CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR PAUL KELTER speaks to prospective students Tuesday during Distinguished Scholars Day. The event was sponsored by the NU Office of Admissions.

Moeser Appoints 29 Faculty to Taskforce

Future Nebraska Taskforce: Research and Graduate Studies to Chart Course for University

By Kim Hachiya, Public Relations

Chancellor James Moeser has appointed 29 people to the Future Nebraska Taskforce: Research and Graduate Studies.

The Future Nebraska Taskforce will be the crucial instrument for charting the future of the university's research and graduate programs, Moeser said in his letter to those nominated to it. The taskforce is charged with drafting the overall strategy or plan for NU's research and graduate programs.

Moeser announced formation of the taskforce, then identified as a committee, during his 1998 State of the University Address in August.

"Let us turn the question of the university's future into a research problem and assign this to a team of faculty researchers," he said in that speech. "Such a research project would require a candid assessment of the status and quality of current programs, an assessment of where special opportunities might lie, an analysis of major problems affecting the world or our nation that this university is well positioned to solve, and the vision and creativity to imagine what might be possible with enhanced resources or a reconfiguration of existing resources."

The taskforce has been asked to answer the following questions: What are properly the goals of Nebraska's research and graduate activities? How should these activities be organized? What can Nebraska learn from the experiences of other universities? What standards or approach should the university follow in prioritizing and budgeting for these programs? How does the university implement these plans? How can the university ensure that its national reputation matches these aspirations?

The Taskforce is asked to investigate these questions as a research project, without preconceived answers or reliance on mere opinion.

In his August address, Moeser said the taskforce would help the university identify areas of greatest strength or potential for future development where significant new investment would move a program or a constellation of programs up to a new level of excellence and reputation.

The premise, he said, is that excellence is best built upon existing strengths or in responding to special opportunities. Identifying existing strengths or opportunities could lead to greater focus in selected areas.

Moeser warned taskforce members that he expected it could take up to two years to complete their assignments. He said in August that the group's recommendations must be designed to move Nebraska forward in research and graduate studies in the next five years.

The group has been asked to imagine, conceptualize and strategize for the entire university but is not asked to plan the individual features of each program it identifies.

Moeser noted that the university has other core missions (teaching and service/outreach) not encompassed by the committee that will be or have been addressed elsewhere.

Those who have been asked to serve on the committee are: John Angle, community member; Azzeddine Azzam, professor, agricultural economics; Stephen Baenziger, professor, plant breeding, agronomy; David Baltensperger; professor, agronomy, Panhandle Research and Extension Center; Paul Barnes, assistant professor, piano, School of Music; Andrew Benson, assistant professor, food science and technology; David Berkowitz, associate professor, chemistry; Nancy Betts, professor, nutritional science and dietetics and chair, Academic Planning Committee; David Beukelman, professor, special education and communication disorders; Dermot Coyne, George Holmes Professor, horticulture; Sidnie Crawford, associate professor and chair, classics; Rick Edwards, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs; Brian Foster, dean, College of Arts and Sciences; Jim Hendrix, dean, College of Engineering and Technology; Alan Kamil, professor, School of Biological Sciences; Gail Latta, associate professor, information services/libraries and president-elect of Academic Senate; Fred Luthans, George Holmes Distinguished Professor, management; Edna McBreen, assistant vice chancellor, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources; Darrell Nelson, dean, Agricultural Research Division; Lorraine Olson, associate professor, mechanical engineering; Lance Perez, assistant professor, electrical engineering; Daniel Pomp, associate professor, animal science; Linda Pratt, professor and chair, English; Helen Raikes, community member; Ross Thompson, professor, psychology; Sylvia Wiegand, professor, mathematics and statistics; Lynn White, professor, sociology; Steve Willborn, Cline Williams Professor, law; and Grenville Yuill, professor, architectural engineering.

Yet to be named is a faculty or staff member to serve as project director in charge of data collection.

