" will be May 2-4 at
The
Gallup Building, F and Ninth streets in Washington, D.C.
The event
is sponsored by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Gallup Research
Center and The Gallup Organization.
The Nebraska Symposium
on Survey Research is an annual seminar
focusing on issues of
survey and market research in contemporary
society. The format of
the symposium is designed to encourage
discussion and interaction
among speakers and symposium participants.
The intended audience
includes survey and market research professionals,
media and
governmental specialists in the field of polling, academics
who
focus on survey and market research, as well as interested
members
of the public.
Invited speakers include Frank Newport, The
Gallup Organization;
Donald Green, Yale University; Harold Clark,
University of Texas
at Dallas; Charles H. Franklin, University of
Wisconsin; Kathlene
Frankovic, CBS News Poll; Edward H. Kaplan,
Yale University;
Michael Traugott, University of Michigan; Simon
Jackman, Stanford
University; George Terhanian, Harris Interactive;
and Christopher
Wlezien, Oxford University.
For more
information contact Allan L. McCutcheon, director
of UNL-Gallup
Research Center at 458-2035 or amccutcheon1@unl.edu,
or
visit the center's Web site http://www.unl.edu/unl-grc/.
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