The Technology Development Center will open this month at 82 percent occupancy.(Photo by Richard Wright) |
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The University of Nebraska Technology Park will take another step forward this month when the park's business incubator building, the Technology Development Center, opens with seven tenants.
The tenants include three software companies -- American Markets, Unident Corp. and Midwest Microsystems; Xodiac Inc., a specialized sign company; Safety By Design, a spin-off from the College of Engineering and Technology's guardrail systems; Suiter & Associates, patent attorneys; and Interlink, a producer of World Wide Web pages for businesses.
"The companies that have signed leases have taken 82 percent of the space in the incubator building and as far as fill percentage, that's better than we anticipated," said Don Helmuth, associate vice chancellor for research. "We had hoped for about a 60 percent fill at the time we opened and we're still talking to other companies to take over the remainder of the space. We're discussing whether we need to expand the building."
At the Technology Development Center, technology-based entrepreneurial companies are provided a range of services at little or no cost, including administrative, management and marketing assistance to well-equipped offices, wet lab and light manufacturing space. The support is designed to offer a higher probability of success to companies in their start-up phases. Technology Park is designed to promote cooperation between university research and private-sector applied research and product development, thus promoting economic development and job creation in Nebraska.
The companies in the Technology Development Center join the security communications firm Transcrypt International as Technology Park residents.
Chuck Henderson, president of the University of Nebraska Technology Park Limited Liability Corp., said each of the park's 24 approved building sites has about 1 million square feet that can be developed. He said plans are under way to develop the Nebraska Center for Electronics Excellence, a staff training and testing center for the electronics industry, at the park.
Technology Park is located north of Interstate 80 on Superior Street.
- Tom Simons
A snip of office shears cut a red ribbon and marked the grand opening of the English Department's Undergraduate Advising Center at an informal ceremony Sept. 10.
Like many departments, English has moved to centralized and professional advising, said Ed Schmidt, associate dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.
Bob Bergstrom, formerly chief undergraduate adviser for the English Department, said that as the university has grown in size and added new programs and opportunities for students, advising has become more complicated with a myriad of rules.
A faculty member with a full teaching load and research program and a slate of seven to 10 undergraduates to advise can have some difficulty keeping abreast of program changes, he said. In addition, there are always students with special cases such as classes that might count toward graduation in one college but not another, or a student who has been plugging toward a degree for more than a decade.
A professional adviser who sees many students each year is more apt to recognize those problems and know how to solve them, he said.
"Many professors do an extremely good job of advising students but we want the professional adviser to keep students on track to graduate in a timely manner, to help them take advantage of opportunities and to develop a coherent program. Faculty will have more of a mentoring role to help students develop their intellectual life, make career choices and think about graduate school."
Jacquelynn Sorensen is the full-time adviser. A faculty member herself (she is teaching one section titled "major literary works"), she is responsible for the 400 undergraduate majors in the department. She also will help the 15,000 UNL students who take an English course each year. Many students want to know if particular courses fulfill Comprehensive Education Program requirements, she noted. English courses are among the most popular elective courses at UNL.
The advising center, located in 123 Andrews, also houses an office for the Undergraduate English Organization; Laurus, the undergraduate English magazine; and Sigma Tau Delta, undergraduate English honorary.
The center, once more informally housed in the departmental offices on second floor, has a prominent location on the first floor of Andrews, she said.
"We were really busy the first week of school, and I expect it will pick up again when pre-registration starts," Sorensen said.
Linda Pratt, department chair, said funding for the center came from the Dean's office.
- Kim Hachiya
Government and university officials, as well as representatives of the state's business and industries set high expectations for the new Institute of Information Science, Technology and Engineering during a groundbreaking ceremony Sept. 10 in Omaha. The ceremony officially launched construction of the 192,000 square foot building that should open in August 1999.
NU President L. Dennis Smith announced he will seek approval from the NU Regents to name the building after the late Peter Kiewit, who during his lifetime oversaw a construction company that still bears his name. The Peter Kiewit Foundation of Omaha has pledged $15 million to the NU Foundation to support the institute, Smith announced at the groundbreaking.
Academic, research and service programs of the College of Engineering and Technology at UNL and the College of Information Science and Technology at UNO will be offered in the building. Distance learning capability is an integral part of the new structure so programming can be provided statewide via satellite, the Internet and other media.
The institute was initiated through a $70 million partnership, with $23 million provided by state government and $47 million by private donors. The building cost is $37 million, with the remainder of the funds going to suppor academic programs, professorships and student scholarships. The building will stand on a 70-acre parcel of land on the Ak-Sar-Ben site donated by FDR.
UNL Chancellor James Moeser said the institute shows UNL's commitment to work together with other Nebraska entities to benefit the state.
