Museum associate Cindy Loope demonstrates an activity from the new rock and mineral gallery program to Rachel Arkebauer, 10, left, Sarah Arkebauer, 13, center, and Andrew Arkebauer, 7, right. Above: This septarian nodule from Oskaloosa, Iowa, is part of the University of Nebraska State Museum's new curriculum for fifth-graders. Photos by Tom Slocum.

Museum creates 5th-grade curriculum on rocks, minerals

By Kim Hachiya, University Communications

"Hey! Is this gold?"

The excited, and hopeful, fifth-grade boy hands a sparkly rock to Cindy Loope.

"Nope," she says firmly. "What do you think it might be?"

A bit crestfallen but still optimistic, the child rejoins two other boys who are using Sherlock Holmes-style magnifying glasses to examine several rock specimens.

Loope, a geologist and associate at the University of Nebraska State Museum, is leading this group of fifth-grade pupils from Lincoln's Rousseau Elementary School through a new rocks and minerals curriculum developed by the museum. The program is being field tested this semester and with a bit of fine-tuning, will be ready to handle the thousands of Lincoln Public Schools fifth-graders who visit the museum annually.

Judy Diamond, associate director for public programs at the museum, said a recent change in the public schools' curriculum that places more emphasis on geology in the fifth grade prompted the museum to create the program and a new exhibit to complement it.

The new permanent rocks and minerals exhibit has been installed on the museum's third floor. It features some unusual specimens, including some that have not been displayed for many years. It also features some photographs of geologic formations taken by David Loope, UNL geology professor, and spouse of Cindy Loope.

"We have some amazingly high quality and extraordinary specimens in our collections," Diamond said of the new exhibit. "They represent places all over the world." The materials have been collected by a number of scientists over many years, she said, and do not represent one particular individual's collection.

The emphasis in the new exhibit is on how metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary rocks are formed, she said. The minerals in the exhibit were chosen in part because of their beauty and because they are unusual.

The curriculum was developed with an eye toward meeting national and state science education standards, and they also meet national criteria for the most effective ways to teach science, Diamond said.

"We advocate active participation in learning," she said. "We want students to do problem solving with real materials."

That's evident watching the pupils handle long plexiglass tubes filled with brown water and layers of sand. The kids tip the tubes and watch the materials filter and settle, and they are at first surprised that the sand and other items don't move as solid core, but shift and then settle in layers. But after examining what happens, and talking about why (some things must be heavier than others, they decide), a new understanding of sedimentation emerges.

Loope moves from group to group, answering their questions with her questions. After asking the would-be gold hunter what he thought his rock might be, he decided it probably was mica.

The children are asked to investigate, predict, conduct an experiment, assess what happened and decide why. It's the heart of inquiry-based learning, and Loope said that those lessons tend to stick much more deeply than any lecture.

The class comes together as a group, and Loope holds up a "mystery rock." "What kind of rock is this, metamorphic, sedimentary or igneous?" she asks. One girl volunteers that it's metamorphic, because it has layers and fossils.

"Good! You noticed the fossils," Loope said. "But if there are fossils, are you sure it's metamorphic?"

A boy says that the fossils would have melted had the rock been metamorphic. "Good!" Loope encourages. "So what do you think?"

Sedimentary, the group concludes.

"My house is made of limestone," another girl volunteers. "I think that's sedimentary."

"You're right!" Loope responds. She suggests they look closely at the world around them to spot other rocks. "Look at the stalls in the bathrooms here; they are made of marble," she said.

The class is excited to look at the fluorescent rocks in a nearby exhibit, and Loope lets them go.

Shelley Clayburn, the teacher of this Rousseau class, said she thought the session went well. Her students haven't quite gotten to this subject yet, but she thought it would be a good preview for them when they hit the topic in a couple of weeks.

"The museum has really nice big specimens for them to handle, which they really like," she said.

Because they are trial-testing the program, Loope has a couple of observers who are watching to see where kids are struggling or what might be too easy. They've made some changes based on that kind of analysis, she notes, and each session gets better. Eight schools are participating in the trials, and by mid-November, Loope and her observers will evaluate and assess the program and make changes before it becomes a permanent offering.

