June 19, 2003

Perlman releases $2.7 million in cuts

This e-mail was sent to all faculty and staff on June 17 by Chancellor Harvey Perlman.

Dear Colleagues:

Once again it falls to me to describe additional budget reductions for the Lincoln campus. The relief we felt when the Legislature rejected the governor's proposed 10 percent reduction is tempered now as we put the final details to the 4.6 percent reduction actually adopted. The total reduction for next year is over $9 million; the cuts announced today are approximately $2.7 million. This e-mail is merely to alert you to the major proposals that I am making.

On our website you will find four documents:

• the recommendations of the Academic Planning Committee with respect to those cuts previously proposed;
• a memorandum from me responding to these recommendations and outlining my additional proposed budget reductions;
• a spreadsheet that provides the details for the new proposals;
• a memorandum expanding on my thinking about the salary increase.

The APC approved many of my earlier proposals. Their most significant departures were as follows:

• a proposed surcharge on event tickets such as Lied Center and football;
• a recommendation to continue some funding for the Bureau of Business Research and the recycling program;
• disagreement with some of the reductions proposed by the Division of Business and Finance;
• disagreement with the proposal to eliminate the Research Division of the State Museum;
• a recommendation to explore a smaller, more targeted Veterinary Student program and to provide bridge funding for the Statewide Arboretum.

I have accepted their recommendation to restore some funding to the bureau and the recycling program. I have offered alternatives to some of their concerns about the Business and Finance proposals with the suggestion that the APC should advise me on which reductions they prefer. I am not accepting their recommendation for a surcharge on event tickets or most of their recommendations associated with the museum. I have agreed to examine the potential for continuation of a Museum Studies program and to secure appropriate expert advice in how to address the collections in the museum. But I am finalizing the elimination of the research division. I have accepted their recommendation to explore a more efficient veterinary student program and to provide limited bridge funding to the Statewide Arboretum.

The Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources has already announced in excess of its 27 percent share of the 4.6 percent reduction. This has produced funds that are being held as a contingency against the unknown result of discussions this summer over the future of the veterinary student contract. If a more focused program for veterinary students can be constructed, the contingency funds will be used to restore the Statewide Arboretum and any remaining funds will support programs in the Nebraska Forest Services.

All additional reduction proposals are associated with City Campus programs. I am proposing these additional reductions:

• reductions in offices reporting to the chancellor;
• two administrative positions in the College of Architecture;
• reduction of the Areas of Strength program in the College of Arts and Sciences;
• restructuring and downsizing the Russian Language program and eliminating instruction in Portuguese;
• restructuring of engineering extension and the downsizing of administrative budgets in the dean's office, College of Engineering;
• reducing the College of Engineering's undergraduate equipment fund, to be replaced by the proceeds from the new fee attached to engineering courses;
• eliminating the department of Industrial Systems Technology at the Peter Kiewit Institute in Omaha;
• eliminating the Omaha site day-time program delivery in the College of Human Resources and Family Sciences;
• eliminating the Department of Health and Human Performance in Teachers College.

I know these reductions will be painful but they are necessary to achieve the budget reductions imposed upon us. We have built some contingency reserves, with the residual from these proposals, to permit us to respond to opportunities to place some of the tenured faculty in alternative positions. We will again extend our best efforts to assist all adversely affected employees in relocating to alternative employment.

We have continued to pursue the strategy of vertical reductions, where appropriate, in order to preserve the central strengths of the university and to position us to continue to enhance our programs of teaching, research, and service. We all hope that economic conditions will improve and that this will be the last time we will face such difficult circumstances.

The APC will develop a time table for considering these additional reductions. Because of the summer, it is unlikely that hearings will be held on these proposals until fall.

You will also find on the web my thinking about the salary increase. At this point, because of the very difficult cash flow problems we face in fully implementing these reductions I am deferring any salary increase for the present time. However, the Board of Regents insists that at some point within this biennium, the full 3.5 percent increase available to us be implemented, and we will do so as quickly as our circumstances permit.

Again, let me thank all of you for your support and your commitment to this university. While these times have not been pleasant, we share this environment with almost every other institution of higher education in the country. As I have said, while the circumstances are the same for all of public higher education, some institutions will emerge as winners and some as losers. With your continued support and efforts, I believe we are positioned to be one of the winners.