"I have asked Senior Vice Chancellor Edwards to convene the meetings and to provide guidance and direction to the work of the taskforce," Moeser said. "We shall also look to the taskforce itself to assist in the development of a research plan.

"I truly believe that this is the most critical planning endeavor in recent times at the university. The new resources from private gifts constitute a tremendous opportunity that rarely comes to a university. I am counting on this taskforce to provide the direction for the future."

University Purchasing New Research Computer

By Tom Simons, Public Relations

The information technology tools available to University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers will take another important step forward later this fall thanks to a $750,000, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation's EPSCOR project.

The grant, with matching funds from the university, will establish the Research Computing Center, which will house a roughly $200,000 multiprocessor computing engine for research purposes. The center and its powerful computer will be the third prong of a major three-part enhancement of the university's information technology resources, joining Internet II and the Great Plains Network. NU is expected to finish logging on to Internet II and its high-end networking resources early next year. The Great Plains Network links institutions in six Great Plains states in a high-speed network.

The university has begun shopping for the new computer, but when it's installed (probably late this semester), it should quickly prove to be a valuable addition, according to Dale Finkelson, a network engineer for Networking and Operations.

"It will be something qualitatively different from anything we now have on campus for research purposes," Finkelson said. "We hope to be able to provide better assistance to people who need high-end computing for research."

Access to the computer will be governed by the advisory committee to the Research Computing Center, Finkelson said. A researcher who wants to use the computer will submit a proposal to the committee, which will review the proposal and grant access based on whether or not it requires the kind of power the new machine will have.

Ashok Samal, associate professor of computer science and engineering, is the interim project coordinator for the center and will chair the advisory committee while project coordinator Sharad Seth is on academic leave. Seth is professor of computer science and engineering and director of the Center for Commuication and Information Science.

Other members of the advisory committee are Sohrab Asgarpoor, electrical engineering; Charles Daniel, UNIX system manager, computer science and engineering; James Emal (or an alternate), IANR Communications and Information Technology; Dale Finkelson, Networking and Operations; Kent Hendrickson, associate vice chancellor, Information Services; Pam Holley-Wilcox, director, Information Technology Support; Sitaram Jaswal, physics and astronomy; Jim Merchant, Conservation and Survey; James Nau, engineering software development specialist, College of Engineering and Technology; Lorraine Olson, mechanical engineering; Christopher Tuan, civil engineering (Omaha); and Xiao Zeng, chemistry.

Finkelson said the combination of the Research Computing Center, Internet II and the Great Plains Network represents a major change in the way the university provides information technology.

"We're building some on-campus resources that we can make available to researchers to sort of 'seed' research activities here," he explained. "Then, as they outgrow our internal resources, we will have the capability to move them out to the broader resources that exist at the supercomputing centers around the country and to other universities that have research groups with same kid of facilities.

"In a very important sense, all of this is a very new activity and really a different model for providing resources than we've had in the past - and really on quite a different scale."

Navajo Philosophies Infused into College Pedagogy

By Gabi Volgyes, Public Relations

The old Navajo couple seemed to want to go somewhere. And when they pointed toward the nearest town and said its name, "Tsaile," Chuck Braithwaite was happy to give them a ride. But he was a bit surprised by the fact that when they pulled to the gates of the couple's home, the old man handed him a socket wrench socket, and smiled.

"I was like, OK, 99 more and I have a set," Braithwaite joked. But slowly, through his work with Diné College, the socket came to mean much more. The gift became a demonstration of the importance of reciprocity, one of the foundations of the Navajo system.

Braithwaite has spent the last six years working in the four corners area of the United States, studying the Navajo living philosophy called "Sa'ah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózhóón," or SNBH. This philosophy is a cornerstone of Diné College, formerly called Navajo Community College. Diné is the Navajo name for the Navajo people.

Braithwaite spoke Oct. 28 at the UNL Culture Center. He is a visiting assistant professor at the University of Montana.