Other museum specialists who helped Loope develop the curriculum include Sarah Disbrow, Saundra Frerichs and Kathy French, Loope said. Their expertise with curriculum development and suitable language for fifth-graders was especially helpful, Loope said.

"I find the rocks and think of activities, and they help me write it up," she said. "Inquiry-based teaching is a very different approach that is more than just describing. There is a lot of information and just a little time to present it. So we needed to find ways to express basic concepts and ways they would remember it."

Loope also praised Ron Pike, an exhibits builder, who designed and built a wheeled cart that can store the boxes of rocks, the sediment settling tubes and all the materials needed for the program.

"My cart is just terrific," she said.

The teamwork involved in developing the program exemplifies the museum's interest in science and education, she said. "The standards are really high here."

"I think the kids today have come away with good stuff," she said. "Geology is just such an interesting part of my life. I just want (the kids) to get an excitement about rocks because you can learn so much from them."

Pipher delights in writing on today's life issues

By Kelly Bartling, University Communications

Mary Pipher always thought there were two groups of people in the world: Those brilliant, creative ones who could write; and a horde of uncreative ones who couldn't.

She considered herself in the latter group.

But encouraged by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln mentor, Charles Stubblefield, and turning 40, Pipher sat down and decided to put her fears of writing firmly aside.

"I just decided to do it," she said. "I wanted to have the experience of trying it."

Pipher turned her love of writing short stories into her first non-fiction full-length book on weight issues called Hunger Pains: The American Women's Tragic Quest for Thinness. She has not stopped since.

"When I started writing, it quickly dispelled in me the myth that there are these brilliant, cool people who can write, and then these others. I see how writing can be analogous to becoming a concert violinist if you give something the study and do the work and you have a talent, after some time you become accomplished."

Still, Pipher says she considers herself lucky that she can write about what she is interested in and find a popular audience for it. With a bachelor's degree in anthropology and a doctorate in clinical psychology (from UNL), she is intrigued by "how culture affects mental health." Her breakthrough book was Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, (Putnam, 1994) which was on The New York Times Bestseller list for 154 weeks and launched her from her clinical practice and academic work into a whirlwind of writing, publicity, lecturing and promotion.

"I love it. I just think it's the greatest gift in the world to make a living as a writer. I love the process. Writing is thinking. I like to be alone. I like it quiet and I like to think," she said. "I'm also lucky to be able to write about what I'm interested in!"

Pipher is at home now in Lincoln, enjoying a winter respite from the less-fun rigors of promotions and book tours, and preparing for her first major lecture at UNL at the Nov. 13 Thompson Forum. There, she will discuss "The Middle of Everywhere: The World's Refugees Come to Nebraska," based on her experiences with refugees working on her book The Middle of Everywhere: The World's Refugees Come to Our Town. The topic, like those in her other books, The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families (1996), and Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders (1999), evolved from her life experiences in Lincoln and with her family.

"When I wrote Reviving, I was up to my eyeballs in teen-agers (at home) and I was seeing a lot of urban, junior-high girls in my practice, and Another Country, I wrote after my mom died. I had learned a lot about older people and the tensions between generations, and I wanted to do it. Another powerful motivating thing in my life was that I had these five aging aunts and I wanted to be with them so I knew I needed to write them into a book proposal. And I did."

When Pipher began to be intrigued by the variety of cultures she was seeing in shops along 27th Street, the hejabs and birkas, the different faces and languages throughout Lincoln, she read books on globalization and decided to look at another way of studying the clash of cultures: from within her community.

Mary and her husband, Jim, befriended three Lincoln refugee families, Sierra Leonian, Sudanese and Kurdish, and "we helped them but they taught us about the world," she said.

"One of the first things I learned is how America looks to outsiders. We view ourselves as great helpers, but the ironic thing is that we, as individuals, are, but as a country, we aren't necessarily."

As refugees, these people arrive unprepared for life in America and can be lost in a culture of material wealth and strange practices, and health, educational and welfare systems that are difficult to navigate. Her book, and her speech, will relate some of the stories of Lincoln's refugees. She hopes it will inspire others to broaden their world view.

