Moira Ferguson, James E. Ryan Chair, English and Women's Literature, extends her greetings to Chancellor James Moeser following the investiture ceremony at the Lied Center for Performing Arts last Friday.
Moeser was officially installed as UNL chancellor during the ceremony, which was preceded by a processional of 160 administrators and faculty in full academic regalia, which paraded through campus accompanied by a Dixieland band.
Speakers at the ceremony, including NU President Dennis Smith and William Richardson, president and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, praised Moeser for the qualities he will bring to the highest UNL office.
In his address, Moeser said the university's greatest challenge is itself, and its greatest enemy is the walls that separate departments and colleges. Moeser said the university must find ways to breach those walls and "resist the tendency for individual departments or colleges to contain specific segments of knowledge within their walls."
In concluding his remarks Moeser said he envisions "a community of
scholars engaged in continuous learning and the creation of new
knowledge, whose campus is the entire state, whose textbook is the world
and the universe beyond it."
By Kim Hachiya, News & Information
In the first of what Chancellor James Moeser hopes will be an ongoing faculty conversation series about the future of UNL, the buzzword was "change."
"Can universities change and tranform internally at a rapid rate while preserving its internal culture?" he asked the 80 or so faculty and administrators who attended the May 1 symposium. "If we don't effect change ourselves, it will be effected for us. Or it will take place at other institutions and leave us as marginalized dinosaurs."
Panelists during the symposium discussed public expectations, boundaries to change and leadership for change.
James Hendrix, dean of engineering, said the public expects quality education, expects some return on tax investment in the form of help and technical assistance, expects universities to change as rapidly as business is changing and wants an institution of which it can be proud.
Richard Perrin, agricultural economics, said the public demands marketable skills of our graduates and wants the university to participate in economic development. He suggested the university should shift focus to basic research but find better ways to link researchers with entrepreneurs to drive economic development.
And, he said, the marketable skills we give our students are not computer programming, accounting and writing, although those are helpful. Rather, it is giving the student the facility, desire, habit and enthusiasm for learning. That skill, he said, is transferrable across disciplines and across learning environments.
Linda Pratt, English, said the university needs to respond internally before it can respond to any of its various publics. Pratt argued that academic turf wars, disciplinary suspicions and departmental snobbery demoralize faculty and damage the academy in the public's eyes. And, she warned, the change needs to be genuine and driven from a desire to improve, and not be driven by a defense strategy to protect the ivy fortress. That, she said, would be viewed as cynical, self-serving and ultimately, failing.
Jo Potuto, law, suggested that the move to distance education needs to be tempered with a look at what the collegiate experience means -- acculturation, community, mentoring and active learning -- items which she said might be unavailable through a course delivered by satellite TV.
Paul Olson, English, said the university needs to expand its idea of publics and begin to work as a network with other institutions for a holistic model of learning. Linking the university with businesses, schools, community colleges and others in rural communities is one way to regain the public's support and trust, he said.
Stephen Baenziger, agronomy, suggested the biggest boundary to change is the limits of one's imagination. "Are we building a monument to our past or a foundation for our future?" he queried. Baenziger suggested that some processes are barriers. The hours we teach, the semester-long calendar, the reliance on location-based programming, all-or-nothing credits turn students away, he said.
Stephen Hilliard, English, said planning for change goes awry when planning becomes the end result. He suggested a sort of blue-ribbon internal think tank be charged with futuring and visioning.
Charles Shapiro, Northeast Extension Center, suggested that change is best implemented when the needs of the clientele are respected and addressed. Shapiro also said we need to replace what we are doing now, not add another layer of work.
Audience member Harvey Perlman, law, said it's important to get a culture into place that can respond to change quickly. Others agreed that it's important to respond to the needs of "stakeholders" -- citizens, students, customers entrepreneurs and others who want our services. Many said the university should adopt the language and practices of business, where service is customer driven.
