Judy Diamond speaks to a reporter after the announcement Dec. 20 that the University of Nebraska State Museum will receive a $2.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Diamond, professor and the museum's associate director, will be the principal investigator for the three-year Explore Evolution grant. Photo by Richard Wright.

State Museum receives $2.8 million for Explore Evolution project

NSF grant to fund exhibits

By Kim Hachiya, University Communications

A project spearheaded by the University of Nebraska State Museum has won a $2.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund exhibits and informal education packages about evolution.

Judy Diamond, professor and museum associate director for public programs, is principal investigator of the three-year Explore Evolution grant funded by the NSF's Division of Informal Science Education. Six museums in the middle and mountain west and six state 4-H programs are collaborating on the project. Each of the museums will end up with eight to 10 permanent exhibits on evolution.

Cooperating museums are the UNL State Museum; the Exhibits Museum of the University of Michigan; the Kansas Museum and Biodiversity Center at the University of Kansas; the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University-Bozeman; the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma; and the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Each museum will participate in development decisions, receive and display the exhibits, and disseminate the Explore Evolution activity kits through their educational programs and Web sites. The 4-H organizations in six states participating in the project are in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska and Wyoming.

"We know that many people think of evolutionary theory as a series of static ideas," Diamond said. "They also think that new research in evolution 'proves' those ideas are wrong. In fact, research in evolution is a dynamic, changing field. New ideas and observations are changing our thinking, adding to our theories about evolution. The concept of the project is to show the public that research on evolution, like research in all areas of science, continuously changes our ideas of how we think about the natural world.

"We want to show that scientific research strengthens evolutionary theory," Diamond said.

The partners have not confirmed the final exhibits for the project, Diamond said. One planned exhibit features recent research by two Princeton University scientists showing that evolutionary changes in the bill sizes of finches, one of Darwin's examples, occur rapidly in response to environmental changes. Darwin had posited that evolutionary changes only occur slowly and over long periods of time. New research shows that while that sometimes does happen, other changes can occur rapidly.

The exhibits and educational kits will be developed in accordance with national science education standards, Diamond said. Those standards, first promulgated in 1996 by the National Academy of Sciences, require learner-centered, inquiry-based presentations that allow viewers at all skill levels to come away from a presentation with some new knowledge.

The educational activities will be most relevant for grades five through eight, Diamond said, and will be modeled on the museum's successful Wonderwise educational kits. Those kits, funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the NSF, are distributed throughout the United States and have been used by about 9 million youth.

Like the Wonderwise kits, which focus on individual female scientists in scientific fields like veterinary medicine or geology, the Explore Evolution kits will focus on individual scientists and how they do their work. The kits will include activity books, stories about the scientists and their research, and experiments students can conduct with adult direction in any kind of setting, such as a 4-H meeting. The kits can be used as stand-alone tools; a visit to one of the museums hosting an Explore Evolution exhibit will augment learning but will not be required for users to benefit from the kits.

Planning begins this summer for the project, Diamond said. Once the topics are confirmed by the cooperating museums, the exhibits will be designed and built at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Public feedback on the prototype exhibits will occur in late 2004, and the exhibits will begin to be installed in 2005. Diamond said Morrill Hall's exhibits would be installed on the museum's first floor across from the current Darwin Exhibits. The African animals exhibits currently in the space will be relocated.

This project has developed from Diamond's dual professional interests: science education and research in the evolution of behavior.

"Issues about evolution come into the forefront in many of our exhibits at the State Museum," she said. "Natural history museums have a major role in teaching about evolution. We were looking for a project that would have major impact and benefit Nebraska. The topic is one of concern for many scientists, and this is a way this museum can play a more dynamic and public role in science. It really puts us on the cutting edge of science education and builds on groundwork and networks we've developed through Wonderwise."

Other individuals at UNL who are associated with the project include Amy Spiegel, research assistant professor in the Center for Instructional Innovation, who will coordinate the evaluation team; Sarah Disbrow, who will serve as writer and editor; Kathy French, who will help train 4-H educators to use the education kits; and Debra Meier, who will coordinate the installation of exhibits at Morrill Hall. Beth Birnstihl, associate dean of cooperative extension, will coordinate the involvement of Nebraska 4-H youth development in the project.

Local educators on the Explore Evolution Advisory Board include Brett Ratcliffe, curator of insects at the state museum; Norman Smith, professor and chair of geosciences; Charles Wood, director of the Nebraska Center for Virology and 3M/Lehr professor of biological sciences; and Mike Voorhies, curator of fossils at the state museum.

Greg Hayden, UNL professor of economics, has received the Veblen-Commons Award, given by the Association for Evolutionary Economics. Photo by Richard Wright.

Award surprises economics professor

By Tom Simons, University Communications

Greg Hayden said he couldn't believe it.