"My biggest hope is that people who come to hear the lecture will want to make an effort to be more welcoming to change people's attitudes and motivate them to help," she said.

Pipher is donating her speaking fee to a refugee fund set up in her name at Lincoln Action Program, and resources will be available for students, staff and faculty or interested community members who want to find out how to help.

"I would like to encourage empathy and understanding and how we can all do our part in being 'cultural brokers'," she said. Volunteering, sponsoring a family or individual, helping in a church group, offering financial aid, transportation or help in establishing connections to health and welfare systems are examples.

Groups at UNL have also established several other events for refugees during the week in addition to the lecture (see box, above).

Pipher said she was honored to be invited for the Thompson Forum lecture and she still considers herself very much a part of UNL. Although she laughingly describes her status as "adjunct-adjunct," she is an alumna and appreciates the opportunity to get her Ph.D at Nebraska. She continues to work with faculty in the psychology, anthropology and geography, and the English departments. An upcoming project will be a summer writers program with Jonis Agee, Hilda Raz and Ted Kooser; in the meantime she is finishing a segment in the "Letters " basic book series called Letters to a Young Therapist. She is basing it on her experiences at UNL supervising young clinical psychologists. And she'll spend the winter at home writing.

"When I go around the country and talk and tell them where I'm from, I was often met with a patronizing or snobby tone but now I'm finding more often that people see Nebraska as a nice place to live. I've always known that, but I'm proud of that and I think these refugees are making it a better place to live. We should recognize that."

Pipher's speech, related events The Thompson Forum lecture by Mary Pipher, "The Middle of Everywhere: The World's Refugees Come to Nebraska," is at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Lied Center for Performing Arts. Her lecture is free and open to the public and will be broadcast live on the UNL Web site <www.unl.edu>, Lincoln cable channel 21, UNL's KRNU radio station (90.3 FM) and UNL campus TV. Pipher will sign copies of her books after her lecture, and an informational fair for immigrants and refugee resources will be in the Lied lobby. In addition to the Thompson Forum, several events on refugees and culture will be held during the week. At 3:30 p.m. Nov. 12, the Paul A. Olson Seminar in Great Plains Studies will focus on "Refugees on the Great Plains: Policies, Practices and Potentials." The seminar is in the Christlieb Gallery, Hewit Place, 1155 Q St.; a 3 p.m. reception will precede the event. Panel members will include professors Robert Hitchcock and Mary Willis of the Department of Anthropology and Geography; Johnna Keim, Bryan LGH Medical Center; Onyema Nkwocha, Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services; Liliana Selendic, Heartland Refugee Resettlement Program; Loukia Sarroub, UNL Teachers College; and several members of the refugee community.   Lincoln is a major refugee resettlement location and is a place where people who came to the United States originally as refugees move as migrants. The panel will address reasons for Lincoln being chosen by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement as a good place to settle refugees and why it is seen as a good destination by refugees themselves. The panel will also assess the activities and capacities of refugee-related programs in Lincoln and identify constraints and opportunities for refugees who come to Nebraska and the Great Plains. Nov. 16, Nebraska International Multicultural Exchange Conference Nov. 17, 3 p.m., dance and social for Sudanese refugees, Culture Center, sponsored by Culture Center, Departments of Anthropology and Geography, Student Involvement, and the Sudanese Refugee Working Group.

Sandun Fernando, a biological systems engineering graduate student, tests his multipurpose soybean oil-based lubricant. The product won Fernando the 2002 Innovative Uses of Soybean Contest. IANR Photo.

Lubricant wins soybean innovation contest

By Sandi S. Alswager, IANR News and Publishing

Two UNL graduate students received top honors in the 2002 Innovative Uses of Soybean Contest.

Sandun Fernando of Sri Lanka, a biological systems engineering doctoral student, won the contest with his improved soybean oil-based industrial lubricant. Federico Vartorelli of Argentina, a plant breeding and genetics doctoral student, earned runner-up for his product, Soy D-Zert, a soy-based cherry gelatin and soy-based chocolate and vanilla puddings.

The Nebraska Soybean Board and the university's Industrial Agricultural Products Center sponsor the annual contest, which is open to students at all Nebraska colleges and universities.

