February 21, 1997




A Place Apart

Sophomore history major Simeon Bukacek found this quiet corner in Love Library Monday to examine some old Nebraska newspaper texts. (Photo by Richard Wright)


Moeser Says University Needs 'Culture of Change'

Chancellor: Reallocation Process Isn't About Budget Cuts

By David Ochsner
Scarlet Editor

Chancellor James Moeser believes that the university's very survival will depend on the creation of a "culture of change" in the coming months and years as the institution faces a future in which state resources will be somewhat static.

"If we don't embrace change then we will be in danger of becoming the equivalent of a drive-in theater - still standing but poorly attended," Moeser said. "The days of new funding initiatives are essentially over, and we cannot afford to be static and ossified."

This state of affairs has prompted the university to undergo a fairly modest redistribution of resources that Moeser hopes will set the tone for the future of the state's land-grant institution.

Late last year Moeser, along with vice chancellors and deans, set into motion a process that will reallocate approximately $6.9 million, or about 4 percent of the state's appropriation to the university, to areas of intensified student demand on campus that have been identified by colleges, departments or programs as institutional priorities.

Moeser said the University of Nebraska, like many land-grant universities, must realize it cannot compete at the highest levels in all areas, particularly against much larger institutions such as Michigan or Wisconsin, but rather it must choose to strengthen the areas that show the most promise for future national prominence.

"Why is it so important that we compete nationally? That's how you attract first-tier graduate students, as well as significant grants," Moeser said. "If you want to play in the big leagues, you need to put together big teams of people.

"Some people say that in 10 years there will only be a handful of land-grant universities remaining in the U.S.," Moeser said. "I want this university to be one of those few."

Although the context of the university's land-grant priorities will remain the same - teaching, scholarship and research, and service - many of the familiar boundaries within this context will change, and will involve more than simply taking money from one area and putting it into another.

During the reallocation process vice chancellors, deans and department chairs are being asked to create scenarios in which they reduce their 1996 budgets by 4 percent. They were also asked to create scenarios in which 4 percent was added to their 1996 budget. "We wanted to see where they would put our resources, how they would redirect an additional 4 percent as they considered their areas of strength."

Moeser said these areas of strength are by no means confined to a single department or college, but are rather collections of related academic functions that cross collegial lines and combine resources and expertise from both City and East Campus. He said a number of these collaborations already exist in such areas as agribusiness, law and psychology, and the life sciences, to name just a few.

The chancellor also emphasized the paramount importance of teaching as a driving force in the process. "One of our highest commitments is to the quality of undergraduate education and teaching. I'm talking about the Honors Program, diversity, information technology, distance learning and the library system - the backbone of a quality undergraduate education."

As for academic programs, the chancellor said "there's been a lot of student movement and migration into our stronger programs, and we must respond to the demand by moving those programs to higher levels.

"We also knew from the onset that we wanted to invest heavily in the Honors Program, a program that has grown from 200 students to nearly 1,000 this year," said Moeser. "The effect these students have on the rest of the student population is noteworthy - we are changing the character of the student body and raising the level of intellectual discourse on campus."

Moeser said the reallocation process will also allow for an even greater investment in diversity initiatives, particularly to create more opportunities at all levels for persons of color and for women.

The chancellor said nothing is off-limits in the process, but added that a university cannot be great without a library, or without a foundation in the arts and sciences. "Historically we haven't talked about the humanities, but at Nebraska there is a keen sense of balance between the humanities and arts on the one hand and the more hard-edged funded research and agricultural sciences on the other."

Moeser said this balanced view is also carried over to the special budget committee that is helping to guide the process.

"One part of the university won't be damaged for the benefit of another part," Moeser said. "Almost all necessary reductions in force will be through normal attrition and retirements. Very few will be affected by direct reallocation, and some of these may be re-assignments."

The chancellor said the reallocation process should not be confused with the budget cuts of the early 1990s, and added that the need for reallocation goes beyond mere fiscal constraints.

"I like what Richard Edwards said when he accepted the job earlier this month as senior vice chancellor for academic affairs. He said the budget reallocation is essential for a dynamic and forward-looking institution, and you only go through the process if you have very high aspirations," Moeser said.

Moeser said he hopes budget reallocation recommendations will be made by the end of the semester, but any final decision will have to wait until the Legislature makes its final budget recommendations and the Board of Regents approves the new budget.

"Once people see the results of this process, the result of new investments in the future of the institution, they will know it was worth it," Moeser said.

"At one time this university was content to be just okay. That's not going to cut it in this day and age. We have to learn not to be afraid of change. We need to start thinking about ourselves as a single university with multiple missions. For too long we've had this 19th century mentality about a university as a place with boundaries, but we've got to relate to places like Scottsbluff as well as to the rest of the world," Moeser said. "That is how we will become a cutting-edge institution."

Forum Finds Little Support for Tenure Review Idea

By Kim Hachiya
News & Information

It seemed that few, if any, of the 40 faculty who gathered in the Nebraska Union Feb. 18 to discuss the proposed policy for review of fully promoted faculty support the document.

