Nebraska Quarterly Fall 2023

Artificial intelligence is a hot topic on campus. Students can easily access online platforms, like ChatGPT, to write papers and ace exams in a fraction of the time it would normally take them. Faculty now need to figure out how to harness the progress of technology while maintaining academic integrity at the University of

You could choose a bigger airport.

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The Lincoln Airport is everything bigger airports aren’t: calm, hassle-free and—best of all—won’t scar you for life. When you fly LNK, you’ll leave with zero airport horror stories and make the most of your travel time, whether it’s a business trip or a quick getaway.

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TYING IN

Origami-inspired design

Standing 20 feet tall outside of Carolyn Pope Edwards Hall is the latest addition to the university’s outdoor sculpture collection.

WHAT’S ITS NAME?

Titled T.I.E., it stands for transformation, illumination and effort.

WHAT DOES THE ARTIST SAY?

“I wanted the sculpture to be interactive, so that people could actually enter the sculpture and sit within it,” said artist James Dinh of Los Angeles. “I hope students, staff and visitors come to identify the sculpture with the College of Education and come to use it as a place to meet and rest.”

There is much that is new on our campus as we embark on the 2023-24 academic year. A new head football coach, a new (albeit retro) look to Herbie Husker and a new chancellor — our 21st since the university’s founding in 1869. Chancellor Rodney Bennett tells us what he is most excited about as he leads the flagship campus forward. P7 New research has scientists closing in on a long-lasting swine flu vaccine P18, while a graduate student experiences a renewal as he composes music in the Alaskan wilderness. P20 In June a new statue was unveiled in the U.S. Capitol. It is the first time a Nebraska graduate has been honored in this way. P29 And, finally, it is time to make some new memories in Memorial Stadium as it celebrates its centennial. P36

PLAY THE GAME, READ THE GAME

NEBRASKA VOLLEYBALL

The Origin Story

John Mabry

Foreword by Jordan Larson

DREAM LIKE A CHAMPION

Wins, Losses, and Leadership

the Nebraska Volleyball Way

John Cook with Brandon Vogel

NEBRASKA

QUARTERLY FALL 2023

VOLUME 119 NO. 3

Shelley Moses Zaborowski, ’96, ’00 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Kirstin Swanson Wilder, ’89 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

SENIOR DIRECTOR, PUBLICATIONS

Quentin Lueninghoener, ’06

Ben VanKat, ’06

MAGAZINE DESIGN HANSCOM PARK STUDIO

Grace Fitzgibbon, ’21 EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Mario Zucca COVER ILLUSTRATION

NEBRASKA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION STAFF

Kim Brownell

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

Hilary Winter Butler, ’11, ’18

SENIOR DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS

Conrad Casillas DIRECTOR OF VENUES

Marian Coleman OFFICE ASSISTANT

Megan Copsey, ’20

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, VENUES & EVENTS

Raylie Dinterman, ’20

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

Jordan Gonzales ’17

SENIOR DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT & SENIOR DIVERSITY OFFICER

Bailee Gunnerson, ’22

ASSOCIATE DESIGN DIRECTOR, MULTIMEDIA

Nathan Hé, ’18

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

Wendy Kempcke

OFFICE COORDINATOR

Maria Manning

Muhlbach, ’09

SENIOR DIRECTOR, ALUMNI OUTREACH

Hanna Hoffman Peterson, ’16

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

Denise Jackson

CUSTODIAN

JESSICA SIMPSON MARSHALL

Jessica Marshall (’11) is a pilates studio owner and freelance writer in Lincoln. She worked in public relations and communications while teaching pilates on the side, and then decided to start her own business and pursue freelancing in 2021. Outside of work, you’ll find her staying busy with her husband and two young boys or reading a good book.

KEVIN WARNEKE

Tyler Kruger DIRECTOR OF VENUES

Grace Mosier Puccio, ’19

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, ALUMNI & STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Heather Rempe, ’03 DIRECTOR, DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

Ethan Rowley, ’03, ’13 DIRECTOR, MEMBERSHIP

Kaitlyn Ryan, ’22 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

Viann Schroeder ALUMNI CAMPUS

TOURS

Jeff Sheldon, ’04, ’07 ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MARKETING AND BUSINESS RELATIONS

Nicole Josephson Sweigard ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT

Cheyenne Townsley, ’19

ALUMNI RELATIONS & PROGRAM COORDINATOR

Aidia Vajgrt, ’22 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, VENUES

Sharon Walling DIRECTOR OF DESIGN

Andy Washburn, ’00, ’07

ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CHIEF OF STAFF

When it comes to his writing, Kevin Warneke (’85, ’12) invites you to judge the book by its cover. This approach to writing is why he has told his college journalism students during the past three decades that the lead is a story’s calling card. He hopes the lead to his story about Ryan Crotty (see page 50) meets your expectations.

DR. TOM OSBORNE

Tom Osborne (’63, ’65) served as head football coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers from 1973 to 1997 (25 seasons). After being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999, Osborne was elected to Congress in 2000 from Nebraska’s third district as a Republican. He served three terms (2001-07), returned to the University of Nebraska as athletic director in 2007, and retired in 2013.

MARIO ZUCCA

Mario Zucca has spent most of the last two decades drawing and creating artwork from his home studio in Philadelphia. His work ranges from tiny spot illustrations to giant environmental graphics and has appeared everywhere from jigsaw puzzles to the sides of semi-trailers.

