By James Moeser, Chancellor
Last fall we admitted to the university the best class of new students in the recent history of the university as a result of our new admissions standards and our efforts targeted at students with exceptional ability and motivation. These students are now beginning their second semester with us.
I hope all Nebraskans share my concern that we challenge this class, and all the other students on campus, to the maximum levels of academic rigor. I believe that one of the most effective ways of reducing the large attrition rate - roughly one in four freshmen do not return as sophomores - is to provide a challenging and rigorous academic and intellectual climate on campus.
I am heartened by the fact that many students themselves tell me that this is what they want from their university. They are disturbed by reports that grades on a Nebraska transcript may be discounted by prestigious graduate schools because the university or a program within the university has a reputation for inflated grades or a lack of rigor in the curriculum.
I am aware, on the other hand, of the pressures for grades that faculty face from many students for whom a C is a failing grade. Many of these high-achieving students have never made grades below A and are insulted by a B. Historically, pressure has also come from the other end of the spectrum from poorly prepared and unmotivated students who want to be challenged as little as possible. I hope that changes in the quality of the student body will serve over time to mitigate these pressures.
Over the coming months our faculty will engage in a series of important conversations about our expectations for students, grades and student performance. We will give serious attention to providing the necessary support structures in academic programs for those students who seek additional help outside of class.
Our goal is not to fail more students. It is the opposite - we want to see more students succeed and graduate. However, I believe the best path toward increasing both the retention and the graduation rate is through the provision of a rigorous and challenging curriculum supported by faculty who demonstrate genuine concern for their students' learning and progress.
I hope all Nebraskans share my enthusiasm for building a university of the first rank with high expectations for student performance. For such an investment in the minds of our future leaders, we all will be richly rewarded.
From the farm to the table, experts will explore nearly every aspect of meat safety during the Governor's Conference on Ensuring Meat Safety Feb. 9-10.
The University of Nebraska, Nebraska state government, and Nebraska's meat and food industries are collaborating to bring together researchers, regulators, meat processors, beef producers, and food industry representatives. Experts will discuss the latest approaches to prevent bacterial contamination of meat, especially E. coli 0157:H7, a rare but potentially deadly strain of bacteria.
The conference, subtitled "Developing a Research and Outreach Agenda on E. coli 0157:H7," will help define and examine food safety issues facing beef producers, processors, retailers, food service providers and others in the industry, said Steve Taylor, head of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Food Science and Technology Department and a conference organizer.
University of Nebraska agricultural scientists have been researching E. coli 0157:H7 for some time, Taylor said, but last year's ground beef recalls spurred Nebraska to make sure it was doing everything possible to protect meat safety.
As a land-grant university, NU has "the scientific and technical resources to really address these issues in a proactive fashion," Taylor said. The conference will focus on finding promising areas for NU research and Cooperative Extension where solutions to the current problems could be identified and implemented.
"What we're seeking is a Nebraska solution to a problem that affects everyone," he said. "We want to make sure we are doing the most we can do to eradicate this problem."
Gov. Ben Nelson said that as the nation's largest beef exporter, Nebraska has set the standard for quality around the world.
"We are known worldwide as a leader in quality beef and our challenge now will be toestablish a new standard of safety throughout the world," Nelson said.
Nelson and UNL Senior Vice Chancellor Rick Edwards will welcome visitors to the conference at 8:30 a.m. Feb. 9. The conference runs until 4 p.m. Feb. 9 and 8:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Feb. 10.
Keynote speaker Mike Doyle, head of the University of Georgia's Department of Food Science, will give an overview of the significance of E. coli 0157:H7 in meat during the opening session to define the E. coli problem. He'll be joined by Catherine Woteki, U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary for food safety, discussing domestic and international dimensions of food safety from a regulatory perspective, and Tanya Roberts, USDA economist, outlining E. coli 0157:H7's costs to consumers, the food industry and government.
Scientific, industry and government experts will explore E. coli 0157:H7 and food safety issues and challenges facing beef producers, beef packers and processors, food service and retailers. Speakers include several NU Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources scientists and specialists who will outline their E. coli research and education efforts.
The conference will include a forum on issues facing the beef industry moderated by Larry Sitzman, director of the Nebraska Department of Agriculture. Panelists include representatives from Nebraska's cattle, meat processing, food, restaurant and grocery industries.
Irradiated hamburgers are on the lunch menu Feb. 10, marking one of the first public servings of irradiated ground beef. The federal Food and Drug Administration approved irradiation of red meat in December but it is not commercially available.
"That'll be a great opportunity to try them," Taylor said. "People say you can't tell the difference."