The session was one of two called by the Academic Senate and the Academic Rights and Responsibilities Committee. Peter Bleed, senate president, said the meeting was called to gauge feelings about the document, which was written by an ad hoc committee appointed by the chancellor and presented to the senate early in February.

The bulk of speakers said the idea to intensively review fully promoted faculty on a six-year basis would add a burdensome amount of work. Some said the burden would fall on department chairs; others felt it would distract faculty from other matters.

Bleed said some attention is being given to the "Kentucky plan," which is a new policy at the University of Kentucky. That plan, Bleed said, would review a faculty member only after two or more unsatisfactory biennial reviews or if the faculty member requested full review. That plan has surfaced in part because the incoming senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, Richard Edwards, is from Kentucky.

Tom Zorn, finance, suggested that current review processes are ineffective because managers and supervisors do not know how to do useful evaluations. The tendency, he said, is for an employee to receive annual reviews of "great job, great job, great job, you're fired."

Some faculty, such as Robert Haller, English, and Oyekan Owomoyela, English, suggested the policy was insulting to the professionalism of professors.

Brian Robertson, mechanical engineering, said some have estimated the cost to conduct the reviews would be about $1 million annually, although Bleed said others have estimated the cost at two or three times that amount.

Tom Myers, museum, suggested that such an expense, to weed out a possible $50,000-a-year professor, was wasteful.

"Is this so-called deadwood really that much of a secret?" he asked. "Haven't these people had year after year of unsatisfactory reviews? If that is true, them maybe the administrator is unsatisfactory and derelict in duty and needs to be sacked."

Hugh Whitt, sociology, said he worried about the proposed policy's effect on the recruitment and retention of faculty, especially when departments try to hire senior faculty from other institutions.

John Flowers, psychology, and Mary Beck, animal sciences, said they feared the university might chill academic creativity by steering a professor's goals and objectives toward specific courses rather than in the direction the professor might wish.

Bill Seiler, communication studies, suggested the university was using a cannon to kill a mouse. He added that he had not heard a public outcry for accountability.

Beck suggested that the university work harder to tell the public about existing review processes and about the importance of academic freedom.

A second forum was scheduled for Thursday, too late for the Scarlet's deadline. Information gathered at both sessions will help the ARRC create a response to the document, said Jim McShane, representing the ARRC.

The document is slated for a vote at the March 4 meeting of the senate.

Devotion to Students Marks Career of OTICA Winner Gruhl

By Tom Simons
News & Information

When a broken jaw won't keep a teacher out of a classroom, it's a pretty good indication that the teacher is someone special.

One morning three years ago, political science professor John Gruhl (shown above) stepped out of his garage, slipped on the ice and landed on his chin, breaking his jaw. Gruhl got up, drove his son to elementary school, went to the doctor to get his chin sewed up and then went to the NU College of Dentistry to get his jaws wired shut.

Fortunately, he didn't have classes that day, but he was back in the classroom the following day and didn't miss a session in the six weeks his jaws were wired together. A graduate student was hired to deliver his (previously prepared) lectures, but he attended all classes and graded the exams. In a smaller class he carried a microphone and an amplifier that allowed his students to hear him.

"That was a commendable and gritty performance under difficult circumstances, demonstrating above all John's interest in and devotion to his students," said David Forsythe, chair of the political science department.

For that effort and the many less dramatic but no less meaningful contributions made in his 21 years on the Nebraska faculty Gruhl has been honored by the NU Central Administration with one of two system-wide Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Awards for 1997. It's the fourth major teaching award Gruhl has won since he came to Nebraska after getting his doctorate at California-Santa Barbara in 1976. He received Distinguished Teaching Awards from UNL in 1979 and 1986 and was a charter member of UNL's Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 1995.

According to fellow faculty members, it's not an accident that Gruhl is recognized as such an outstanding teacher.

"I can say in all honesty that I have never been associated with any other colleague who researches his lectures as if they were journal articles," Forsythe said. "His students, even those in introductory courses, get superbly crafted presentations.

"John has received excellent evaluations from his students while holding the line on grade inflation. John is one of the tougher graders in our department, which makes his superior evaluations even more remarkable."

Gruhl said being a top teacher has always been his goal.

"What I like best about the job is the teaching," he said. "Even when I was in graduate school, my goal was always to be regarded as one of the best teachers on campus, wherever I went."
Fortunately for Nebraska he came to Lincoln and stayed.

His classes are among the most in demand on campus, particularly among pre-law students. His meticulous preparation for lectures and the value of the knowledge he imparts is attested by the number of former students who retain their class notes for years - including one who reported that she used notes from Gruhl's constitutional law class to prepare for classes under renowned constitution authority Laurence Tribe at Harvard Law School.

Gruhl said the time spent on preparing his lectures is obviously time that can't be spent on research - but that's OK with him.

"I prefer to spend time teaching," he said. "I feel I have more talent that way, and I think it's not only better for me, it's better for the university when people spend time doing what they do best.