Harvey

On the web Detailed documents about the budget reductions, including information for students affected by proposed reductions, can be found at <www.unl.edu/pr/chancl lr/2003-5budget/>.

Ron Pike, exhibits preparator for the NU State Museum, installs a sign at the newly renovated Pine Ridge diorama, which opened May 31 at the museum. Photo by Crystal Corman.

Ron Pike, exhibits preparator for the NU State Museum, is reflected in glass surrounding a piece of an exhibit he is hanging at the Pine Ridge diorama, which opened May 31 at the museum. Photo by Crystal Corman.

Pine Ridge diorama reopens at museum

By Kim Hachiya, University Communications

If you were lucky enough to have a cabin at Fort Robinson in Nebraska's Pine Ridge and were looking out the cabin's window on an overcast early winter afternoon, you might see mule deer and white-winged juncos as part of the landscape. Now, anyone can experience that event in Lincoln in a newly renovated Pine Ridge diorama at the University of Nebraska State Museum.

The diorama is the fourth in a series of renovated dioramas in the Hall of Nebraska Wildlife on the first floor of the museum, located in Morrill Hall on the UNL campus. It opened to the public on May 31.

The original Pine Ridge diorama was completed in 1959. The next 44 years took its toll on the exhibit, as harsh lighting faded the deer fur and the acrylic paint in the background deteriorated. In addition, the museum's philosophy in presenting dioramas has changed and the new exhibit incorporates that thinking.

Dioramas, according to Judy Diamond, the museum's associate director for public programs, showcase wildlife in their natural environments. While that approach remains, the museum's staff has changed the way that visitors interact with the dioramas and also has enhanced the content of the dioramas with new materials that highlight biodiversity.

"We try to involve the visitor to experience the habitat group by surrounding the visitor with the diorama," Diamond said. "Our new emphasis is to make the visitors paramount and to communicate with them to enhance their learning experience."

The Pine Ridge diorama was designed to re-create the landscape outside a Pine Ridge cabin setting. Two mule deer, an antlered buck and a doe step amid brown grasses and small ridges of snow. The doe's gaze appears focused on a bird in the foreground. Behind the pair rises the Pine Ridge escarpment.

Other parts of the exhibit include mounts of two bucks who were found near death with locked antlers, and a pair of skulls - one from a mule deer and the other from a white-tailed deer - allowing viewers to compare the two. New signs explain the habitat and life cycles of the wildlife.

Patricia Freeman, professor and curator of zoology at the State Museum, was one of the scientists who worked on the project.

"There is so much information to distill to laymen's terms about mule deer," she said. "We went back and forth on how much information to present. In the end, you realize you have to know a lot about the animals in order to get it down to just a little information."

The Pine Ridge is a remnant of the Black Hills and the Rocky Mountains in northwest Nebraska, Freeman said. It's isolated, exceptional and unique in terms of the animals, plants and other wildlife it supports, she said. For instance, the white-winged junco is unique to the Pine Ridge and Black Hills. It's larger and slightly lighter in color than the juncos one would see in Lincoln, she said. The diorama also depicts the tracks of a white-tailed jackrabbit. Mule deer, Freeman said, once were far more common in Nebraska when most of the state was open prairie. Now their range has moved farther west. As Nebraska has become more forested, white-tailed deer, once thought of as an eastern species, have proliferated, she said.

Diamond said dioramas depict a moment in time; the Pine Ridge diorama showcases an early winter scene from the late 1950s. Thus, Freeman said, there are no insects and the dormant brown grasses would not be grazed down. A portion of the educational materials for the diorama explains what the animals eat during the winter, she said.

The junco was carved by local artist Cliff Hollestelle, who has created many carvings for the museum. Carvings hold up better than mounted birds, Freeman said. A metal casting of the junco will be installed so people can touch the bird to get a feel for its size.

Diamond noted that a number of scientists from the university were involved in developing the diorama. They include Paul Johnsgard, Foundation Professor emeritus of biological sciences, who consulted on the bird; and Robert Kaul, also professor emeritus of biological sciences, who consulted on the grasses.