One thing that must be addressed, most agreed, is the internal reward structure. While tenure and academic freedom must be respected and preserved, the "model" for the ideal faculty member might need to be broadened to include criteria beyond research, teaching and service. Liz Grobsmith, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, offered this bit of wisdom: "We need to recognize our own fear of change before we can go forward. That's an important step."
Moeser urged those in attendance to talk to "five people" about what
they had heard. He promised the conversations would continue in more
symposia and workshops.
UNL has received a $1.5 million, five-year grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Mich., to help food systems professionals meet the needs of stakeholders in the 21st century.
Based on a visioning process involving more than 800 across the state in Phase I of Nebraska Network 21 (NN21), Phase II calls for redefining educational structures and creating "Communities of Learning into the 21st Century."
William C. Richardson, president of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, said "The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is certainly one of those universities positioning itself for the 21st century, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation is proud to be one of your partners in doing so." He made the comments at the investiture of new UNL Chancellor James Moeser.
Richardson said he is pleased to have recently awarded a $1.5 million Food Systems Professions Education Grant to continue the Nebraska Communities of Learning Project being spearheaded by the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources. This project partners the University of Nebraska with several Nebraska communities, your community college system, the K-12 agricultural education system, other universities throughout the state, the food system-related business and industry to initiate systemic changes that will stress lifelong learning and will prepare a new kind of graduate for the 21st century.
"We also are pleased that Dr. Moeser will be a member of the Kellogg President's Commission on the Land-Grant University of the 21st Century that is being organized and conducted by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges," said Richardson.
Moeser said UNL is part of two major Kellogg initiatives, one of 12 institutions participating in the food systems professional education grant and part of a national consortium of 20 other major institutions working with Kellogg to redefine the mission on the land-grant university.
"The issues facing us are common to many of our peer institutions, and we want to be part of this national conversation," Moeser said.
The five-year grant stresses partnerships within the University of Nebraska as well as other institutions throughout the state. In addition to people throughout Nebraska, faculty and students on both UNL campuses will continue to be actively involved in NN21, said Irv Omtvedt, vice chancellor of IANR.
The NN21 Phase II management team will include Cecil Steward, dean of the UNL College of Architecture; Dennis Baack, executive director of the Nebraska Community College Association; Don Edwards, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, IANR; and Glen Vollmar, dean and director of International Programs, IANR, who also will serve as director of NN21.
A major of component of Phase II is action teams of administrators, faculty, staff, citizens and students, said Vollmar.
Designated actions teams include: Distance education and outreach; scholarship, evaluation and rewards, particularly focused on faculty; human development, faculty, staff administrative development focusing on change; food systems in 2020 with emphasis on changes in structure science, diets curricula and other areas; cultural and gender diversity; and monitoring change integration.
Vollmar said there will be opportunities for proposals to establish actions teams such as information access and management, communities of learning and how they work, new administrative structures, visionary student curricula and learning in a global context. Fifteen percent of the total action team budget will be designated for support of open proposal solicitation on a competitive basis as they relate to "Communities of Learning."
NN21 was undertaken 18 months ago with a $134,415 grant from the
Kellogg Foundation.
To many, summer and reading are a logical pairing, just like summer and baseball, thanks in part to summer reading programs that have been sponsored for years by libraries across the country to prevent the atrophy of young minds during the school break.
With that in mind, here are a few suggestions for summer reading --
recent University of Nebraska Press publications recommended by some of
its editorial advisory board members and compiled by Annette Windhorn,
publicity and exhibits manager at the Press.
I like to balance my summer reading between books in my own field, music history, that pull me out of my professional concentration on medieval studies -- particularly tempting is Opera: Desire, Disease, Death by Linda and Michael Hutcheon (1996, $40 cloth) with its marvelously alluring and alliterative title -- and books that take me at least a little further away, if not beyond the gates of campus -- Robert Knoll's Prairie University (1995, $40 cloth) has to be on the top of the pile.
If I ever decide to take on my wife and in-laws in their passion for
the
Civil War, Lee the Soldier by Gary Gallagher (1996, $45 cloth) has
decided appeal too.
