The University of Nebraska Alumni Association will recognize two Distinguished Service Award winners during spring commencement exercises May 9.
Distinguished Service Awards recognize individuals with exemplary records of service to the Nebraska Alumni Association or one of its college alumni associations and the university.
This year's recipients are 1962 graduates Nancy Tederman Osborne of Lincoln and Jeanne Garner Salerno of Omaha.
Osborne, a former fifth-grade teacher, has had a distinguished career
as a volunteer leader in supporting youth and family issues. She was key
in the founding and building of the Samaritan Counseling Center and
received
its Tip of the Hat Award in 1996. The Christian Heritage Children's Home
and the Lincoln Public Schools Foundation Board are other youth-oriented
service organizations in which she is active. She and her husband, former
Husker football coach Tom Osborne, are co-founders of TeamMates, a
program
pairing NU athletes with at-risk junior high students. The Osbornes,
named
the Omaha World-Herald's Midlanders of the Year for 1998, also have
worked
with the American Heart Association and the Stroke Foundation, and are
co-chairs
for the Love Library fund-raising portion of the NU Foundation's Campaign
Nebraska.
Salerno is director of professional development for Kutak Rock, a law firm with offices in 11 cities, including Omaha. An ex officio member of the Nebraska Alumni Association's executive committee, Salerno joined the association's board of directors in 1987. She subsequently served terms as second vice chairman (1990-92), first vice chairman (1992-94) and chairman (1994-96), devoting much time to association business, including chairing the search committee for a new executive director of the association in 1996-97. Salerno is a past president of the Junior League of Omaha and has been on the board of the National Association for Law Placement.
-Andrea Cranford, Alumni Association
Citing a long history in working to champion women on campus, the Academic Senate honored Mary Beck with the James Lake Academic Freedom Award April 28.
Beck, a professor in animal sciences, accepted the award by laying out a series of challenges for the faculty. Asserting that academe and higher education have lost relevance in the eyes of the public, Beck suggested that faculty need to rehabilitate the ideals of tenure and academic freedom.
Tenure, she said, is not a lifetime job guarantee, but a protective system that encourages creativity and outspokenness for unpopular causes.
She also suggested that Nebraska professors examine who controls the curriculum in alternative academic programs, such as "virtual universities" offered via the internet. She also challenged the faculty to examine the proliferation of non-tenure track instructorships at the university and they consider the potential threats to academic freedom caused by increasing private funding of research.
Beck also said faculty must examine their own motives in how they treat one another. "We go to great lengths to nurture and welcome students," she said, "but not to nurture women and people of color."
Beck said it is hard for new professors to "succeed in isolation," noting that a climate need not be openly hostile to be chilly, merely indifferent.
"If you are a tenured faculty member, take a look at these issues and take a hack at them with your academic freedom," she said.
Earlier, Chancellor Moeser suggested the faculty promote the idea of rigor by changing some grading standards. Faculty should push to change the policy allowing students to drop a class without faculty permission anytime during the first 12 weeks of the semester. He also suggested the pass/no pass policy be tightened so students cannot take courses required for their major in a pass/no pass manner.
The grade forgiveness policy that allows students to erase D and F grades also should be reviewed, he said.
Pat Kennedy, newly installed senate president, said the executive committee would review the ideas and possibly assign them to a committee for review this summer.
In other action, Gail Latta, libraries, was elected president elect; Miles Bryant, educational administration, was elected secretary; John Bender, news editorial, Brian Humes, political science, Sheila Scheideler, animal science, Tom Zorn, finance, and Kathleen Prochaska-Cue were elected to the executive committee; and Dee Ann Allison, libraries, Ann Mari May, economics, and Helen Moore, sociology, were elected to the committee on committees.
-Kim Hachiya, Public Relations
Allan McCutcheon, director of the Gallup Research Center and Donald O. Clifton distinguished professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska, has been appointed to a three-year term on the scientific advisory board of ZUMA, the German Survey Research Center in Mannheim, Germany.
McCutcheon received the appointment to ZUMA from the board of trustees of the German Social Science Foundation. ZUMA is the leading academic survey research center in continental Europe. Since 1974, it has been funded by the German government and conducts much of the survey research for the German scientific community.
ZUMA's scientific advisory board is limited to five or six members and Americans rarely are appointed.
The Association of Students of the University of Nebraska thanks the Faculty Women's Club for their help in staffing the polling sites for the ASUN Student Government elections on March 11. The polls were open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and approximately 70 members were on campus during that time period. Coordinators for the election from the Faculty Women's Club were Carol Riefler and Gail O'Hanlon.
The Student Government donates $800 and any fines for poster violations to the Faculty Women's Club. This year the fines were $171. This money funds FWC scholarships for students.
Three University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension teams were honored as models April 16 during the organization's staff development conference.
The New Tools for Pasture Production, Ag Awareness Coalition and Water Jamboree programs received Excellence in Team Programming awards from Extension Dean Ken Bolen.
In 1992, one-day New Tools for Pasture Production workshops began introducing Management Intensive Grazing (MIG) techniques to eastern Nebraska cattle feeders. After five years, a survey estimates the 1,600 attendees saved a total of about $3 million annually by extending the grazing season, increasing the number of animals grazing per acre, reducing feed costs and increasing yields.
In 1996, the Ag Awareness Coalition began offering the Agricultural Awareness Festival to teach urban youngsters about agriculture. Over two years, about 950 urban sixth-graders have attended the festival at NU's Agricultural Research and Development Center near Mead. The coalition also has developed an Agricultural Awareness Kit for schools, 4-H school enrichment programs and a teacher inservice program.
Over 20 agri-businesses, commodity groups, food industry companies and NU's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources have supported the program.
The Water Jamboree will celebrate its sixth anniversary this year. Through hands-on activities, fourth- and fifth-grade pupils from schools in Kearney, Franklin, Phelps, Gosper, Harlan and Furnas counties learn about aquatic life and water quality.
In 1997, 503 students attended. More than 195 adult volunteers and staff help support the program each year.
Cooperative Extension is a division of NU's Institute for Agriculture and Natural Resources.
- Molly Klocksin, IANR news writer
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