"The institute and partnership demonstrates the seriousness with which we in Lincoln take our commitment to not only the city of Omaha, but the entire state of Nebraska," he said. "There are many things unique to this project. One is a new level of collaboration and cooperation between campuses and among faculty assigned to the two colleges."
Smith noted that the institute has a challenging mission.
"This institute represents a partnership unique in every sense. Its mission is daunting. It must support business and industry. It must help ensure the future of our younger generation. It must educate in a state-of-the-art mode, and it must be steeped in excellence from the day the doors open.
The groundbreaking ceremony included participation of people 500 miles to the west in Scottbluff.
"This building will be Omaha," Smith said. "But the classroom is Nebraska."
By simulcasting the ceremony via satellite in Scottbluff, officials demonstrated the institute's statewide mission.
State Sen. Joyce Hillman, speaking from Scottsbluff on behalf of Nebraska's Panhandle residents, said, "Distance learning is very important to citizens across the state who can't physically be in classrooms in Omaha, Lincoln or Kearney. We appreciate the recognition of the need - the planning from the outset -to make instruction from the institute available to all Nebraskans."
Walter Scott Jr., president and chairman of Peter Kiewit Sons Inc., said the challenge now is to recruit top students and first-rank faculty.
"We must strive to become one of the top 10 institutions in the nation for information science, technology and engineering."
Scott said the institute will benefit all Nebraskans and that efforts must be made to assure that the needs of business and industry are addressed through curriculum and research.
Scott is chair of the institute's board of policy advisers, which provides guidance to ensure that the institute is responsive to current and emerging needs of business and industry
-University of Nebraska Public Affairs and UNL Public Relations
A scavenger hunt, a free rock concert, a Pepsi Ball tournament, thousands of Mug Root Beer floats and free pop and t-shirts will all be part of the Pepsi Week celebration Sept. 15-19 on campus.
Created to welcome students, faculty and staff back to campus and recognize UNL's contract giving Pepsi exclusive rights to sell its products on campus, the weeklong series of events offers lots of prizes, pop and fun for the UNL community. Pepsi Week is sponsored by LinPepCo, the local Pepsi franchise.
Official activities begin Tuesday with a four-day scavenger hunt to find keys and Pepsi products at various sites on campus. Clues will run in the Daily Nebraskan and the first two students to arrive at the designated site and identify themselves as directed by the clue will receive keys that might entitle them to a new Jeep from Pepsi.
The Jeep giveaway is part of an ongoing Pepsi promotion and only UNL students will be eligible win the 10 keys. Ninety keys have already been given away to the public in the Lincoln and Omaha areas by radio station KGDE. Although the scavenger hunt for the keys is open only to students, UNL faculty and staff are encouraged to participate in all other Pepsi Week activities.
Free Mug Root Beer floats will be given away at an ice cream social from 3 to 5 p.m. Sept. 18 in the Green Space north of the Nebraska Union. UNL Chancellor James Moeser and LinPepCo President Steve Ford will speak briefly about the beverage alliance. Two more keys offering a chance at the the Jeep also will be raffled off to students.
The week culminates with an all-day party and Pepsi Ball tournament Sept. 19 in the loop just east of Memorial Stadium. A new sport developed for Pepsi at the national level, Pepsi Ball is a popular event on the college circuit.
The game pits three four-person teams against one another on triangular field with a goal box at each angle. Teams try to maneuver a Pepsi Ball - a handball-sized orb encased in a unique triangular covering - into the two opposing teams' goal areas. Play begins with a jump start and each person may take only three steps before passing the ball to a teammate or trying to score. Fast-paced, high-scoring and action-packed, the Pepsi Ball tournament begins at noon.
After Pepsi Ball play winds down, National B - a Des Moines-based alternative rock band - will present a free concert beginning at 6 p.m. in the loop. The band will perform two 45-minute sets with a short break in between.
During the intermission, 100 keyholders - at least 10 of whom will be UNL students - will try to start the Jeep. Although only one lucky person will drive off in the brand-new sport utility vehicle, hundreds of Pepsi Week participants will go home with assorted Pepsi paraphernalia.
UNL awarded a 12-year contract to Pepsi in June. Proceeds from the alliance will support several academic and student programs.
- Amy Cyphers
The university faces two challenges in the short term, Chancellor James Moeser told the Academic Senate on Sept. 9.
The first will be to ensure that the freshman class that enrolled Aug. 25 is stimulated and challenged in ways that will match their reputation as the best class ever to enroll at the university.
The second is to overcome an enrollment decline which could put a crimp in university coffers.
Moeser said that while final figures are not in, some 500 fewer freshmen enrolled this year as compared to last year. This was anticipated. More surprising was a 350 student decrease in graduate student enrollment and 150 fewer transfer students than would be expected.