Nebraska Quarterly (USPS 10970) is published quarterly by the Nebraska Alumni Association, the known office of publication is 1520 R St., Lincoln NE 68508-1651. Alumni association dues are $65 annually of which $10 is for a subscription to Nebraska Quarterly. Periodicals postage is paid at Lincoln, Nebraska 68501 and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS. Requests for permission to reprint

materials and reader comments are welcome.

SEND MAIL TO: Nebraska Quarterly Wick Alumni Center / 1520 R Street Lincoln, NE 68508-1651

Phone: 402-472-2841

Toll-free: 888-353-1874

Website: huskeralum.org

Views expressed in Nebraska Quarterly do not necessarily reflect the official

position of the Nebraska Alumni Association. The alumni association does not discriminate on the basis of gender, age, disability, race, color, religion, marital status, veteran’s status, national or ethnic origin or sexual orientation.

EDITORIAL QUERIES: Kirstin Wilder (kwilder@huskeralum.org)

ADVERTISING QUERIES: Jeff Sheldon (jsheldon@huskeralum.org)

Q:What excites

you most about leading UNL?

A: to serve as the 21st chancellor of this historic landgrant university is an incredible opportunity — one in which I’ve been preparing for through my entire career in higher education.

What excites me most about this role is the challenge to strengthen and improve academic excellence, research and innovation, and community engagement. In accordance with our land-grant mission, we are a leader in these areas across all 93 counties of the Cornhusker State. I see no reason why we should not aspire to grow that impact beyond the state borders and serve as a national leader in higher education.

The most exhilarating part of being chancellor is realizing the array of opportunities that we offer our students. Our commitment to one-to-one interactions and stretching Huskers to develop their strengths is an important pathway to future success. This university is a transformational space, one that helps students realize their potential as they build community and earn a valuable Big Ten degree.

I am also excited about my first year as a Husker, engaging with our community and enjoying all the traditions of this great university. I look forward to chanting “Go Big Red!” in Memorial Stadium, attending world-class performances in the

Lied Center, clapping during match point in the Devaney Center, standing tall alongside Archie the Mammoth in Morrill Hall, and picking out ice cream flavors at the Dairy Store. Each day, I wake up committed to leading this university in a way that helps to shape the future of higher education. Working together, we will tackle challenges that lie ahead as we pursue

new levels of success. With unapologetically bold leadership and an unwavering focus on our foundational teaching, research and engagement missions, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will set a new standard of excellence among land-grant institutions.

—Rodney D. Bennett CHANCELLOR

craig chandler

Scholarship Send Off

Californians for Nebraska

Californians for Nebraska gathered in Irvine in July at their annual picnic where they distribute scholarships to local students headed to college in Lincoln. Dave Dietrich, left, and Cari Cohn-Morros (’83) chat at the merchandise booth which saw brisk business this year. Couture cookies made by Stephanie Olsen are always a highlight of the annual event; this year’s featured the lucky horseshoe that football players tap on their tunnel walk into the stadium on game day.

Mile High Meet Up

Coloradans for Nebraska

Scholarship winners from the Denver area were feted and sent off to Lincoln in style in August thanks to the Coloradans for Nebraska alumni chapter. Student Huskers, from left, Morghen Gilchrist, Emily Frech, Lauren Haring, Elsa Spencer and Amber Chase gathered to celebrate their scholarships and get fired up for life in Lincoln. “It is so rewarding to encourage the next generation of Huskers,” said chapter president Dan Spencer (’87, ’92).

Blueprinting the Future

San Francisco Soiree

The new College of Architecture Dean Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, at right, met up with alumni in San Francisco in June to share his vision for the college’s future and outline his priorities. Alumni with degrees in architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and community and regional planning attended the event which also saw alumnus Griff Davenport (’80), managing principal and chair of board of directors for DLR Group, and Cameron Andreesen (’08) with the University of Nebraska Foundation in attendance.

Find Archie!

Morrill Hall’s Archie is hiding somewhere in the magazine, like only a 20,000-year-old mammoth can. Find him, email us with his location at alumni@huskeralum. org and you’ll be entered into a drawing for a Husker prize. Congratulations to Nancy (Ringer) Gillpatrick (’76), who found him dancing on page 39 of the summer magazine. Gillpatrick studied trumpet and voice at UNL and spent 43 years teaching music in schools. She also was one of the first five women accepted into the Cornhusker Marching Band after Title IX was enacted in 1972.

Welcome

To Our New Life Members!

We would like to welcome the following new Life Members who joined January 1 - July 1, 2023.

ARIZONA

Judy Moyer

Steven & Bonnie Weitzenkorn

ARKANSAS

Michael & Dixie O’Donnell

CALIFORNIA

Mehdi Ghobadi

Ping H. Lin

COLORADO

Timothy & Lori Alvarez

Bradley & Valerie Haas

Mark & Cindy Stanley

Maria & Byron Trysla

Mallory Varney

W. David & Sharon Wallman

Kristin Zahnow

FLORIDA

Brian Pfeifer

INDIANA

Melanie & Gilford Green

Ronald & Diane Hosek

Grayce & Victor Lechtenberg

IOWA

Todd & Viveca Beveridge

Gabriella Heckard

KANSAS

Emma Bresser

Edward Harris

Daniel Roh

Josh & Heather Suelflow

MICHIGAN

Jeffrey Garza & Nga Dinh

MINNESOTA

Brian & Rene Hinton

Marsha & Robert Videen

Brent & Jill Parsons

Amy Thiede & Tina Dodson

MONTANA

Darrell & Annette Gillespie

Victoria Riis

NEBRASKA

Robert & Barbara Bartle

Michael & Barbara Becker

Susan & Richard Brown

Pamela Carrier

NEBRASKA (cont.)