When the UNL economist answered his telephone earlier this fall, on the other end of the line was a representative of the Association for Evolutionary Economics calling to tell him he was the 34th winner of the association's annual Veblen-Commons Award.

"I was shocked. I wasn't expecting it at all," Hayden said. "I didn't know that I had been nominated. In fact, I had written a letter to the committee nominating someone else. Had I been guessing, I would have thought that might have been something that might happen 10 years from now. It's the highest professional honor I will receive in my life. I hope I can measure up."

Hayden, who received the award Jan. 3 in Washington, D.C., joins a distinguished circle of economists to receive the award, including Robert Heilbroner, John Kenneth Galbraith, Gunnar Myrdal and Rexford G. Tugwell. But he won't have to look far to find a previous winner. One is Wallace Peterson, George Holmes professor emeritus of economics at UNL, who won the award in 1992 and who hired Hayden as an assistant professor in 1967, the year before Hayden finished his doctorate at the University of Texas in Austin. Together, they make Nebraska the only institution with two winners of the Veblen-Commons Award.

The award, Hayden said, emphasizes economists who not only have been active in scholarly work, but who have also taken their expertise out into the real world. He said he thinks the main reason he won the award was probably for his development starting in 1982 of the Social Fabric Matrix, which allows researchers and policy-makers to integrate various aspects of the economy with social and environmental conditions.

"The Social Fabric Matrix is a method for doing research whereby we can bring together all of the different aspects of what we might call the economy," Hayden said. "In other words, you have social institutions, you have technology, you have social beliefs that give you certain kinds of property laws, and so on. The Social Fabric Matrix allows us to get a handle on all of that."

The matrix has been used for major research projects in many countries, including Thailand, France, Australia, the United States, South Africa, the Netherlands and Iran. It has proven especially useful for the analysis of the interface between the ecological system and the economy. In this use, Hayden's most recent involvement has been as a conceptual consultant on research projects to determine sustainability of the Northwest Forest Plan on the North Olympic Peninsula of the state of Washington and to evaluate an industrial waste plan for the government of Thailand.

Hayden's invention is a natural tool for evolutionary economics, a sub-discipline that he said adds to orthodox economics, which is very much devoted to the theory of the market. It's also an important addition to traditional economics in the era of globalization.

"We have many different cultures and different normative criteria in those different systems," Hayden said. "We need a way to handle that, but a way that's not designed for just one system."

Students spend break in Cuba

By Kelly Bartling, University Communications

While most college students are enjoying a much-needed, post-holiday semester break, nine College of Journalism and Mass Communications students are engaged in an intense fact-finding mission to Cuba.

The 11-day trek is part of the college's depth reporting class. Dozens of students competed for the chance to be among the seven news-editorial and two broadcasting students selected for the Cuba reporting team. Since August, they have been doing background research and examining topics they are exploring during the Jan. 1-12 trip to Miami and Havana. Once home, they'll use the spring semester to put together a 75-page magazine and a broadcast documentary on the people, culture, government, economy and everyday life of Cuba. A special focus will examine the 43-year-old U.S. embargo of Cuba and whether eliminating it would benefit Nebraska farmers and cattle ranchers.

The project is as unique as it is exciting for the students and the college, according to its dean.

"As far as I know, an undergraduate college reporting trip to Cuba has never been done before," said Will Norton, dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. "It's a print and broadcast media convergence by students in a Communist country, and a prototype experience of taking one topic, in this instance, a country, and 'blowing it up'" to examine every news angle imaginable.

"This is something our students are really excited about," Norton said. "We're doing things here that other journalism schools aren't, and it's journalism at its best."

The depth reporting class has been a strong feature of the J-school for many years, with recent projects ranging from a study of the Battle of the Little Bighorn to the resurgence of the American bison to the U.S. epidemic of obesity. But this is the first intensive "convergence" on a remote site, and the political issues and mystique of a closed and isolated country add another new element to the project.

Both Norton and Joe Starita, a news-editorial professor and project adviser, had previously traveled to Cuba and found their visits interesting. Because Starita needed a topic for depth reporting and both were familiar with the procedures necessary to travel to Cuba, they decided to make the request. They secured a certificate to travel from the U.S. Treasury Department, which routinely permits visits by educators, journalists, politicians and humanitarian groups. Their travel certificate is good through June 2004. The study trip is paid for by private funds for a professorship and will come at no cost to taxpayers.

For 16 weeks, the student journalists have been enrolled in an independent study class, immersed in an intensive bibliography, videography and discography in order to learn more about Cuban politics, agriculture, culture and music. All of the students have some command of Spanish, and several are fluent.

Each student will complete three major stories by the end of May for the full-color magazine and the hour documentary. Meanwhile, a "slimmed-down" version of the magazine may be offered to communities around the state to initiate dialogue and feedback for a virtual statewide town hall meeting. Two reporters from NETV also will accompany the group to provide statewide professional coverage and to mentor and assist the student journalists.

