UNL Chancellor James Moeser visits with Ivan Rush, beef specialist, on
a tour of the University of Nebraska Panhandle Research & Extension
Center in Scottsbluff. Moeser is conducting a number of "road trips" this
spring to various communities across Nebraska to become better acquainted
with the state as well as with UNL programs and facilities that serve
Nebraskans who live outside of Lincoln. (Photo by Kim Hachiya)
UNL Chancellor James Moeser has appointed Irv Omtvedt to serve as interim senior vice chancellor for academic affairs when the position is vacated June 30 by Joan Leitzel.
Leitzel has accepted the presidency of the University of New Hampshire after serving in UNL's No. 2 administrative position since Aug. 1, 1992.
Omtvedt currently serves as vice chancellor for the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources and is a vice president in the University of Nebraska system. He came to UNL in 1975 as dean for agricultural research. Prior to that, he held faculty positions at Auburn University, Oklahoma State University and the University of Minnesota.
"Dr. Omtvedt is an experienced administrator with a distinguished record of service and dedication to this institution," said Moeser. "It's not difficult to understand why he is held in such high esteem.
"I look forward to what he can bring to this interim position. It's an ideal opportunity for us to capitalize on his knowledge of UNL's statewide resources -- reemphasizing the fact that our campus is the entire state of Nebraska."
Omtvedt will serve in the interim position during the period in which
a national search will take place to fill the senior vice chancellor
position. Moeser said a search committee is being formed.
By Kim Hachiya, News & Information
New to the slate of vehicle registration options is a touch-tone registration system, NU Park, launched this week by UNL Parking Services.
Tad McDowell, parking manager, told the Parking Advisory Committee that tests of the computerized registration process have gone well, and he expects to get the system going this week.
The system, accessible 24 hours a day with no downtime, runs up to eight lines simultaneously, McDowell said. Warren Embree, manager of business computing, wrote the software and helped develop the script, McDowell said. It is Embree's voice that will prompt users through the system.
Faculty, staff and students will be able to use the system.
McDowell said several smaller campuses have initiated touch-tone vehicle registration. Each software package must be tailor-made for each campus.
People also may register by mail or in person, he said. Faculty and staff have until May 10 to register early for next year's permits, which won't be mailed until mid-August. Students must pick up permits in person.
McDowell told the committee that next year's permits will be harder to counterfeit because the hologram will be larger and will photocopy in black. Counterfeiting has become somewhat of a problem, he said.
McDowell said he's been working with city and Haymarket officials to develop alternatives for the anticipated loss of about 600 parking spaces on the west side of campus next December due to staging and renovation of the Ninth Street Bridge and probable expansion of the Immigration and Naturalization Service building.
"We have lots of projects going on and lots of events at the same time," he said.
Plans are progressing for the parking garage. Preliminary designs call for a 700-stall, five-story garage that can be expanded in the future. An Aug. 1, 1997, completion is targeted.
The committee also advised Parking Services to look into changing the amount of time to appeal a ticket from 14 calendar days to 10 "class" days so vacation periods don't use up appeal time. McDowell said the informal policy is to not count vacation periods as part of the 14 days, but agreed a more formalized process would clear confusion. The question was raised by a student appealing a ticket.
The committee elected Scott Swenseth, associate professor of
management, as chair for 1996-97.
Nebraska Educational telecommunications has announced plans to digitize the transmission signal of its NEB*SAT satellite services and to lease excess transponder space freed by the move.
Digitization describes the transfer from an analog to digital satellite signal. Digital transmission is more efficient than analog transmission and requires less satellite transponder space.
Revenues generated for the lease of NET's excess transponder space to nonprofit and commercial users will be used to cover the costs of transfer to the new technology and create a fund toward a replacement distribution system once the GE Americon SpaceNet 3 satellite -- currently distributing all NEB*SAT programming -- completes its expected service life in the year 2000.