Joseph & Robbin Chin

Norman & Phyllis Choat

Robert Dietrich

Eric Engstrom & Joan Yien

Marcus Gaspar

Mary Gillespie

Chloe Higgins

Dalton Johnson

Thomas & Kathleen Johnson

Karen & Rick Kennell

Richard Landreth

Jason Lange & Sara Daran-Lange

Carla & Kenneth Loemker

Marshall & Lois Logan

Shane McCullough

Ryan Meister

Mitchell & Amanda Merz

Pamela Mulder

Nicole Olivo

Joseph & Monica Rigoni

Barbara Rolston

William & Peggy Swanson

Lara Swerczek

Jay Thomas

Casey Trego

DeEtta & Tony Walch

Todd Walkenhorst

Dana & Pamela Wolfe

Dale & Ronda Yoesel

NEW YORK

Rajiv Ramlal

OKLAHOMA

Cheryl & G. M. Wooten

OREGON

Randy & Diane Dodd

SOUTH DAKOTA

Gregory & Beth Hunter

TENNESSEE

James Rowland

TEXAS

Dylan Hoppner

Muriah Johns

Laurel Kastrup

Curtis & Iva Knobbe

Johnathan Raucci

WASHINGTON

Judith Kintner Gilmartin

FALL

GO BIG GRAD

“It’s really helpful to go directly from a class to the lab and see how the ideas are applied, and how you need to be flexible and learn to adjust to support the child’s development.”

EDUCATION AND HUMAN SCIENCES

Pioneering Child Development

LAB NEARS A CENTURY OF LEADING EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE

BY HALEY APEL

Since 1925, one laboratory on East Campus is responsible for producing some of the most dynamic teaching, outreach and research ever to come out of the university. You won’t find a microscope in this laboratory, but rather young children singing and playing outdoors. They’re enrolled at the Ruth Staples Child Development Laboratory.

The child development lab is part of the College of Education and Human Sciences’ Department of Child, Youth and Family Studies. It offers full-day childcare and preschool services for children 18 months to 5 years and is open to the entire Lincoln community and surrounding area. The lab school also serves as a training ground for students studying to become teachers, and a research lab for faculty, students and affiliated scholars to develop new knowledge on children, families, and early childhood education. The lab school has long been recognized as a leader in early childhood development, even being named the program of the year in 2020 by the National Coalition for Campus Children’s Centers.

Thirty-eight families are annually enrolled at the child development lab, equating to about 800 children during the past 20 years.

The Jahan family has been a part of the child development lab since

—MEG WOLKEN (PICTURED AT RIGHT)

FALL

August 2020. Israt Jahan is a doctoral student in the School of Natural Resources. A native of Bangladesh, she and her husband Manirul were overwhelmed at the thought of raising a child away from their families while balancing full graduate school workloads. That all changed the day she walked past the lab school and saw the children outside. After initially being placed on the waitlist their son Ishmam was enrolled in the Bluestem classroom. Beyond high-quality childcare, the Jahans also found a supportive community to help them raise their son.

“As a first-time mom, I am not an expert on child development. I’ve had no exposure to how to raise a child with independence and confidence, or how to support his strong willingness and need to explore,” Jahan said. “Every day we learn from the teachers. There are so many things Ishmam has learned, but I think I have learned even more.”

The Jahans’ experience is not unique, according to Jenny Leeper Miller (’03, ’09), director of the child development lab. She says the child development lab fosters a “community of learning,” in which children, parents, students and faculty all learn from each other.

“Family engagement is the highest priority in an early childhood setting,” Miller said. “The parents are the child’s first teacher. It’s critical for us to have a partnership to ensure the child has the best learning experience possible and we make sure our pre-service teachers training at the lab understand that.”

Approximately 200 students come through the facility each year completing practicum and teacher training. Pre-service teachers placed at the lab school get hands-on practical experiences in teaching in the early childhood classroom while being coached and mentored by highly skilled faculty at the lab school.

One of those students is Meg Wolken, a sophomore from Plattsmouth. Wolken had the opportunity to complete a practicum at the child development labo-

ratory during one of her first classes as a student at the university.

“I was very nervous at first because it was my first semester of college, but it was such a welcoming environment to be brought into.”

Wolken’s practicum was part of a class on curriculum and instruction. She and her classmates first learned about developmentally appropriate practices during a classroom lecture, and then had the opportunity to witness and practice those influences under the guidance of faculty at the child development laboratory.

“I’m a hands-on learner. I need to see things happen instead of being told what will happen,” Wolken said. “It’s really helpful to go directly from class to the lab and see how the ideas are applied, and how you need to be flexible and learn to adjust to support the child’s development.”

The experience was so impactful for Wolken that she changed her major from elementary education to elementary and early childhood education.

Wolken’s course is taught by Christine Corr Kiewra, an assistant professor of practice in the Department of Child, Youth and Family Studies at Nebraska. She’s uniquely qualified to work with students who are training at the child development lab, not only because she has more than 25 years of experience in early childhood care and education, but also because she went to the lab as a child with her siblings.