Registration costs $25. Individuals can attend one or more sessions but only limited registrations can be accepted at the door; registration by Feb. 2 is preferred. Checks should be made payable to the University of Nebraska and sent to: Roxanne Martin, University of Nebraska, 60 Filley Hall, Lincoln, Neb. 68583-0928. For further registration information, call (402)472-5791.
The conference is co-sponsored by the State of Nebraska, Nebraska Department of Agriculture, NU Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, UNL Food Processing Center, Nebraska Food Industry Association, Alliance for Food Protection, Nebraska Cattlemen, NebraskaFarm-to-Table Initiative, Nebraska Association of Meat Processors, Nebraska Restaurant Association and the Nebraska Retail Grocers Association.
-- Molly Klocksin, IANR News Writer
Whatever happened to the dinosaurs of the Gobi Desert happened so suddenly that 80 million years later, some skeletons are still upright in the sandstone tombs that enclosed them. In one instance, the skeleton of a mother dinosaur remains crouched over the fossilized eggs of her unborn young.
Scientists first believed that the dinosaurs and other creatures living at the site, including early mammals with skulls the size of human thumbs, fell victim to a violent sandstorm. But NU geologist David Loope suspects that the creatures were buried as they huddled at the base of a sand dune when fast-moving slurries of sand washed down the dunes during heavy rains.
Loope has spent years studying the Nebraska Sand Hills, which bear little resemblance to the modern Gobi Desert. But 70 million to 80 million years ago, the Gobi's geography may have been similar to the modern Nebraska Sand Hills, Loope believes.
Loope, chairman and professor of geosciences at NU, has spent four weeks during each of the last two summers in Mongolia's Gobi Desert at the invitation of paleontologists with the American Museum of Natural History who are working at the site in cooperation with colleagues from the Mongolia Academy of Science.
"The Gobi sites were discovered in the 1920s," Loope said. "Almost all the fossils that have been found there are unusual in that they have articulated skeletons. You hardly ever find any loose bones, or any indications that they've been moved, and they show no signs of mutilation or scavenging."
Polish scientists first opined that the sandstone in which the dinosaurs fossilized was at one time blowing sand that suffocated and strangled the living creatures in their tracks. Loope said they were right in supposing that the dinosaurs fell victim to desert sand. From what he could see, however, the sand wasn't windblown. There were deposits of such sand, produced by migrating sand dunes, but that wasn't where the dinosaurs were preserved. The skeletons uncovered in the Gobi were adjacent to those deposits, at the base of what was a giant dune 70 million to 80 million years ago.
At the time of the dinosaurs demise, Loope surmises, the Gobi Desert was not a land of shifting and blowing sand but a region with a fair amount of vegetation, very much like the Nebraska Sand Hills. The dunes were not made up of clean, pure sand, but were infiltrated by clay and sediments which impeded the free flow of water and turned the hills into gullied, erodable hills that would turn into cascading mush beneath the force of heavy rains, burying in its forcible descent anything in its way.
The result would be what is a common sight in the Nebraska Sand Hills today - a formation called an alluvial fan stretching out from the base of an existing sand dune, a motionless incline that in the moment of its formation flowed away so swiftly from the mother dune that it might have buried whatever lay in its path in seconds.
In the Gobi Desert of the Mesozoic era, it would have buried dinosaurs and other living creatures just as swiftly, and more completely than a desert sandstorm. Skeletons would remain in place, unmutilated and safe from scavengers for millions of years.
"It took me awhile to come to that conclusion," Loope said. "I returned from my first trip to Mongolia with some samples of the sandstone from the site. When I looked at the samples through a scanning electron microscope, I discovered that the grains of sand (unlike the usual desert variety) were coated with clay."
The finding suggested the presence of dust in the atmosphere that combined with sand to produce a surface capable of supporting sparse vegetation such as that found today in the Nebraska Sand Hills.
Loope said he was "kind of nervous" about the theory he'd developed until he returned in 1997 and found evidence to support it in the distribution of layered crossbeds that pointed to the migration of dunes over the alluvial fans in their paths.
Loope's studies will give paleontologists a head start on locating other sites with geological characteristics that would point to the presence of other paleontologically significant materials.
"It's like hunting for oil," Loope said. "You look for geologic clues, the factors that indicate a likelihood that you'll find what you're looking for."
A more personal "spinoff" from his findings in Mongolia will be increased attention to alluvial fans in Nebraska.
"I'd never thought of it before I went to Mongolia, but now I wonder about the innards of our Nebraska dunes. There may well be alluvial fan deposits within them that could provide us with new insights into the history of climate change on the Great Plains during the last 10,000 years."
The New York Times featured Loope and his research in a Jan. 20 Science Times story by John Noble Wilford.
- Robert Sheldon, Public Relations
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