SpaceNet 3 relays the broadcast signals for the Nebraska ETV Network, the Nebraska Public Radio Network and other educational and public broadcasting services such as the Schools TeleLearning Service and distance learning teleconferencing. The Nebraska Legislature approved the lease of excess satellite transponder space in LB1138, which has been signed into law by Governor Ben Nelson.
According to Sue Gildersleeve, NET assistant general manager, administration and finance, leasing of the extra transponder space could generate as much as $750,000 per year.
The switch to a digital signal requires the purchase of encoding equipment to be housed at NET in Lincoln and some 300 digital receivers for use at transmitter locations and schools across the state. The encoding and receiving equipment will cost approximately $1.2 million, which will be initially funded through the state's Division of Administrative Services master lease program and repaid through transponder leasing revenues.
The Nebraska ETV broadcast signal will become completely digital within about 60 days. The transition to digital reception for Nebraska's schools, colleges and universities will occur only after all schools that use the NEB*SAT satellite service have been equipped with digital receivers.
"The switch to digital broadcasts will not affect Nebraska ETV viewers who receive the public television signal via home television antennas or are cable subscribers," said Bill Ramsay, NET director of engineering and technical services. "Nebraskans who use privately owned satellite dishes to watch Nebraska ETV will not be able to receive Nebraska ETV by installing, or re-attaching, a regular home television antenna," he explained.
Viewers outside the range of Nebraska ETV's broadcast signal or those
who reside outside of Nebraska and use a satellite to receive Nebraska
ETV will lose access to Nebraska ETV programming.
William C. Richardson, president and chief executive officer of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, will be the keynote speaker for the UNL investiture ceremony at 3:30 p.m. April 26 in the Lied Center for Performing Arts. James Moeser will be honored as UNL's 18th chancellor during the ceremony, which will be free and open to the public. All faculty, staff and students are invited to attend.
A processional of nearly 160 representatives from the UNL faculty,
other universities, academic and professional societies, all dressed in
academic attire, will march through the campus from the Campus Recreation
Center to the Lied Center before the ceremony. The ceremony will be
carried live on KRNU radio 90.3 FM and UNL campus channel 8. The ceremony
will be broadcast on Monday, April 29 from 10 a.m. to noon on NEB*SAT
Network 2 located on Space Net 3 channel 4 C band (set satellite
receivers to narrow video band width). A reception in the Sheldon
Memorial Art Gallery Sculpture Garden will follow the ceremony.
Noted sociologist Harry Edwards, a scholar in the study of sport and society for three decades, will be the keynote speaker at the first conference in a new UNL series focusing on issues facing persons of color in predominantly white educational institutions.
The conference, "Students and Faculty of Color in Predominantly White Institutions: Different Perspectives on Majority Rules," will be April 26-27 at the Clifford Hardin Nebraska Center for Continuing Education, 33rd and Holdrege streets. Other featured speakers are athlete Arthur Agee and sports-in-society expert Richard E. Lapchick.
Special focus of the conference is on student-athletes. Additional topics include issues facing African-American women in higher education and Afrocentric curricular reforms. Presenters from 28 institutions in the United States and Canada will be featured in a variety of concurrent sessions including interdisciplinary abstracts of case studies, research results, theoretical analyses, model programs, and personal experiences.
The conference features lectures by three nationally known speakers. Agee, a former student-athlete featured in the acclaimed documentary Hoop Dreams, will open the conference with a speech at 9 a.m. April 26. He will address issues ranging from the importance of role models to the experience of being a student-athlete. Hoop Dreams follows Agee and fellow student-athlete William Gates from their entry into high school until just before they started college. The documentary captures the complex relationships as these two young men struggle to balance their dreams of basketball greatness with the realities of growing up in an American inner city.
Edwards' address, "The Black Athlete on the Traditionally White College Campus -- Issues of Access and Diversity," will be at 4 p.m. April 26. Edwards, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a staff consultant for the San Francisco 49ers and a consultant and commentator for sport-related television programs on NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS and on National Public Radio.