I read without much system and without a clear program. This summer I will be rereading John Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks (1979, $9.95 paperback) and Marty Strange's Family Farming (1988, $9.95 paperback).
I think that Marc Weiner's Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination (1995, $40 cloth) is a good read.
I find most contemporary literary criticism so jejune as to be not
worth the effort; yet Linda Simon's Gertrude Stein Remembered
(1994, $20 cloth) holds some interest.
Outwitting the Gestapo (1993, $12 paperback), Lucie Aubrac's memoir of her work in the French Resistance, is a book I've been recommending to family and friends these past two years. As one would expect of such a subject, this book is historically and politically illuminating; it's also fast-paced, funny and warmly personal.
For a summer's leisurely reading with one of America's best-loved writers, Carol Petersen's Bess Streeter Aldrich (1995, $35 cloth) is the ideal starting place. This biography tells the human stories behind Lantern In Her Hand, A White Bird Flying, and the other novels, as well as the short stories -- all also available from the NU Press.
Finally, Gregory Morris's finely crafted interviews, Talking Up a
Storm: Voices of the New West (1994, $12 paperback), introduce
readers to 15 of the new breed of western writers. Nebraska's Ron Hansen
is here and also Molly Gloss, Mary Clearman Blue, and Amy Tan, among
others. These writers talk about the land, of course; what's new is the
extent to which they also talk about how politics affects the land --
John Keeble went to Alaska to write of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, for
example, and Douglas Unger writes of the industrial economics of
modern-day farming in his Turkey Trilogy.
I'll be reading A Lie and a Libel: The History of the Protocols of
the Elders of Zion by Binjamin Segel (1995, $22.50 cloth). This is a
new edition of a classic study of the Protocols, the notorious
antisemitic tract that continues to circulate in many languages.
Originally published in Germany in the 1920s, Segel's study exposes the
methods and motives of the Protocols' creators at the end of the 19th
century. Editor Richard Levy of the University of Illinois at Chicago has
brought Segel's study up to date by adding a chronology, a biblography,
and a detailed introduction.
If you're averse to taking a hardcover book to the swimming pool, here's a few paperback books as suggested by Annette Windhorn that may just fill the bill:
More great summer reading can be found in three paperback offerings from the University Press by UNL's own John Janovy Jr. -- Keith County Journal, Back in Keith County, and On Becoming a Biologist. Commenting on Janovy's books, Noel Perrin said of Janovy in Civilization: "Good biologist though he is, he's an even better nature writer with a special affinity for the mysterious and the mystic." In the same article Perrin puts Janovy in an exalted place in "Thoreau's Literary Family."
But don't take the word of a critic. Read the books. You'll never look at a bird or a pond the same way again.
While the basketball season takes its brief break during the summer, why not take a little time to learn more about the game from the man who invented it all -- James Naismith. Basketball: Its Origin and Development, was first published by Naismith under the auspices of the YMCA in 1941 to mark the 50th anniversary of the game. Naismith not only writes of the origins of his game in this Bison Books reprint, but also of the development of rules, the spread of the game throughout the U.S. and the world, the development of girl's basketball, and the values and "physiology" of the game. The book also features a reproduction of an advertisement from 1893 that hawks indoor and outdoor basketball goals. Because nets were still closed at the bottom, each goal featured a pull cord used by the referee to discharge the ball following a score.
One can only imagine what Shaquille O'Neal would do to one of those.
-- David Ochsner
By David Ochsner, Scarlet Editor
The coffee shop in the Cornhusker Hotel was an ideal setting for Richard White (shown at left) to discuss his ideas on the unique American view of nature and how this view shapes both our culture and our politics.
The walls of the cafe were covered with murals depicting idealized nature scenes, Arcadian vistas and lush formal gardens, views that are starkly interrupted by windows offering a different vision of the world -- streets, cars, signs, buildings.