“I have very vivid memories of spending time outdoors, and riding trikes. It’s fun to share those memories with my students today.”

It’s part of the culture of learning at the child development laboratory to have daily routines in a healthy, comfortable, and engaging outdoor space for children and teachers. In addition to outdoor learning and play time, children also eat and nap outside. Kiewra says it is eye opening for her students to see that the children are actually learning so much math, science or team-

Israt Jahan with her son Ishmam, who is a student at the Ruth Staples Child Development Laboratory.

work skills outside and aren’t just at recess.

“It’s a phenomenal place for teacher training,” Kiewra said.

Child development lab faculty continually seek opportunities to expand their own learning and teaching. Faculty have led students on study abroad tours to New Zealand, Scotland and Italy focused on naturebased education and early childhood environments. Faculty and students have also had the opportunity to learn from research being conducted within the lab. Current research projects being conducted at the lab include projects designed to improve teachers’ use of equitable and culturally responsive teaching practices in the classroom and learning more about how parent-child engagement affects children’s development with the intention of developing more effective family programs.

With so much hands-on teacher training and research being conducted, how does it impact the daily experiences of the families coming to the child development lab? According to Jahan it has only added to their positive experience.

“As a parent, I really feel privileged to be a part of this community because the students who are training there and researchers who are working there are doing so with intention, and have a strong desire to improve the system,” she said. “I appreciate the energy and positivity they bring, and their constant desire to grow and learn.”

As the child development lab looks to the next century of growth, it has a big goal in mind. The College of Education and Human Sciences is actively raising funds to go to a new child development lab and family resource center to be built on the east side of East Campus. The proposed facility would maintain the strong programming that the child development lab is known for and also include the Family and Couple Clinic, a facility offering services to people in the community facing challenges within their marriage or family. Therapy in the Family and Couple Clinic is provided by students in the marriage and family therapy program.

“The new child development lab and the family and couple clinic will improve and enhance our facilities in order to expand the number of children and families that we can serve while also attracting more students to early childhood education and mental health fields,” said Sherri Jones (’85, ’87, ’94), dean of the college.

The idea of a new facility is an exciting one for the current faculty, students and families at the child development lab as it would expand their community of learning to new levels.

BUSINESS Future Actuaries

TEENS EXPLORE CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Nearly 30 teenagers took their first step to finding their future careers at the inaugural Discover Actuarial Science summer high school program. Students explored the actuarial science field and how actuaries solve complex, challenging problems that impact the financial security of people and businesses.

“While actuarial science has been around for a long time, many are unaware of this field and its rewarding career opportunities, including those in insurance, hospitals, banks and more. In fact, insurance is the second largest industry in Nebraska, just behind agriculture,” said Sue Westphal Vagts (’88), an associate professor and director of the actuarial science program.

Rising high school juniors and seniors from eight states attended to gain insight into the field.

“Last year, I did a job shadow with Kristen (Kennelly) DuPree (’07), who is an actuary. She answered many of my questions about her job, but I came to Discover Actuarial Science because I wanted to know more about the college and career prep needed to become an actuary. Going into my senior year, finding a career path and a college is really important for me. This experience is very helpful and gives me a head start,” said Sofia Gonzales of Omaha.

Word of mouth brought Austin Ernberger, of Thornton, Colorado, to the program after hearing about the opportunity from his school counselor. Ernberger then researched actuarial science and wanted to learn more.

“I’m really interested in numbers and math and wanted to check this out because it looked interesting. It’s been a great opportunity and really helpful. I’ve learned a lot of the skills needed to be an actuary, like problem-solving,” he said.

The university has replaced more than 50 lights along high-traffic walkways on City and East Campus. They include darknessdetecting photocells that automatically trigger the lights at dusk. The lights themselves are a longer-lasting, energy-saving LED variety.

Smith

Participants split into different teams where they completed simulations, workshops and challenges. Current actuarial science majors served as their mentors and spent one-on-one time with their team answering questions about college life and getting to know each other. —Kimberly

BIG BRAG

FALL

BIG BRAG

The university is pursuing an international collaboration with Morocco that can boost wheat disease research and strengthen prevention strategies against fungus-enabled wheat diseases. The partnership also can open opportunities for student exchanges to prepare Moroccan and American graduate students for careers in plant science.

Stairway to Creativity

Striving to improve Nebraska communities, architecture students are creating a public art space in an economically depressed Lincoln neighborhood.

The Art Chapel, located at 13th and F streets and one of Lincoln’s first church structures, will offer studio space, exhibitions, classes and other art-related events for the community. The 1873 building was transformed from a neglected space into an asset for a struggling neighborhood. Collaborators hope this project will not only bring new energy to the neighborhood, but also offer a place of reflection and community engagement for those who need it.

The Art Chapel project began as a grassroots effort with Lincoln’s F Street Church members looking for ways to improve the area and engage with local residents. The college’s design-build instructors Jason Griffiths and Jeffrey L. Day agreed to collaborate and make this a joint project.

The concept design phase started with Griffiths’ graduate architecture studio during the fall semes-

ter of 2019, and the baton was passed to Day’s studio in spring 2020. Work paused during the pandemic to resume in the fall 2022 semester for detailed design and construction. Implementation and building were divided into four groups: cabinetry, rolling wall, windows/restroom and furniture.