Lapchick will close the conference with a lecture at 3:15 p.m. April 27. Lapchick is the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston. The center works to ensure the education of athletes from junior high school through the professional ranks. Lapchick has written eight books, including Sport in Society: Equal Opportunity or Business as Usual? and is a regular columnist for The Sporting News. He is an adviser to the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Commission on Fairness in Sport and to the players' associations of the NBA, the NFL and Major League Baseball on the issue of racial hiring practices in sport.
Concurrent session topics include: psychosocial and racial identity development, relationships between students and faculty, outreach programs, recruitment and retention programs, influences on student college choice, isolation and resistance in college athletics, rules governing student-athletes, the Maafa concept (pronounced Ma-ahh-fah, defined as "a comprehensive program of enslavement and dehumanization of African Americans") in college athletics, academic services and support systems, student-athletes as role models, sports and the media, gender equity and Afrocentric education reforms.
A related set of concurrent sessions April 27 focuses on African-American women in higher education. Titled "Transforming the Ivory Tower: Ebony Women Redefining the Academy," these sessions will discuss the challenges faced by African American female faculty and administrators and how their presence redefines the dynamics of intellectual and cultural scholarship.
Registration for the conference is required.
The Department of Academic Conferences and Professional Programs is
offering a new registration option for UNL faculty, staff, and students
who want to attend "Students and Faculty of Color in Predominantly White
Institutions: Different Perspectives on Majority Rules" but may have
difficulty fitting the entire program into their schedules. "The Random
Sampler" permits holders of valid UNL ID cards to attend a maximum of
three sessions at any time during the conference on a space-available
basis. The cost is $25, which does not include meals or materials. For
more information contact Professional Programs, 472-2844.
Department of Textiles Clothing and Design faculty at the UNL are looking forward to some interesting questions on April 22.
Queries on a wide range of textiles-related science topics could come from children, parents or educators across North America and beyond. The department's 12 faculty are volunteers in a nationwide network of scientists and engineers participating in the Ask-A-Scientist Hotline.
The National Science Foundation sponsors the hotline as part of its National
Science and Technology Week activities, April 21-27. The public can get answers to all sorts of science, engineering and technology questions by calling 1-800-682-2716 on Monday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. People with Internet access can e-mail their questions to asknstw@nsf.gov.
The Texas Math and Science Hotline will act as a clearinghouse for questions. Personnel will review questions and forward them to appropriate scientists nationwide who are responsible for providing answers in a particular discipline. TCD will address textile-related queries.
The College of Human Resources and Family Sciences department is the only textiles department in the nation participating, said Rita Kean, textiles, clothing and design department chair.
"TCD is taking a major role," said Joel McCleary, science and math outreach coordinator for the Nebraska Math and Science Initiative, which coordinates National Science and Technology Week activities in Nebraska. As far as he knows, McCleary said, TCD is also the only entire academic department nationwide participating in the call-in.
"Our faculty are very excited about this," Kean said. "We realize that one way to get people interested in science is to really pique their interest at a very young age."
Kean expects the department's two textiles scientists will field most questions. However, faculty specializing in textile design and use, art, internal trade and environmental aspects of textiles also will offer information. This combined expertise should help provide information on a variety of textile-related topics, she said.
Textile science and design are good tools for illustrating science's link to daily life because textiles are familiar and universally used, she said.
The theme for this year's National Science and Technology Week is "Design Connections Through Science and Technology." The concept of links between science, math and technology is a good fit for TCD, Kean said.
"In our department, we talk about how the science and design of textiles are related," she said. "One of the bridges between science and design is the technology."
In conjunction with National Science and Technology Week, McCleary distributed information packets that include information on people with different scientific expertise, including the TCD faculty. Packet recipients included 1,100 Girl Scout troops representing 15,000 girls statewide.
"We think this will be the first time that many of these girls will have come into contact with a scientist, let alone a woman scientist who is at the top of her field," McCleary said.