The atmosphere at Diné College is very different than that of most colleges. It is a bilingual, bicultural endeavor to incorporate SNBH into the classroom and into students' lives. Braithwaite found that within the classroom, SNBH was enacted by focusing of the Diné system of meaning, which includes the strong interrelation between people and the environment and the concept of the duality in life (male and female, good and evil in all of us); by focusing on the Diné identity, both the identity of the Diné as a group and the identity of the individual student and their efforts to be a better Navajo; and by using Diné rhetorical techniques, such as using stories from the Navajo culture and history, contrasting Diné with the "West," and using the process of enactment, which is holding oneself as proof of one's argument.

"What SNBH came to mean to me," Braithwaite said, "is really the importance of understanding the interrelations between people and the environment, and the focus on becoming the best person you can be." Braithwaite said he felt changed as a teacher by his experience at Diné College.

"In university education, we take for granted the ways in which we teach," he said. "There was a change in me in the sense that I'm really much more open to different perspectives in the classroom." For example, at Diné, oral history is seen as a valuable resource and research tool, something that Braithwaite is more likely to accept after his time in Montana.

In the future, Braithwaite hopes that members of the higher education community will come to "understand the uniqueness of students from tribal colleges, use them as a resource, and focus of the positives of the system." He will continue to do research and speak at colleges to that end. His most important goal, however, is that people should strive to "understand culture in its own terms, which is a long-term effort." He intends to continue his scholarship of discovery, integration and application of the Diné system in higher education.

Braithwaite's visit at the University of Nebraska was sponsored by the Communication Studies Department, the Ethnic Studies Program, and the Native American student group UNITE. He will be here through Nov. 3 and is reachable after that date through his wife, Dawn Braithwaite of the Communication Studies Department.

Teachers College Compact with Nebraska Unveiled

Evaluating Effectiveness of TC, Graduates

By Tom Simons, Public Relations

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Teachers College will undertake an ongoing evaluation of its recent graduates under the "Compact with Nebraska," a first-of-its-kind idea that came out of the college's 90th anniversary celebration earlier this year.

Dean James O'Hanlon said that during the celebration there was a feeling within the college that there should be a more lasting, serious commemoration of the anniversary, something that would contribute to the college's mission of teacher education.

What eventually came out of that discussion, at the suggestion of David Imig, executive director of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, was the idea of the "Compact with Nebraska" in which the central premise is that Teachers College should be evaluated by how effectively its graduates teach and how well their students learn.

The unique features of the compact, O'Hanlon said, will be two evaluations in the graduates' second year of teaching. For the first time, Teachers College will ask schools to report on the academic progress of students taught by the graduates, including on standardized test scores. Also for the first time, the college will ask parents of elementary and secondary students to evaluate the ability of its graduates to support the academic progress of their children.

"David Imig said the real issue in teacher education is demonstrating the ability of teacher education graduates to produce the needed learning in their own students," O'Hanlon said. "He said it's something that hasn't been done before, but it's something that needs to be done."

O'Hanlon said the data on each group of second-year teachers will be made available to the public so it can make informed judgement on the effectiveness of the university's teacher education programs. The data will also be used to continually reevaluate the programs.

"We won't report data on individual teachers," O'Hanlon said. "It's the school district's job to evaluate teachers. Our business is to demonstrate how well our teacher education program is doing."

Under the compact, the college will undertake additional assessments of its students around the time of graduation. The students' knowledge of subject matter will be measured not only through performance in required undergraduate courses, but also through a standardized test. In addition, their teaching skills demonstrated as student teachers will not only be evaluated by their faculty adviser from the college and the classroom teacher at the school, but also by other experienced teachers retained as independent evaluators by the college.

O'Hanlon said the first cohort of teachers to be studied will be the 70 or so 1997 graduates who teach in the Lincoln Public Schools. The project will be expanded across the state in following years.