Moeser said the tuition shortfall from fewer students most probably will be covered temporarily by Central Administration. In year's past, CA has "carried" UNO and UNK when enrollment fell short of projections. However, Moeser noted, that is only a short-term solution.
"This could have serious consequences" for the instructional budget, he noted.
Longer term, he said, the university must focus on recruiting high-ability students.
Those efforts paid off this year, he said, with the incoming class boasting the highest number of Merit Scholars ever to enroll at the university and the class as a whole posting a 24.26 mean score on the ACT, fully a point higher than last year's class. In addition, almost 350 students scored higher than 30 on the ACT.
Stiffer admissions standards enacted this year were expected to damper enrollment, he said. Other universities that have pursued that strategy have suffered short-term losses but made them up in three or four years.
Moeser challenged faculty to "exercise rigor" in making sure the students have a stimulating academic experience.
"And we should pledge to work towards dramatic changes in our retention data," he said. "We have removed the excuse that we allowed in too many students who were unprepared to succeed."
Faculty provide an important support structure for students, he said, adding that students also shoulder a responsibility for their own success.
The body voted to indefinitely table an item regarding post-tenure review. That document, brought before the body last spring, was reworked twice over the summer and was not ready to be presented at the meeting.
The group accepted reports from the Commencement Committee and the Executive Committee and then broke into small groups to discuss the faculty's role in university planning and senate goals for 1997-99.
-Kim Hachiya
More than a third of rural Nebraskans believe their community has changed for the better, but more than 50 percent think there is not enough affordable housing in rural areas, according to a University of Nebraska survey.
A significant number of people surveyed for the second annual Nebraska Rural Poll also believe the consolidation of public schools, health care and local governments would reduce the quality of life in their community.
"We wanted to look at how rural residents perceived the change that is occurring in their communities now," said John Allen, a rural sociologist in the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, who directed the project.
The April poll surveyed rural residents' attitudes on well-being, community, government policy and work. Conducted by the NU Center for Rural Community Revitalization and Development, the survey received 3,264 responses from households randomly selected in the state's 87 nonmetropolitian counties. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percent.
Thirty-seven percent of rural Nebraskans believe their town or village has changed for the better, while 19 percent see a decline. In the 1997 survey, 22 percent of respondents with household incomes less than $10,000 thought the quality of life in their community was getting worse, compared with 34 percent last year.
"We actually see low-income people in the smaller communities out there saying it's either the same or getting better. I think part of the reason is a national economy that's pretty strong and a state economy that's pretty strong," Allen said.
Certain groups were more likely to think their community has improved. These include respondents in larger communities, people with higher educational levels, older respondents and people with higher incomes.
"Seventy-two percent thought their community was friendly, 63 percent thought it was trusting and supportive," Allen said. "That's pretty consistent. People tend to like their communities here, and in a society that's highly mobile I find that interesting.
"I think there's a social phenomenon that's taking place," he said. "People are looking for connections. They're trying to have some connection to place and to family. When you begin doing that, you see more value to it. If you look back at the New Residents Survey, conducted by the Center for Rural Revitalization in May, the reason people were moving back to the state were for family, for community, for safety, for those connections."
Fifty-four percent of rural Nebraskans think there is not enough affordable housing in their community. Sixty percent of respondents in the Panhandle said housing was inadequate, compared to 48 percent of respondents in southeast Nebraska. Seventy-seven percent of respondents who indicated there is a shortage of affordable housing feel it has hurt their community's population and economic growth.
Most respondents favored adding young families to their communities, with 74 percent agreeing it would improve the quality of life.
When asked how adding minorities would affect their community, 48 percent felt that would decrease the quality of life, 34 percent felt it would have no effect and 17 percent saw a potential for improving it.
"The larger communities were more likely to say that (adding minority groups) will have a negative impact," Allen said. "If you think about the state, that's where we've had the largest influx of minority populations. So they've seen the issues dealing with new populations.
"Most everyone else in the state has been watching population leave. So any time you have a growth, it doesn't matter who they are, you'll have some change. When a minority population - maybe another language, another culture - comes, it will add stress," Allen said.
Twenty-five percent of respondents reported incomes higher than $50,000; an equal amount reported that their spouse or partner was retired. Ninety percent had achieved at least a high school diploma. The poll had a 51 percent response rate.
The poll shows a relationship between rural Nebraskans' sense of community and quality of life, especially since on average, respondents had lived in their town or village 31 years.
"People in Nebraska have not been as mobile as the rest of society," Allen said. "That may give us some insight into this strong attachment to community. That attachment is somehow related to their overall quality of life."
- Dan Holder, IANR News Assistant
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