Starita said the travel project would give the student journalists the best hands-on learning available in a tough news locale that even professionals would envy.

"Our job is to do what good journalists do: illuminate perceptions and shatter stereotypes," Starita said. "Some beliefs held by Americans and others by Cubans are light-years from the truth and so that's our goal, to try to reconcile truth with reality."

Starita said story topics include the trade embargo and how it affects Nebraska, how the Castro regime affects everyday life in Cuba, how Cuban-Americans in Florida view their past lives, the grass-roots effort to bring democratic reforms to Cuba and what Cuba might be like in a post-Castro era.

"We as journalists examine issues and try and throw light on darkness and then let the readers or viewers decide. That's our job: not to editorialize, but to present information fairly and objectively," Starita said.

Although the students have been preparing for weeks for their Cuban trip, Starita and Norton said they might never be fully prepared for the stark differences they will encounter.

"Cubans have been isolated from the rest of the world for decades and they have, perhaps, paid a heavy price for that," Starita said.

The group left Omaha Jan. 1 for three nights and two days in Miami to study the Cuban exile community. There, reporters and editors at the Miami Herald shared their facilities and helped the students make connections.

From Jan. 4-11, they are in Havana, where they are studying life in Cuba. They are working with news bureau personnel there and plan to meet foreign ministers and administration in Cuba. They will return to Omaha on Jan. 12; second-semester classes start Jan. 13.

Students participating are listed below. All are news-editorial majors unless otherwise stated:

Dakarai Aarons, sophomore; Sarah Fox, senior, news-editorial and Spanish major; Matthew Hansen, senior; Lindsey Kealy, senior, broadcasting major; Melissa Lee, sophomore; Shane Pekny, senior; Cara Pesek, senior; Dave Pittock, graduate student in broadcasting; and Jill Zeman, senior.

Pederson is NU's new athletic director

Steve Pederson (shown at right) shas been named the 12th athletic director at UNL by Chancellor Harvey Perlman.

Pederson, 45, replaces Bill Byrne, who announced on Dec. 3 that he was leaving Nebraska to accept the Director of Athletics position at Texas A&M University.

Pederson returns to his alma mater with six years of Division I athletic director experience, having served as the A.D. at Pittsburgh since 1996. He also has extensive experience as an administrator at Nebraska and at two other Division I programs. Pederson earned his bachelor's degree from Nebraska in 1980 and worked at Nebraska from 1980 to 1986 as a sports information assistant and football recruiting coordinator; from 1994 to 1996, he was associate athletic director for football operations. He also had positions as an athletic administrator at The University of Tennessee and The Ohio State University.

Pederson said his love of Nebraska has never wavered.

"There are a few very special places in the world of college athletics. The University of Nebraska is at the top of that list," he said.

Perlman made the announcement at a press conference on Dec. 20. Although a search committee had been selected, Perlman named Pederson the Director of Athletics before the holiday break. The appointment was effective Jan. 1.

"The speed of the process of selecting and appointing Steve Pederson was due in part to the need to resolve the issue of his candidacy in the eyes of other potential candidates for the post," Perlman said.

"As we moved forward with the search process, it became very clear that, in the intercollegiate athletics community, all assumed that Steve was certain to be named as our next A.D., and we found that existing successful athletic directors were unwilling to enter the search until Steve had indicated that he would not be a candidate. In order to move ahead with our search, Steve's candidacy had to be resolved one way or another.

"Earlier this week, our search committee chair, James O'Hanlon, another member of the search committee, Jo Potuto, and I met with Steve and were able to reach an agreement. Our Equity, Access and Diversity office approved a proposal from me to move ahead in this manner in the best interest of the search process and the university," Perlman said.

Pederson is credited with many additions to the University of Pittsburgh athletics program. He helped shape the Petersen Events Center, the recently completed convocation center and basketball arena on the Pittsburgh campus. He also oversaw a major renovation of Fitzgerald Field House for Pittsburgh's Olympic sports programs. Trees Field also underwent major upgrades to assist the Panthers' baseball and softball programs. A new softball field is set to debut in 2003.

Pederson said his administrative philosophy is to surround himself with good people.

"The thing I am most proud of is that I hire great people and let them do their jobs," he said. "That is the only thing I would ever take credit for."

Pittsburgh's athletics have had successful seasons recently, earning the college the title "Comeback U" by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In 2001, Pederson was named a recipient of the General Robert R. Neyland Athletic Director Award, annually presented by the All-American Football Foundation for outstanding administrative achievement.

Before being named Pittsburgh's 10th A.D. in 1996, during his second stint at Nebraska, Pederson oversaw the refurbishment of the football administrative offices and other construction.

A native of North Platte, Pederson and his wife, Tami, have three children.