Keith Parker to be Honored at King Day ConvocationKeith Parker, professor of sociology and director of African American and African Studies, will be honored Jan. 19 with the first Chancellor's "I Have a Dream" Award for his "exemplary actions in promoting the goals and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." Chancellor James Moeser will present the award to Parker at the Lied Center as part of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Youth Rally and University Convocation at the Lied Center. |
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The university's observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday Jan. 19 will include a convocation from 12:30-2 p.m. in the Sheldon Art Gallery Auditorium that will celebrate the holiday's 1998 national theme, "Remember! Celebrate! Action! A Day on, Not a Day Off."
The African American and African Studies Program and the Academic Senate have invited Ken Tucker, recruitment and retention specialist in the Student Services Division of Southeast Community College, to speak about King's influence, not just in the United States but from an international perspective. Venetria Patton, assistant professor of English, speak after Tucker and will also moderate a question-and-answer session with the audience for the remainder of the convocation.
The convocation will be followed by a reception from 2-3:30 p.m. in the Sheldon, where participants will be able to continue conversation and view the photographic exhibit by African American photographer James VanDerZee.
The exhibit, "VanDerZee, Photographer," was scheduled to close Jan. 18, but has been held over an extra day for this event. Developed by the National Portrait Gallery and circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the exhibit is the first major retrospective of the work of VanDerZee, who was known for his vivid interpretations of middle- and upper-class African Americans in the first half of the 20th century. It includes 83 black-and-white photographs and two hand-tinted works.
The convocation and reception are sponsored by African American and African Studies, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Jan. 19 Celebration Committee, the Office of the Chancellor, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden and the Academic Senate.
King Day activities will begin at 9 a.m. in the first-floor lounge of the Nebraska Union, 14th and R streets, where Youth Rally March participants will assemble prior to the start of the Youth Rally March at 9:30 a.m. Video and audio of Dr. King's speeches will be played and refreshments will available for march participants. There will also be receptacles for the canned food and book drives. The march will end at the Lied Center at 10:30
The program for the rally and convocation from 10:30 to noon at the Lied Center will include music from the Lincoln High School choir, Voices of Destiny; a reading by high school students of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech; an address titled "University and Community Relations/Civil Rights" by longtime community civil rights activist Lela Shanks; a performance by Jessie Myles, director of multicultural education for the Nebraska Department of Education as Dr. King delivering his motivational speech, "I Stand in a Nation"; and remarks by Chancellor James Moeser, who will also provide piano accompaniment for the audience in singing "We Shall Overcome."
The chancellor has urged all faculty and staff to attend the convocation and encouraged faculty to take their classes to them and, he said, "avail themselves of this splendid educational opportunity." While all offices should remain open Monday, Moeser has encouraged managers to encourage staff members to attend one of the sessions as part of the university's observance of the holiday and in honoring the legacy of Dr. King.
University students will also be active in observing the King holiday.
ASUN, the university's student government, has scheduled a series of half-hour presentations by and individuals and organizations in the Nebraska Union lounge from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The University Program Council will provide continual showing of the "I Have a Dream" speech in the Nebraska Union Crib from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and from 2-4 p.m., while the Office for Student Involvement invites students to come to its booth at the Union that day to fill out forms telling about their dreams. The forms will then be placed on a wall in the Union. Staff at the booth will also have information about volunteer opportunities in the community, ranging from projects requiring a few hours to others requiring long-term commitments.
--Tom Simons, Public Relations
When it was time to decide where he would go to college, Simone Sinagaglia Liverani was like many teen-agers. As a Nebraska high school graduate, he was drawn to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Unlike most Nebraska graduates, however, Liverani earned his high school diploma while living in Italy.
Liverani, a 1991 graduate of the Independent Study High School headquartered at the Department of Distance Education in the UNL Division of Continuing Studies, is a master's degree candidate in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
He said he initially chose Nebraska because of his familiarity with the university through his distance education experience.
The school "gave me a point of reference in the United States. I probably would never have considered Nebraska if I had not taken the independent study courses," Liverani said.
"Students who do independent study are lucky because they can get a high school diploma from a recognized United States high school but at the same time they have the opportunity to integrate their formal education and travel experiences seeing the world," he said.
Liverani began elementary school in Italy and finished in Mozambique where his mother, Stefania Sinigaglia, taught English. His father, the late Gino Liverani, worked in Italian television and documentaries. Simone Liverani attended junior high in Italy and in Amherst, Mass. In his first year of high school Liverani attended classes in Italy and Bloomington, Ind. In 1986, when Liverani was 16, the family moved to Bamako, Mali, in northwest Africa.
As each move progressed, so did the jumble of classes and levels of preparation. The last straw came when he dropped out of the local school in Bamako after two frustrating months. Learning was difficult and it was hard to make friends because Liverani didn't know the local language (Bambara) and knew limited French, the official language in Mali.
"I had no constant thread in my education," Liverani said. He needed to find an education alternative that provided a definite curriculum and path of progress that would not change when he moved.
Liverani went to the United States Embassy in Bamako in search of information about independent study schools. Upon the embassy's recommendation, he soon enrolled in the UNL Independent Study High School. The school is the only university-based, fully accredited, diploma-granting distance education high school in the United States. It serves more than 14,000 enrollments each year from students in all 50 states and more than 135 countries.
In 1987 Liverani returned to Ancona, Italy, where he continued his ISHS studies under the tutelage of Antonio Luccarini, a professor at the Italian classical museum in Ancona.
"To study on your own you have to be disciplined, and by nature I'm not. It was vital to have my adviser," Liverani said. "This was the best thing that could have happened for me to settle down" after years of traveling and switching schools.