The museum team who worked on the project include Diamond, Freeman, Sarah Disbrow, Debra Meier, Ron Pike, Joel Nielsen, Kathy French and Saundra Frerichs. The work was supported by a donation from Omahans J. William and Ruth Scott and donations from the Friends of the University of Nebraska State Museum. The mounts of the mule deer were made by artist Fred Hoppe.

Freeman and Diamond said plans are under way for a renovation of fifth diorama ­ one depicting the Niobrara River. According to Diamond, the Niobrara diorama will be a full walk-in exhibit with a sandstone cliff, a mountain lion (puma), an elk and other animals. True to the "moment in time" concept, this diorama also features Native Americans hunting the elk and has a passenger pigeon, an extinct bird that once populated North America in the millions.

Diorama renovations are costly, Diamond said. Depending on the scope and size of the project, each diorama can cost between $10,000 and $60,000. Private donations pay for the renovations.

Biochemist Vadim Gladyshev led a team that identified seven new proteins in humans and mice containing selenium. Their work recently was published in Science. IANR Photo by Brett Hampton.

Work shows important role selenium plays in our health

Biochemistry research appears in Science

By Daniel Moser, IANR News and Publishing

Research headed by a UNL researcher should help scientists better understand the role of selenium, an essential micronutrient, in human health.

A team led by UNL Biochemist Vadim Gladyshev identified seven new selenium-containing proteins in humans and mice. Their findings were published in the May 30 edition of the prestigious journal Science.

Nebraska researchers teamed with scientists from a Spanish university to identify the new selenoproteins. Selenium is a trace element that plays an important role in a healthy immune system, among other things.

Selenoproteins are elusive and difficult to identify. For example, most of them were missed when the human genome was completed two years ago. However, the UNL research team tracked down these proteins by using a novel genome search method that analyzed in parallel human, mouse and rat genomes for features characteristic of selenoprotein genomes, a strategy devised by recent UNL Ph.D. graduate Gregory Kryukov.

With the 18 previously known selenoproteins, scientists now believe they've identified all of the proteins in the body that contain the essential micronutrient selenium. About half of all human, mouse and other animal selenoproteins were identified in Gladyshev's lab at UNL. Scientists now can more fully study the micronutrients' role in human and animal health and link selenoproteins to specific beneficial health effects of selenium.

"Dietary selenium plays an important role in cancer prevention, immune function, aging, male reproduction and other physiological and pathophysiological processes," the authors wrote in their Science paper. Selenoproteins are important because scientists think they're responsible for most of the beneficial effects of dietary selenium and are essential to mammals.

"Information on a set of human and mouse selenoproteins should provide the basis for future systematic analysis of mammalian selenoproteins' functions," they wrote.

Research elsewhere has found that men with high selenium levels are three times less likely to develop prostate cancer. Previous research also showed that people with HIV who are low in selenium are 20 times more likely to die from AIDS than HIV-infected people with adequate selenium levels.

Ultimately, research into selenium's role could lead to recommendations that people take more selenium if they are at risk of developing certain cancers, especially prostate cancer. In addition, the soil in the Midwest, including Nebraska, is rich in selenium, so future research might add value to Nebraska's agricultural products, Gladyshev said.

The paper is titled "Characterization of Mammalian Selenoproteomes." In addition to Gladyshev and Kryukov, other UNL authors are Sergey Novoselov, Alexey Lobanov and Omid Zehtab. Sergi Castellano and Roderic Guigo, also co-authors, are from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain.

Gladyshev joined NU's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources in 1998. He received his Ph.D. from Moscow State University in Russia and then worked at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, where he began his research into selenoproteins. He studies selenium biology to understand the potential of selenium as an anticancer drug and its possible role in delaying the aging process.

Funding for his research is provided by the National Institutes of Health.

The text of the Science paper can be found at <www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/300/ 5624/1439>.

Faculty vote supports Perlman

This e-mail was sent to all faculty and staff by Chancellor Harvey Perlman on May 19. It was in response to the results of the vote initiated by Perlman on May 5 to gauge faculty support for his administration and its methods of cutting the budget. The voting results showed that 914 voted in favor of the actions of the administration in addressing budget reductions and have confidence in its ability to continue leading the university. There were 110 votes voting against this statement. David J. Shively, Lancaster County election commissioner, certified the election results.