Day and Griffiths’ studios worked under the idea of creating a space that is utilitarian in concept, but also unexpected and surprising.

One of the innovative features not obvious at first will be the entrance of the building. The students designed half of the front facade as a large rolling door to expose the art studio to the street and neighborhood. This feature will be useful for community events welcoming area residents into the Art Chapel, as well as an opportunity to expand exhibit space beyond the walls of the building.

The students also made the space more functional with amenities such as custom furniture with unique storage features. One of the design highlights includes a rolling ladder inside that users can use for accessing the light fixtures, another is custom-built tables for artmaking and instruction. Other building

At a public exhibition held at the Art Chapel, architecture students Tanner Koeppe, left, and Andrew Winter share the finer details of their minimal custom window frames.

STUDENTS CRAFT ART CHAPEL FOR LINCOLN NEIGHBORHOOD

features are designed to seamlessly blend into the surroundings.

By design, the collaborators decided upon a utilitarian design theme to give the art the attention it deserves and to be more functional rather than pristine. And it appears that parts of the building remain untouched. “If you look up to the ceiling, you’ll see the original, unfinished roof trusses of the original building,” Day said.

To the casual observer, they will be unaware of all the work that’s been done to create that look and feel.

“We wanted the user to know this was a space that was to be used,” Day said. “We didn’t want the neighborhood community to feel too intimidated to use the space or worried about damaging this or that because the building is too precious.”

The materials chosen by the team reflect that theme with plywood tables and stainless-steel tops, materials that will last over time and endure a lot of use.

“Working on the Art Chapel, I was able to work closely with the client and gain valuable feedback during the design process,” said Nick Olsen, an architecture major.

—Kerry McCullough-Vondrak

OVERHEARD

“When I look at UNL’s Animal Science Department, I see an unprecedented commitment to Extension, world-class research, and passionate, hard-working students. I’m looking forward to building on the department’s firm foundation to take the department to the next level.”

—DEB VANOVERBEKE, who earned her bachelor’s degree from Nebraska in animal science in 1996, on coming home and being named the university’s new Animal Science Department head.

JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATIONS

Oh, Buoy!

STUDENT HELPS IMPACT NONPROFITS ACROSS THE STATE

Advertising and public relations student Paige Brophy wears a lot of different hats for Buoy.

In addition to working with the team of 30+ students that make up Buoy, Brophy organizes, communicates and collaborates with a roster of nonprofit clients that utilize Buoy’s marketing services.

“Student leads work up, down and across within Buoy,” says the senior from Lincoln. “I’m the main point of contact for Buoy’s clients, but I also work with my peers to help keep us on track to complete deliverables for clients.”

Buoy is one of the six programs within the college’s Experience Lab, whose new facility has a variety of different workspaces modeled after the offices of the lab’s industry partners. Buoy focuses on providing marketing and advertising work for local non-profits and community partners, a specialty that resonates with Paige.

“My first semester of Buoy, I worked with the Boys and Girls Club of Lincoln in partnership with Jacht on social media for their organization,” Brophy said. “Working with them I realized how big of an impact our work can have on the community, and it really drove my interest in nonprofit work.”

All Experience Lab programs, which include Jacht (a full-service ad agency), Nebraska Nightly, KRNU, Nebraska News Service, Heartland Webzine and Unlimited Sports, are managed by students under the mentorship of professional faculty.

“Our faculty are amazing — we work with them to make sure that students are having a good experience and, since Buoy is a newer program, find new ways to make it better. Plus, we’re given tons of networking and professional development opportunities through their connections,” Brophy said.

This is all real-world advertising, journalism and agency work. Brophy has helped coordinate Buoy’s work for Nebraska National Forest focusing on tourism in Nebraska and MilkWorks, a nonprofit providing breastfeeding resources across the state.

“Learning about the different communities in Nebraska has been really great — I love working with so many different people,” said Brophy.

Nathan Conner, associate professor in agricultural leadership, education and communication, has been selected for a Fulbright Fellowship. Conner will be teaching and conducting research at the College of Agriculture, Science and Education in Port Antonio, Portland, Jamaica, through June 2024.

BIG BRAG

Paige Brophy

FALL

Historic Gift

ACKLIE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION MAKES LANDMARK PLEDGE

Lincoln philanthropist Phyllis Acklie has pledged a landmark gift to the College of Law that will provide approximately 80 scholarships annually, as well as other financial support to law students and to permanently endow the college’s Children’s Justice Clinic.

The Acklie Charitable Foundation, established by Phyllis and her late husband, alumnus Duane Acklie (’53, ’55), made the gift through the University of Nebraska Foundation. At the request of the donors, the total commitment amount will remain confidential.

“The education from the College of Law has had a monumental impact on multiple generations of our family, and there is no question we feel passionate about Nebraska Law, and how we believe it is currently shaping Nebraska’s next generation of leaders,” said Halley (Ostergard) Kruse, the couple’s granddaughter and VP/director of the Acklie Charitable Foundation.

With this gift commitment, the Acklie family is the largest donor in the College of Law’s 132-year history. The Acklie pledge will provide immediately-spendable dollars to fund the scholarships for the next nine years, as well as stipends and travel awards, to Nebraska Law students. The gift also will provide permanent funding for the Children’s Justice Clinic, which gives legal representation to vulnerable Nebraska children, and ongoing support for the College of Law’s other law clinics.