NSF funds the Nebraska Math and Science Initiative in partnership with
UNL's College of Arts and Science, Teachers College, College of
Engineering and Technology, State Museum and the Institute of Agriculture
and Natural Resources.
By Robert Sheldon, News and Information
There are archaeologists who squat in the dirt, squinting over splinters of bone from which to reconstruct a dinosaur. Then there is UNL's Michael Hoff, art historian and archaeologist, who looks to the sky and raises a statue out of thin air.
Hoff is UNL's sole representative in the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. He is the first UNL faculty member to be associated with the institution, which oversees all archaeological excavations and research undertaken by American scholars, in more than half a century.
In Athens several years ago, Hoff erected a scaffold 13 meters high alongside what had once been the eastern entrance to the old Roman Agora, erected during the reign of Augustus about 10 years before the birth of Christ. Today, the columns marking the entrance are chipped and worn, their function obscured by coarse-stoned buildings flanking their boundaries or impeding the very road that once led into the ancient marketplace.
"A pair of English architects sketched this entranceway in the 18th century," Hoff said. "At the time, there was still a block of marble with an inscription that noted that a statue honoring Lucius, a grandson of the Emperor Augustus, was placed at the very top of the gate."
There was no telling what form the statue took, or its overall dimensions, and the task is more difficult today than it was even in the 18th century, for even the inscribed block of marble has disappeared from what remains of the statue's pediment.
At the top of his scaffold, Hoff's trained eye discovered a series of holes above the sloping roof of the ancient entrance. They are on either side of a weathered piece of marble perched at the apex of the roof. He used those holes and other cuttings at the top of the pediment to reconstruct the statue.
"Any little cutting, any little mark I found helped me understand what went on up there," he said.
From marks and cuttings, Hoff was able to find where two blocks of marble were clamped to the center block, which was part of the pediment itself. Holes carved into the pediment told him how long the missing blocks were, for they marked places where a crow bar was inserted to move the end blocks firmly into place before all three were clamped together.
Thus, Hoff determined that each missing block was about three feet long, and the total distance from end of one block to the center point of the pediment was about five feet.
"A base that large would most likely have supported an equestrian statue, a style common in the period," Hoff said.
Reconstructing the past out of thin air is just part of what Hoff does as he moves about the ancient ruins of what was once the flower of western civilization.
Hoff is associate professor of art history in the UNL Department of Art and Art History and holds a courtesy appointment in the classics department. "I teach art history, but my research interest is Greek and Roman archaeology and history, particularly the archaeology of Athens," he said.
At the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he earned his bachelor's degree, art history was part of the archaeology curriculum, thus enabling Hoff to combine studies in classics with studies in archaeology and art history to graduate with a dual major.
He became enamored with Athens while pursuing graduate degrees, first a master's degree in classics from Florida State and later a Ph.D. in art history from Boston University. In 1981, he worked on an excavation at one of the main archaeological sites in Athens, and has returned to the city almost every year since then.
What intrigues Hoff, unlike so many scholars who busy themselves with the contributions of the Greeks to Roman culture and hence to western civilization, is the opposite side of the coin -- the impact of Rome on the Greeks.
From atop the ruins of the once majestic gateway to the Roman agora, Hoff was able to look down on 2,000 years of history, seeing beneath the clutter of accrued habitation the original form of the marketplace which was begun in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus about 20 B.C. Augustus, Hoff said, intended that the new marketplace take the place of the old Athenian agora, both functionally and symbolically. It would be the new center of Athenian life, a few hundred yards from the old center, which for 500 years had been the seat of Athenian democracy, the locus for the mustering of armies that had marched forth to conquer the known world and to repel invaders from near and far.
"The Athenians were never to forget that their days as citizens of a free democratic city were over." Hoff said. "This was a very important phase in the history of Athens, this collision of Rome and Athens. I'm interested in the effects of the collision, the give and take of Athenians and Romans over the years."
The old Greek agora and portions of its Roman successor have undergone extensive excavation since the 1930s, thereby allowing researchers such as Hoff many opportunities to reconstruct the past within the confines of the existing archaeological framework.