Dear Colleagues:

(On May 15) you received the results of the poll of the membership of the UNL Assembly. I am pleased, and humbled, by your confidence in me and the others in my administration and your support for the general approach we have taken to budget reductions. I also deeply appreciate the expressions of support from staff and students and alumni. But there is, of course, no joy in any of this. None of us bargained for the cards we have been dealt, and I am sure that many of you who voted "yes" remain uneasy about what the future may hold for the university and for each of us individually. I take the vote to mean that a majority of you, even if you may disagree with one or more of our individual decisions, recognize that those of us with the responsibility to do so are trying in good faith to find the path that will best preserve the strength of this university.

I have previously explained why I thought the vote was essential. It is now behind us, and I pledge to continue working with the faculty leadership and the APC to find the best way to resolve the budget issues. I invite individuals, as well as the Academic Planning Committee and the Academic Senate, to continue to evaluate the recommendations I make and to provide me with comments, criticisms, and alternatives as they think appropriate. I will honor the procedures of the university, carefully consider each and every suggestion, and work hard to continue to deserve your confidence.

I remain committed to shared governance and to the current structures designed to represent faculty interests. I hope the faculty leadership and I can develop a more constructive relationship, one that is focused clearly on how we are to build a strong university. I fully acknowledge that there are many issues that are primarily the responsibility of the faculty. Similarly, there are decisions that ultimately only the administration can make. I believe the very difficult choices posed by these budget reductions are in that latter category. It is not because we are smarter or in positions of power or want to make these decisions but because we are the only ones in a position to consider all the available information and to balance the interests of the entire university. We can surely debate the merits of any decision without rancor and in such a way that does not undermine the very goal to which we are all committed: to build public support for a stronger and better university.

I thank all of you for your willingness to make your voice heard about this important issue and assure you that I will continue to value your input, whether you agree with me or not. And I renew my pledge that I made to you when I was installed as your chancellor: that I will seek your guidance, I will listen to your comments, I will candidly explain and justify any decision I make, and I will make my decisions solely on what I believe will best serve the interests of the university.

Again, thanks to each of you for what you do for the university. The fact is that notwithstanding all of these budget cuts and controversies, we had a quite remarkable year. Our tally of successes and achievements in research, in teaching and in serving the needs of the public is extensive and still growing. Your efforts to produce this record, in the face of such adversity, gives me confidence that together we can make this university a very special place.

Harvey

Regents OK budget, approve UNL projects

The NU Board of Regents approved several issues important to UNL at its June 7 meeting:

• The regents approved the university's operating budget for the 2003-2004 and the 2004-2005 fiscal years. The budgets include an increase in tuition of 15 percent for 2003-2004 and a 12 percent increase in 2004-2005. It also includes a 1.75 percent pay raise for university faculty and staff each years.
• The regents approved the merger of the UNL Teachers College and the College of Human Resources and Family Sciences. They will become the College of Education and Human Sciences effective Aug. 18. The move saves about $300,000.
• The regents approved the merger of the Division of Statistics with the Department of Biometry in the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources to create a new Department of Statistics. The statistics division had been paired with the Department of Mathematics, which will now stand alone.
• The regents approved the university's purchase of two pieces of the former Cushman property near 22nd and Vine streets. The University of Nebraska Foundation has agreed to facilitate the purchase for the university. The university proposes to pay about $4.9 million for the property from Antelope Valley funds, gifts from the NU Foundation, and restricted monies in the University Trust Fund. UNL will use the warehouse facility for relocation of maintenance shops and storage, which will be lost in 2005 as part of the Antelope Valley Project. The campus will undertake a campus planning effort to determine the university's use of the other major building at this location.
• The regents approved spending for other projects around campus, including the addition of another level to the parking garage to be built at 14th and Avery streets; renovation of Behlen Lab; renovation of the dining hall at Selleck Quadrangle; replacement of fire alarms in Nebraska Hall; and the building of new student housing at 16th and Y streets.