Clinic programs address an increasing need in the community for legal services and give third-year law students an opportunity to represent actual clients, under the supervision of faculty members, and to have experiences comparable to what a new attorney might encounter.

“The Acklie family’s long dedication to the College of Law started with Duane’s days working and studying in our library and has included the education of generations of family members. Their gifts have transformed our physical space and provided generous scholarships for our students,” Dean

Richard Moberly said. “We are honored they continue to believe in our mission to develop inclusive leaders and are especially grateful for the support our students and programs will receive through this most recent gift.”

The Acklie pledge will establish the College of Law Leadership and Scholarship Fund, which prioritizes scholarships for Nebraska residents. The fund will provide full-tuition scholarships for 15 in-state students and half-tuition scholarships for about 65 students each year, with most of those scholarships designated for Nebraska residents.

The Acklie pledge also supports the Nebraska Public Interest Law Fund, which provides stipends for second- and third-year law students who work for a government or public interest organization in law school, as well as travel awards for students to attend a national leadership conference.

Duane Acklie was raised on a farm near Norfolk and received his undergraduate degree from the university in 1953 and his Juris Doctor in 1955. He served as an Army officer in counterintelligence from 1955 to 1957. He and Phyllis purchased Crete Carrier Corp. in 1971, building it into one of the nation’s largest privately owned trucking companies. Duane Acklie died in 2016.

“To our family, the impact of the education Duane received at Nebraska Law cannot be overstated,” said Kruse, a 2014 alumna of the college. “We are thrilled to make these gifts to help students have the same chance to acquire an exceptional foundational legal education and gain practical hands-on experience assisting clients.”

OVERHEARD

“I’ve made some of my best friends while being an athlete here at Nebraska and I credit it all to the ways that I was brought up in Hawaii — to show aloha to all.”

—GWEN MAEHA (’23), a bowling student-athlete from Wahiawa, Hawaii, graduated in May with a degree in child, youth and family studies.

Duane Acklie

Phyllis Acklie

DEVOUR

IN HUSKER COUNTRY

FOLLOW

Chonk and Beans

Everyone needs a steady stream of chunky cat videos on their feed. Watch the misadventures of recent political science alumna Kalea Morgan’s three furry children Chonk, Beans and Mac on her TikTok of 1.3 million followers @chonkandbeans, and if you haven’t had enough fluff, become one of the 250K followers on the kitties’ Instagram by the same handle.

WEAR

Grad Cap Remix

Textured or curly-haired scholars don’t have to settle for ill-fitting graduation caps anymore. Junior nutrition, exercise and health science major Myayla Wright saw a necessity for her own hair at her high school graduation and with her parents made Grad Cap Remix — inserts that keep the hat on the head and the hairstyle untouched. And it’s not just reaching one niche; Wright said the inserts have also helped people with sensory disorders, cochlear

READ

Birding While Indian: A Mixed-Blood Memoir

As much an observation on colonialism as it is on birds, Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies

Thomas Gannon’s memoir as a partLakota growing up in the Great Plains covers more than 50 years of finding solace in Native literature and the natural world. A search for identity and the snowy owl become one in Gannon’s most recent project.

CREATE

Gomez Art Supply

Nebraska art students will tell you Gomez is the place to shop for any creative project worth its salt. Owner, operator and alumna Peggy Gomez (’85) was a parttime printmaker and drawing instructor in the art department and can set you up with whatever materials your professional or aspirational vision requires.

SQUISH

Squishy Herbie

Here’s another mustbuy for the brightest star of your collectible plushie mountain. The Herbie Plushlete Mascot Pillow is soft, lovable, and the perfect companion for comfy game days spent cheering from the

Fly Fitness

Believe it or not, exercise can be a positive experience. Dr. Jenni Bruning Brown’s (’93, ’96) decade of experience as a sports psychologist for the Athletic Department led her to found Fly Fitness, a boutique gym sanctuary with science-designed high-powered classes for every fitness level. Find your community in two Lincoln locations: the flagship heart of downtown or southeast expansion.

Framed by a model of nucleic acid proteins are, from left, Associate Professor Eric Weaver; Matt Pekarek, a graduate student in the Weaver Lab; Cedric Wooledge, a technician with the Institutional Animal Care Program; David Steffen, with the Nebraska Veterinary Diagnostic Center; and Nicholas Jeanjaquet and Erika Petro-Turnquist, both doctoral students in the Weaver Lab.

ARTS AND SCIENCES

Shot of Hope

SCIENTISTS CLOSING IN ON LONG-LASTING SWINE FLU VACCINE

Asuccessful long-term experiment with live hogs indicates Nebraska scientists may be another step closer to achieving a safe, long-lasting and potentially universal vaccine against swine flu.

The results are not only important to the pork industry, but they also hold significant implications for human health. That’s because pigs act as “mixing vessels,” where various swine and bird influenza strains can reconfigure and become transmissible to humans. In fact, the 2009 swine flu pandemic, involving a variant of the H1N1 strain, first emerged in swine before infecting about a fourth of the global population in its first year, causing nearly 12,500 deaths in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

tive strategy because of the rapidity with which swine influenza evolves.

The Epigraph algorithm enables scientists to analyze countless amino acid sequences among hundreds of flu virus variants to create a vaccine “cocktail” of the three most common epitopes — the bits of viral protein that spark the immune system’s response. It could be a pathway to a universal flu vaccine, which the National Institutes of Health defines as a vaccine that is at least 75% effective, protects against multiple types of influenza viruses for at least one year and is suitable for all age groups.