Fernando's product is an improved version of many commercially available soybean oil-based lubricants on the market today. Fernando found a way to chemically modify his soybean oil-based lubricant to resist a destructive chemical process called oxidative polymerization. In this process, oxygen changes the oil's molecules and causes the oil to solidify. This limits its use in many high-temperature industrial applications, such as the pumps in irrigation wells that provide water for center pivot and gravity irrigation.

"Farmers using commercially available soy drip oils began to face problems with the formation of gummy-like substances that eventually led to maintenance difficulties," Fernando said. Drip oil lubricates the shaft bearings as the pump pushes water to the surface.

Fernando studied the problem with guidance from Milford Hanna, UNL biological systems engineer and director of the Industrial Agricultural Products Center. In 1992, Hanna teamed with other NU Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources researchers, private business and farmers to test the potential for using soybean oil as a drip oil. It proved to be a good lubricant but was vulnerable to oxidative polymerization.

Fernando subjected his chemically modified product and commercially available soybean-based lubricants to high-temperature treatments of 185 degrees for 14 days. Results showed his improved product was significantly more stable than commercially available drip oils.

"I had great direction from Dr. Hanna," Fernando said. "He was my mentor on the product."

Soy-based lubricants are an environmentally friendly alternative to petroleum drip oil made from locally grown, renewable resources. Developing a way to make them more stable under high-temperature conditions should help expand their use.

"Because the university and the state are based on agriculture, I wanted to add value for soy oil," Fernando said. He's also working on a soybean oil lubricant for jet engines.

Fernando has submitted paperwork that is the first step in pursuing a patent of his invention through the university. He was awarded $3,500.

Vartorelli studies plant breeding and genetics with George Graef, IANR soybean breeder and geneticist. Vartorelli wanted to develop a nutritious, high-protein soy food product. He had two things in mind: children's protein needs and soy's protein value as an animal protein replacement.

"So I thought gelatin," Vartorelli said. "Gelatin is offered worldwide and it's delicious."

Vartorelli found a way to replace the collagen in gelatin, which is derived from swine byproducts, with a soy isolate. Collagen, although a good ingredient to keep fingernails strong, has no essential amino acids or protein, he said.

Vartorelli said his product, which he calls Soy D-Zert, could benefit many people around the world.

"In Europe, the market for (gelatin) started to decrease because of mad cow disease. Jewish and Muslim people also are unable to eat gelatin because it uses (the pork product) collagen. And children need protein. It's a good product that could include protein in kids' diets in developing countries."

Vartorelli used the same soy isolate in pudding and replaced the milk in pudding with non-dairy creamer to make it a 100 percent vegetable product.

Soy D-Zert, including cherry gelatin and chocolate and vanilla puddings, provides 42 percent of a child's daily protein requirement and 100 percent of daily isoflavone requirements, he said.

Vartorelli was awarded $2,500. He hopes to find a corporate partner to further develop his product.

Loren Isom, technical assistance coordinator for the Industrial Agricultural Products Center, said both entries are innovative. Similar soy-based products are available, but these entries provide significant advantages.

"Sandun's entry directly addresses the polymerization problem, and his supporting research illustrates the significant improvements over commercially available soybean-based lubricants," he said.

"In the case of the Soy D-Zert, other soy-based products are available but on a very limited basis. These products also have characteristics that are limiting their market acceptance," Isom said.

Nebraska college and university students can enter the 2003 contest until April 30, 2003. Cash prizes will be awarded for first place, runner up and honorable mention. There is no entry fee.

Entries will be evaluated by a team of UNL faculty and the Nebraska Soybean Board, which will present the award.

Contestants may work with an adviser or professor, individually or as a team. Entries must include a written report describing the product and how it was developed, the projected market impact of the product and a product sample. Students are encouraged to contact Isom to review entry concepts and coordinate research and product development efforts with an appropriate faculty advisor.

For more information, visit the Innovative Uses of Soybeans Contest Web site at <http://agproducts.unl.edu/co ntest.htm> or contact Isom at 472-8187 or <lisom@unl.edu>.

The Industrial Agricultural Products Center is part of NU's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.