"It does limit my research productivity, but fortunately at this university we still have the leeway to make that choice. You don't have that choice everywhere. There's definitely a movement (toward greater emphasis and reward of teaching). The administrators really do care more about teaching now than they did a few years ago."

Gruhl, who earned his bachelor's degree at Indiana's DePauw University (1969) before earning his graduate degrees at UCSB, is credited with helping broaden the political science department's curriculum on public law. Gruhl developed its judicial process course (which has become a standard course at other universities), completely restructured the course in administration of justice and helped the department add a senior-level course in civil liberties.

"My goal is always to be the best teacher I can be," Gruhl said. "I'm aware of some shortcomings I have and I'm always working to improve them. I can be a better teacher in five years than I am now."

UNL Agricultural Climatologist Thinks Locally

By Dan Holder
IANR News Assistant

One of the underlying axioms of the environmental movement is to "Think globally. Act locally." Yet a lack of local data on pollution makes that difficult.

National and state data help monitor the greenhouse gasses that figure in the debate over global warming, but on a very large scale. A more effective "act locally" principal requires using small-area measurements of pollution contributions.

William Easterling, director of the Great Plains Regional Center for Global Environmental Change at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, discussed "Changing Places, Changing Emissions," during a Feb. 14 session at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Lincoln.

"When we begin to fathom the various kinds of policies that may be invoked to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, those policies will be implemented at a local level," Easterling said. "The question is how fine a scale, how localized, does the information have to be?"

Easterling's research involved geography researchers at three universities measuring the amounts of greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - in three parts of the United States. The sites studied are 1 degree longitude and 1 degree latitude in area, a map orientation that corresponds to an area approximately 70 miles by 55 miles.

The three sites studied are in northwestern North Carolina, southwest Kansas and Toledo, Ohio, and encompassed a range of environmental and economic conditions.

Researchers collected emissions data for each of the sites over one year - 1990. Easterling then supervised a comparison of those figures with national and state data on greenhouse emissions.

"We're going to compare the major differences between the U.S. numbers and each of the smaller 1-degree regions, so we'll begin to see where there are major departures as you change the spatial scale of analysis," Easterling said.

One challenge for the researchers is identifying the source of measured pollutants. In North Carolina, the furniture industry produces a lot of wood shavings. These are usually burned so the area has high levels of carbon dioxide. Toledo, an urban area, produces emissions from vehicle exhaust and has high carbon dioxide readings. Southwestern Kansas is home to numerous cattle feedlots, which produce a lot of methane. Nitrogen used in area farming also produces nitrous oxide.

"The idea eventually is to develop a basis for trying to predict how these regions may emit greenhouse gases in the future and how that may depart from our predictions, as best we see them, for the U.S. as a whole," the NU Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources scientist said.

"What policy makers in Washington are vitally interested in is what scale of resolution of greenhouse gas emissions is needed in order to make wise policy decisions that aren't inequitable," he said.

Three Business Dean Candidates to Visit

Three finalists for dean of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Business Administration are scheduled to visit campus in March.

The candidates, recommended to Chancellor James Moeser by a search committee chaired by Harvey Perlman, dean of the NU College of Law, are: Bell's prior administrative experience was as chair of the management science program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (1975-80), acting chair (1981-82) and chair (1989-93) of the department of management sciences at Iowa, and associate dean for graduate programs (1980-84) and acting senior associate dean (1993-94) of Iowa's College of Business Administration. He earned his bachelor's (1964) and master's (1966) degrees in statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, then earned his doctorate in administrative sciences at Yale University (1969). He was assistant professor (1969-74) and associate professor (1974-75, on leave) at the Graduate School of Administration at the University of California, Irvine, before going to Tennessee.

Franz earned all of her degrees at UNL - her bachelor's in mathematics (1968), her master's in mathematics education (1970) and her doctorate in management science (1980). Before beginning work on her doctorate, she was a high school math teacher, a computer programmer/ analyst and then an instructor in the quantitative and information systems department at Western Illinois University. She became an assistant professor in the management science department at the University of South Carolina in 1979 and was promoted to associate professor in 1984. She went to Missouri as an associate professor of management in 1985 and became a full professor in 1991.

Worrell earned all of his degrees (1971, 1974, 1978) in management from Louisiana State University. His previous administrative experience was as chair of the management departments at Appalachian State University (1986-90) and Texas-Arlington (1993-95) and as senior associate dean for academic affairs in Texas-Arlington's College of Business Administration (1995-96). He began his career as an assistant professor of management at the University of Southwestern Louisiana from 1977-80, then was on the faculty at Appalachian State (1980-82), LSU (1982-83) and North Texas State University (1983-86) before returning to Appalachian State.

Moeser will select the new CBA dean in consultation with Richard Edwards, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs-designate, who assumes his position April 15.

The university seeks to replace John W. "Jack" Goebel, who has served as dean of CBA since January 1995 and plans to return to the teaching faculty.

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