BIG BRAG

In partnership with History Nebraska, the university unveiled a Nebraska State Historical Marker next to Andrews Hall in commemoration of Louis Crompton — the late, openly gay professor of English who, in 1970, taught the United States’ first full-fledged, for-credit course on LGBTQ studies.

“Considering the significant role swine play in the evolution and transmission of potential pandemic strains of influenza and the substantial economic impact of swine flu viruses, it is imperative that efforts be made toward the development of more effective vaccination strategies in vulnerable pig populations,” said Erika Petro-Turnquist, a doctoral student and lead author of the study recently published in Frontiers in Immunology

Petro-Turnquist is advised by Eric Weaver, associate professor and director of the Nebraska Center for Virology. Weaver’s laboratory is spearheading an effort that uses Epigraph, a data-based computer technique co-developed by Bette Korber and James Theiler of Los Alamos National Laboratory, to create a more broad-based vaccine against influenza, which is notoriously difficult to prevent because it mutates rapidly.

Pork producers currently try to manage swine flu by using commercially available vaccines derived from whole inactivated viruses and weakened live viruses.

As of 2008, about half of the vaccines in use in the United States were custom-made for specific herds — an expensive, time-consuming and not very effec-

“The first epitope looks like a normal flu vaccine gene, the second one looks a little weird and third is more rare,” Weaver said. “We’re reversing the evolution and bringing these sequences that the immune system recognizes as pathogens back together. We’re re-linking them and that’s where the power of this vaccine is coming from, that it provides such good protections against such a wide array of viruses.” —Leslie Reed

OVERHEARD

—EDGAR CAHOON, biochemistry professor and director of Nebraska’s Center for Plant Science Innovation, on the $4 million in U.S. Department of Energy support to help transform sorghum into renewable energy.

“This provides funding that allows us to do innovative research to address a societal grand challenge: developing an economically sustainable feedstock for liquid biofuels.”

craig chandler, ananda walden

ENGINEERING

Locking Down Safety

ENGINEER UNWINDING CAUSES, SOLUTIONS TO BOLT LOOSENING

In 2011, one of America’s most advanced unmanned aerial vehicles crashed. In 2013, a train accident in Paris killed seven. And in 2016, a Union Pacific train derailed in Mosier, Oregon, spilling 42,000 gallons of crude oil. Those are just three dramatic examples of how one of the most vexing and little understood phenomena of basic mechanics — the loosening of bolts over time — can create havoc. Assistant Professor Keegan Moore is studying how that happens and how it might be prevented with a five-year, $727,410 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program.

“Loose bolts aren’t just to blame for high-profile catastrophes; they’re a threat in everyday life, from playground equipment and cars to biomedical implants and the James Webb Space Telescope,” said Moore.

Moore said that despite the ubiquity of bolts and screws in infrastructure of all types, little is understood about how a structure’s dynamics can influence their loosening during normal operation.

“Bolt and joint loosening has been studied since the Industrial Revolution because it’s been a problem since then,” Moore said.

He’s hoping his research will answer some of those questions. He will focus on rotational loosening, which is caused by vibrations in structures.

Lock washers are the most common approach used to prevent bolts from loosening, but in many cases they’re ineffective or even increase the rate of loosening. Other approaches, including torque nuts and the

use of two nuts on a bolt, seem to at best delay, not prevent, loosening.

Moore’s project will measure the interface contact conditions — the surfaces the bolt holds together — using high-speed digital cameras that film at thousands of frames per second. He believes the strains measured around the bolt head or nut can be mapped to the contact conditions inside the interface around the bolt hole. He also will produce modeling frameworks to reproduce the dynamics of loosening and determine how a structure’s dynamics influence loosening bolts.

“This will hopefully give us a new window to what’s going on in the interface that we’ve never had before and we’ll be able to measure how that changes dynamics as the bolt loosens and as the structure shakes,” Moore said.

One key challenge is understanding how one loosening bolt might have an impact elsewhere in a structure. “Changes in one bolt can cause dramatic changes elsewhere … not just failure but changes in operation,” he said.

Loosening bolts is one aspect of America’s aging infrastructure. He hopes his research could lead to predictive maintenance that would focus on specific likely problem areas, which is more efficient than trying to monitor all bolts.

Moore’s research includes an education component. He plans to “gamify” existing dynamics courses in mechanical engineering by developing collaborative, not competitive, game-based learning and create a virtual reality dynamics laboratory. —Dan Moser

The Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum in Ashland has enlisted a team of engineering students to create an exhibit that will allow museum visitors to experience a slice of the crew’s life aboard one of the world’s biggest combat aircraft.

Keegan Moore, assistant professor of mechanical and materials engineering, will use high speed cameras to capture the interface contact conditions — the surfaces the bolts hold together.

BIG BRAG

FALL

a bush plane to Port Alsworth, a port town with about 200 inhabitants. From there, we took three float planes and flew over a saddle in the mountain range and landed on the lake. They taxied us to shore, we unloaded our equipment, and they flew away. From there, we officially began our experience living in the Alaskan wilderness.” A knee injury during a hike the first day gave Frost some doubts about whether he should be there or not, but he persevered and experienced an incredible adventure.