Luccarini balanced the European education style with the American curriculum, Liverani said. His course work was conducted by mail, a far cry from today's computer, fax, e-mail and World Wide Web options. The Department of Distance Education has four high school courses available on the World Wide Web and plans an entire 50-course diploma sequence to be available on the Web by 2001.
The American curriculum reinforced Liverani's English skills, and fueled his interest in returning to the United States for university work.
Liverani began the journalism program at UNL in 1992. He planned to attend UNL for one semester and then transfer to the University of Massachusetts. Fate, however, played a hand. Liverani met his future wife, Svetlana Pashkevich, in August 1992 when he worked with the UNL International Affairs Office as part of the welcome team for exchange students. Pashkevich, a Russian, was an exchange student from St.Petersburg Pedagogical University.
"We just knew," Liverani said. They married in November 1992. Now a teaching assistant and Ph.D. candidate in UNL's Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Pashkevich earned a B.A. in English and an M.A. in German from UNL.
Liverani earned a B.A. in journalism (advertising) and is a master's degree candidate in UNL's College of Journalism and Mass Communications. After visiting Russia in 1993, Liverani shifted his academic interest from advertising's creative aspect to media theory. His thesis is a comparison of the so-called Generation X of the United States and the peer demographic group in post-perestroika Russia. His research focuses on market segmentation in the international marketplace.
"I am interested in finding out about how the differences in culture and historical events have shaped these two similar yet very different groups," said Liverani, who is 27.
Liverani hopes to use his experiences to find a job in international advertising. His current project as a marketing assistant for UNL's Agricultural Leadership and Communication program is to research and define potential markets for a course focusing on youths creating wearable art.
By Tracy J. Mueller, Division of Continuing Studies
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NU President L. Dennis Smith (left) and Rich McDermott (center), director of Facilities Management, are stopped by reporters after a news conference Jan. 9 at Bancroft Hall. Smith, Gov. E. Benjamin Nelson and State Sen. Dan Lynch, discussed a bill being introduced in the Legislature to address some of the university's deferred maintenance needs. (Photo by Richard Wright) |
The eccentricities of Bancroft Hall's ancient heating system helped prove a point at a news conference Jan. 9. As NU President Dennis Smith, Gov. Ben Nelson and State Sen. Dan Lynch explained why the university needs a bond issue to fund building renovations, the radiator pipes in one of Bancroft's classrooms began clanking and banging, nearly drowning out their remarks.
Lynch, a plumber by trade, launched into an explanation of condensation and air pressure. But the reality was that the building, erected in 1914 as an elementary school, is inadequate for 1998 educational purposes.
Lynch has introduced a bill in the Legislature that if passed would fund the $79 million bond issue. The university would repay half and the state would fund the remainder. The money would allow the university to address the bulk of its deferred maintenance needs by 2015.
Smith said that the university should be spending nearly $18 million annually on maintenance but for many years has spent about $11 million. The deficit has built up to where the system is more than $100 million behind.
The Lynch plan would solve 70 percent of the backlog by allowing work to begin immediately on 16 buildings systemwide. It also would provide funding to address deferred maintenance at the state colleges.
Part of renovation, Smith said, is to go beyond simple repair and to redesign and update some buildings to provide for multimedia classrooms and other current uses. Many of the buildings on the target list are not handicapped accessible, lack air conditioning, contain asbestos or have a host of problems.
"Outstanding academic programs cannot occur with a third-rate physical plant," he said.
Lynch said the state's inaction on providing maintenance funding was "probably at best irresponsible." He predicted support for the bill this session.
Nelson said the plan was business-like and prudent. Past reluctance to fund maintenance projects, he said, probably occurred because "it's more exciting to build new buildings and new programs than to deal with on-going obligations."
UNL buildings which would be addressed under the plan are renovation and expansion of Love Library ($12.69 million); renovation of the Snyder Building at WREC in North Platte ($1.11 million): replacement of Biochemistry/Natural Resources Building ($6.66 million); Lyman/Bancroft replacement ($10.56 million); Hamilton Hall renovation ($12.13 million); and Avery Hall renovation ($10,8 million).
--Kim Hachiya, Public Relations
Those who remained for the entire Academic Senate meeting Jan. 13 spent time talking about the role of faculty in university governance. One senator said the absence of the majority of the senators might indicate the faculty's level of interest in the issue.
Jim Ford, senate president, charged the administration with being lax in notifying faculty of decisions and including faculty in the discussions that lead to those decisions. He asked the body to divide into small groups to come up with ways to improve the process.
Among the ideas that surfaced in senate discussion were:
proposals floated for discussion and review should be written in language indicating their tentative nature, not as though they are at the implementation stage. more insistence on the part of faculty that they be included in discussions. come up with a definition of shared governance that defines what the administration can do without faculty input and when faculty input is required or desirable. participation in academic senate and university committees should be viewed as legitimate activities, not as a frivolity.
One senator said he believed problems arise because turnover of administrators gives rise to duplicate efforts and "grandstanding proposals" that pad the administrators' resumes before they move on. Another said the university is not a business and should not be operated on a top-down corporate model. A third said the senate has become more advisory in nature and the administration feels it has less need to be accountable to the senate.
Ford said discussions on the topic would continue.
In other action, the senate revisited two resolutions first proposed in November. The body rejected a plan to delete the Tuesday after Labor Day holiday and add a two-day "fall break." It endorsed a plan to place spring break after the ninth week of classes rather than the 10th week as is it is currently scheduled.
The group also accepted reports from the Teaching Council and the Academic Planning Committee.
Chancellor Moeser, in addressing the body, said he would be asking faculty to engage in discussions about how to increase academic rigor.
"That does not mean we want to flunk out more students," he said. It does mean, he said, improving academic quality, which only the faculty can do.
--Kim Hachiya, Public Relations
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