Most Americans wouldn't identify a city street as a part of nature. According to White, many of us see nature as something devoid of human habitation, which he believes is an unfortunate and unrealistic view that has caused everything from political rifts to undeserved stereotypes.
White, a professor of history at the University of Washington, recently presented a three-evening series of lectures at UNL as part of the Abraham Lincoln Lecture Series, founded and co-sponsored by the University of Nebraska Press. White also spoke to a number of classes, examining such issues as how the American view of nature has made an about face during the last 50 years.
"Just look at your capitol building, where the murals depict farmers breaking the soil," said White, referring to heroic images born of the founding philosophies of such American leaders as Thomas Jefferson. "The Jeffersonian view was that it was the task of Americans to bring nature to its final perfection -- and that is the message of those murals."
White said that in the 19th century, when many of our customs and institutions took shape, humans were viewed as a part of nature and knew nature through their work, and philosophers and political leaders like Jefferson believed that the rights of the republic and the dictates of our social system sprang from nature -- they were "natural rights."
Not anymore. Pollution, increased urbanization and even pop culture (namely, Disney) have all contributed to a new point of view, an imagined nature that exists apart from humans and, when left alone, is somehow perfect. Along with this new view came greater limits on individualism and property rights.
White concedes that Americans, armed with free market and private property rights, have done much to degrade the natural landscape. But to view the land as something that was pristine and "natural" before the arrival of Europeans and other settlers is not only fallacious, it also shows little respect for the humanity of Native Americans already here.
"Before European settlement the whole landscape had been shaped by Indian land use, by fire, hunting, agriculture and even cities. We forget that the colonial towns were as small or smaller than many of the existing Indian settlements," White said.
White added that simplified, Disney-esque views of Native Americans (such as those depicted in the recent animated movie Pocahontas) tend to de-humanize American Indians, suggesting that they live in perfect harmony with nature and that Indians and animals are nearly the same thing.
"There were changes to the landscape well before Europeans got here," White said. "Yet we deal with the Indians in terms of what we need them for, not for what they really are."
Changes to the American landscape have been far more dramatic (and destructive) since European settlement, but according to White, as much as we have changed the world, those changes still pale in comparison to such natural forces as volcanoes, floods and mudslides.
"We forget about the massive geological forces on this planet -- we can do nothing to stop them," he said. "We make a mockery of what we can control."
That is where White's respect for nature lies. He agrees that fighting pollution and saving forests and endangered species are all worthy causes, but not to the point where we only deceive ourselves.
Among the deceptions is the view that humans somehow don't belong in nature, that nature is something without humans that can be "preserved." White believes that human habitation is a vital part of nature, and that it can be argued that a ranch differs from a grassland only in that it is a "different kind of nature," and that "wilderness without humans is as artificial as anything humans create."
White said the debate over nature will continue to rage on, and both sides realize that "if you claim what you do is natural, you have a leg up in the debate," a debate fueled by emotions, misperceptions, and a lack of empathy.
"Environmentalists often treat farmers and ranchers as though they don't know anything, but farmers and ranchers work in nature -- that's a real knowledge," he said. "Environmentalists operate from abstract knowledge . . . that's one of the things that makes environmentalists so intractable."
Whatever side you choose, White said, we should be mindful that the human debate is always rooted in history and culture.
"Many times what we attribute to nature is what we really should attribute to ourselves," he said. "Nature will do what it wants. We still live on a planet with vast and fanciful forces that are important in explaining how we live. Nature doesn't care about human conflict, though, and it doesn't give a decisive answer."
By Robert Sheldon, News & Information
A new book by a retired UNL history professor takes a hard look at President Abraham Lincoln as a war president and commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces.
Abraham Lincoln and a Nation Worth Fighting For, by James Rawley, professor of history emeritus, was published by Harlan Davidson Inc. of Wheeling, Ill., as part of its American Biographical History Series.
In providing a new book about Lincoln, the editors of the biographical series, Alan Kraut and Jon Wakelyn, noted that "each generation needs to revisit Lincoln because each generation has fresh questions, inspired by its own experiences. Collectively, the answer to these questions expands our understanding of Lincoln and America in the 1860s, but they also assist us to better comprehend our own time."