While in Athens this summer, Hoff will look at material pertinent to an article he is writing. He is focusing on a night in the winter of 87-86 B.C. when the Roman dictator Sulla assaulted and ravaged Athens, the event that signaled the end of the Greek city's independence and the beginning of half a century of deprivation and degradation.
"We have the testimony of Plutarch concerning Sulla's attack on Athens," Hoff said. "His account was written at a time not that far removed from the actual event. What I'm doing at present is looking at Plutarch's account and seeing how it is reflected in the architectural record."
Plutarch talks of Roman soldiers overhearing old men talking about the absence of guards at a location on the northwest side of the agora, Hoff said. Sulla is said to have entered the agora at this point. "Sure enough," said Hoff, "I find from reports of excavations that most of the debris associated with the attack begins in the northwest section of the agora and follows a path about 50 meters long inside the wall."
During the reign of Augustus, much of the old Athenian agora was filled in with monuments, buildings, temples and other structures. It no longer resembled the social and political center it once had been.
"In the very near future, I plan to do archaeological fieldwork in the
Roman agora," Hoff said. "I want to learn more about the Roman market's
role in the Roman patronage of Athens, as well as gain some understanding
of commerce in the Roman period."
Hoff said he will initiate negotiations with the Athenian archaeological authorities for an excavation permit this summer, when he will be in Athens to serve as director of the American School's Summer Session for six weeks. During the session, he will lead 20 mostly advanced graduate students from the United States in a study of archaeological sites and museums throughout Greece.
Hoff organized, with Susan Rotroff of the Department of Classics at
Washington University in St. Louis, an international conference on the
Romanization of Athens April 18-20 at UNL. Twelve scholars in the field
of Greek antiquity are presenting papers at the conference, which was
expected to draw about 100 scholars from the United States and Europe.
By Dave Engberg, International Affairs
Fiftieth birthdays are supposed to be memorable occasions. And for the Fulbright Exchange Program this will undoubtedly be the case. Unfortunately, the memories of its 50th year of service will, in hindsight, just as soon be forgotten.
Faced with proposed budget cuts equal to nearly one-fourth of their current operating budget, a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article reported that Fulbright officials convened a symposium in March to discuss ways to keep the program alive.
Although unable to reach a definitive decision concerning the program's future during their four days of talks, administrators did agree on one thing: The Fulbright Program has to change.
One of the changes proposed is a decrease in the number of faculty scholarships offered and a greater focus on student exchanges. Each year the program sends about 850 American graduate students abroad and brings about 1,200 foreign students to the United States in an attempt to realize its founder's vision of increasing mutual understanding among people.
Around 1,000 American academics and an equal number of their foreign counterparts participate in Fulbright exchanges each year. Several changes also have been suggested in normal exchange patterns.
For example, instead of exchanges between the United States and one country, officials believe that Fulbright activities might be better served if organized on a regional basis. By creating regional commissions to oversee Fulbright activities in several countries, they hope to cut administrative costs. To keep the program financially healthy, efforts now must focus on private contributions.
Joseph Stimpfl, UNL Fulbright program administrator and assistant dean of International Affairs, said the proposed cuts will require a dramatic rethinking of both the program's mission and the way future scholarships will be distributed.
"We need to consider what the program is all about and what its goals should be," he said. Despite the proposed cutbacks, however, Stimpfl reports the Fulbright Program has traditionally enjoyed only modest levels of participation.
"Fulbright programs have been a tremendously underutilized resource for both students and educators," he said. "Nearly one-third of the UNL students that apply for Fulbright scholarships receive them. The faculty success rate is even higher."
Faculty members interested in learning more about the program and how
to apply are encouraged to attend a Fulbright information session hosted
by Stimpfl from noon to 1:30 p.m. May 8 in the Nebraska Union.
Application forms will be distributed at the meeting and a free lunch
will be provided. If interested, RSVP with Carmen at 2-5358 no later
than April 30.
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