Rawley said in his book that if Lincoln had died in 1859, he would be "a fairly obscure figure in American history." It was in the war years that he distinguished himself, and it is for his deeds during those years for which he is remembered.
It is the Lincoln of those years to which Rawley limits his essay -- the years when Lincoln was President and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy.
Lincoln, dedicating himself to the task of winning the war and preserving the nation, wielded a strong hand as President, Rawley notes. Lincoln asserted an unprecedented claim to war power, and "without his expansive concept of the war power he would have been a far less effective president," Rawley declared.
Rawley said Lincoln used his role as commander-in-chief to do non-military things. The Emancipation Proclamation was one of those things. Others were his suspension of writs of habeus corpus and steps toward implementation of his own plan for post-war reconstruction.
In Rawley's view, Lincoln's actions were justified. The nation was in a state of extreme emergency and extreme actions were required to preserve the nation.
The Emancipation Proclamation and reconstruction plans were justifiable to Lincoln under his war powers and in that light were acts whose rationales are largely understandable to modern observers. Revocation of habeus corpus, however, was an act most sensibly viewed with a thorough understanding of the background in which it occurred.
"The extent of suffering caused by Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus have been greatly exaggerated,"Rawley said. "On the other hand, most of those who were arrested were persons of questionable loyalty to the union."
Rawley said that Lincoln's view of his role as commander-in-chief carried over to the next century, when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt used their war powers to justify some of their actions.
"Neither Roosevelt, however, was able to assert his role as commander-in-chief to the extent that Lincoln did. No other president before him or after him has done so," Rawley said.
By Kim Hachiya, News & Information
In her last meeting before the UNL Academic Senate, Joan Leitzel, senior vice chancellor, told of a list of top priorities for UNL that have emerged from the planning cycle.
Leitzel, who leaves UNL this summer to become CEO of the University of New Hampshire, said the list represents requests for new initiatives. They will be merged with lists from other NU campuses into a master wish list submitted by the regents to the legislature for funding. The list includes: increased efforts in recruiting and retaining high-ability students, including scholarships and honors programming; expansion of engineering programming in Omaha and statewide; expansion of distance learning; support of technology transfer and small business initiatives; development of a signature science program in plant science at the Beadle Center; attention to deferred maintenance; and more need-based scholarship support, particularly targeted at low-income first-generation students.
Leitzel said UNL also will ask that the continuation budget for computing equipment be increased at a rate higher than inflation.
Leitzel reported for Chancellor Moeser, who was attending a Kellogg Foundation conference in Washington, D.C. She told the assembly she believed UNL has made progress in a number of areas during her four years as senior vice chancellor such as general education, honors program enhancements and expanded undergraduate research opportunities. She said progress in less visible areas such as teaching and technology and planning also has been great.
In other action, the senate endorsed a a procedures policy to address harassment on campus. The policy, which some said had been in the planning stages for as long as 10 years, had gone through its final vetting at the hands of administrators and lawyers and landed on senators' desks earlier in the week.
Leo Chouinard, math, objected to the policy's status as "emergency," and asked the vote be delayed until fall so he and others could more fully study it. Jim McShane, English, former senate president, pleaded with the senate to not delay the policy. Chouinard's motion to delay did not receive a two-thirds favorable vote. The policy itself passed on voice vote with no dissenters.
Peter Bleed, anthropology, took over as president of the Academic
Senate, succeeding Doug Jose, agricultural economics. The senate elected
Julie Albrecht, nutritional science and dietetics, as secretary, and Jim
Ford, English, as president-elect. Gary Zoubek, extension educator; Gail
Latta, libraries; and Sharon Kuska, architecture, were elected to the
executive committee. Max Kirk, construction management, and Barbara
Trout, textiles, clothing and design, were elected to the committee on
committees.
By Kim Hachiya, News & Information
Helen Moore, (shown at right), professor and chair of the sociology department, received the 1996 James A. Lake Academic Freedom Award from the UNL Academic Senate.
The award, named in honor of professor emeritus of law James A. Lake, is given to a person whose acts "support, defend, explain and apply the principles of academic freedom at UNL."
Moore was cited for a 15-year record of championing the rights and opportunities of women and minorities on the UNL campus. Moore is the author of several studies and reports regarding the climate for women, sexual harassment, campus security, student agression and sexual assault. In 1991, a report "Status Report on Women at UNL" caused the NU Regents to make a commitment to hiring more women faculty.
Dermot Coyne, George Holmes Distinguished Professor of Horticulture, said more than a dozen people nominated Moore. He said the nominations were uniform in their enthusiasm and praise; each called Moore courageous and passionate about her cause.
"At times she has been severely criticized for the positions she has taken, but her has always persevered in the face of opposition or just plain neglect to achieve her goals to make UNL a safer and better place to work for women and minorities," Coyne said.
In accepting the award, Moore said that academic freedom is the glue that holds the academy together during adversity. She recounted several instances during her career, both at UNL and during graduate school, where academic freedom was abridged. They included a case where a female professor's scholarship was questioned by others who felt the topic (women prisoners) was unscholarly. She said she missed women colleagues who have left UNL, "forced out not by Nebraska's cold winters but by the chilly climate in our hallways."
"My own scholarship has been expanded by those who have fought me and
challenged me through the years," she said. "Many times I have suspended
by disbelief about what was in order to do the work toward what we could
be."
By Dave Engberg, Office of International Affairs
Whoever said big things come in small packages must have been referring to the efforts of the little-known, but hard-working UNL student organization known as RAAG. In just two-and-a-half years the organization has managed to attract some of India's best-known classical music stars to Lincoln in an effort to promote cultural diversity through music.
"Our goal is to familiarize all people with Indian culture," said Rahda Balasubramanian, the group's faculty advisor and an assistant professor of Russian at UNL. "We try to bring the best artists possible from different regions of India to represent all aspects of Indian culture."
Recent concerts are an excellent measure of the group's success. Pundit Shivkumar Sharma, one of India's leading santoor players performed at UNL's Westbrook Music Building last week. In November, Sahis Parvez Khan, widely accepted as the second best sitar player in the world, brought his music to UNL.
Balasubramanian started RAAG with five students in 1993. The group took their name from the Sanskrit word for melody.
Classical Indian music enjoys a rich cultural tradition. For more than 4,000 years different "raags" have been passed orally from one generation to the next. Only in the 19th century have composers written out the music to keep in book form.
Because raag patterns are very improvisational, Balasubramanian reports that concerts are highly organic events.
"Artists start with a basic pattern, then build on the rubric of raag to create a dialogue between themselves and their audience", she said. "Like a jazz concert, what follows is dependant on the mood of the moment. Nothing is preplanned. Everybody knows when the program will start but not when it will stop."
The result, according to Balasubramanian, is a very dynamic concert atmosphere that inspires a great deal of communication between audience members curious about which raag the artist will choose to use. Organizing the thrice yearly concerts can be very hectic. Balasubramanian reports that RAAG members meet every two weeks throughout the year and nearly every day during the last week before an event in order to keep things running smoothly.
"Fundraising is often the most challenging aspect of the work," she said. "We are a non-profit organization and concerts are expensive." The group rarely covers costs through the sale of tickets. Free hospitality provided by members of the Indian community, grants from UNL sources such as International Affairs, and revenues generated at a RAAG-sponsored spring Holi festival have helped defray the costs for past concerts.
Although the organization has regular office holders, Balasubramanian said that each of the students involved "does everything" and that there is "a lot of sharing of responsibility."
"The students have learned to be very organized," she said.
"Participating in RAAG builds both responsibility and leadership skills,
and gives each of us the opportunity to hear music we love."
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(402) 472-8518, Fax: (402) 472-7825