“Our final full day we went on another hike. We got to the top, and I felt refreshed. We spent an hour on top of the mountain taking in the landscape and thinking about our compositions. I took the time to meditate, living in the moment and absorbing the environment. It was a spiritual moment for me, meditating on top of a mountain in Alaska. I felt my spirit connected with the Earth below me.”

He was proud to push himself beyond his comfort zone. “This was physically the most challenging experience I have ever had, but I’m so happy that I did it. I went on this journey for me,” he said.

FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS

Alaskan Solitude

COMPOSING MUSIC IN THE WILDERNESS

BIG BRAG

Black Public Media and the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts continued a collaboration for the second year on a residency for Black filmmakers, creative technologists and artists who need access to emerging technology, studio time or work space.

Trevor Frost, a second-year graduate student, was one of six composers who participated in the Composing in the Wilderness program in Alaska in June. During his adventure, he experienced 10 days in the backcountry of Lake Clark National Park and will now compose a new band work to be performed around the country.

Now in its 11th year, the unique Composing in the Wilderness program is led by adventurer-composer Stephen Lias and offered by the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in collaboration with Alaska Geographic and the National Park Service.

Twenty-three composers applied, and six were selected through a rigorous selection process, including Frost. “It was truly a life-changing experience,” Frost said. “We all met in Anchorage, where we took

Each composer was given a prompt and will use that inspiration to compose new works for wind ensemble that will be premiered in 2024 by three university wind ensembles, including the Glenn Korff School of Music’s Wind Ensemble, as well as the Stephen F. Austin Wind Ensemble (Texas) and the Grand Valley State University Wind Symphony (Michigan).

Frost will be writing a six-minute, grade four piece for wind ensemble that should be “light, humorous or playful.” “At first I was having a hard time with my prompt because there was no part of this place I viewed as light, humorous or playful,” Frost said. “I was lying down in my tent during an early morning, and I decided to record some birds who were singing to each other. Inspiration hit me. I knew how this contemplative, majestic and beautiful place was light, humorous or playful — the birds flying and singing with each other.”

Carolyn Barber, UNL’s director of bands and director of the wind ensemble, said having a UNL composer in the mix will only enhance the experience for the wind ensemble.

“It will be fun having a person on the ‘inside’ of the composition side of the project. That will really enrich the wind ensemble’s experience when we start prepping the program.”

Frost said he learned the importance of being comfortable with being uncomfortable. “The only way you learn about yourself is to visit the realm outside of your comfort zone,” he said.

—Kathe Andersen

Trevor Frost during his Alaskan adventure.

AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Hot Flashes

TEMPERATURE, DROUGHT INFLUENCING MOVEMENT OF PLAINS BISON

Conservation efforts have pushed the number of Plains bison back to roughly 20,000, and its status from endangered to near-threatened. But a recent study led by Nebraska’s Nic McMillan hints that the ongoing conservation of the Plains bison will demand accounting for the climate they encounter moving forward.

McMillan and colleagues at Oklahoma State University have found GPS-backed evidence that temperature and extreme drought can drive movement among herds of Plains bison. Continued increases in both, combined with the fact that most bison herds are now confined to fractions of the land they once roamed, could pose challenges to managing the iconic species, McMillan said.

“When we think about reintroducing bison or any large animal to a landscape, the landscape that the animal is inhabiting is potentially a lot smaller than it was historically,” said McMillan, assistant professor of agronomy and horticulture at Nebraska.

The team reached its conclusions after analyzing the movement data of 33 Plains bison from two disparate sites in Oklahoma: the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in the southwestern part of the state, and the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve near its northern border. Each of the bison wore GPS-equipped collars that tracked their location every 12 minutes over mul-

tiple years, yielding a total of 715,344 measurements. Pairing that data with temperature, rainfall, wind and other variables recorded by nearby weather stations, plus drought-revealing moisture readings of the soils at both sites, allowed the team to search for links between bison movement and weather.

When the air temperature ranged from a few degrees below zero to 83 degrees Fahrenheit, bison movement increased 92.5% for every 18-degree rise, so that movement nearly doubled when the temperature rose from, say, 65 degrees to 83 degrees. Above that threshold — from 83 degrees through at least 112, the highest recorded temperature — an 18-degree increase instead corresponded to a 48.5% decrease in movement.

“When you consider (that) this is the first study of Plains bison across multiple herds — and then we find the same relationship across herds, in two very different landscapes — that’s a big deal,” said McMillan, who noted that the trend also paralleled a study of wood bison in Canada. —Scott

OVERHEARD

Schrage

The university has received a $25 million cooperative agreement award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the creation of the Heartland Regional Foods Business Center. This award is among the largest ever received by the university.

“I never had a bike as a kid, and this is something I wish existed back then. Volunteering with the Bike Kitchen is an incredible opportunity to use my skills as an engineer, work alongside and learn from others, and give back to the community.”

—ALEJANDRO MARQUEZ, a mechanical engineering major, who volunteers at the Bike Kitchen repairing donated bicycles that become free “new” rides for area youth and adults in need.

Nic McMillan

A bison herd roams at Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge in Valentine.

BIG BRAG

FALL

GO BIG GRAD

Capping off commencement

The May graduates of Dear Old Nebraska

U transformed mortarboard to canvas, adorning the traditional graduation cap with personal (and academic) touches that ranged from bejeweled apples, mini ecosystems and dog photos to world maps, vinyl records and inspirational credos.

HOW MANY GRADS WERE THERE?

Two new records were set with 3,664 actual graduates earning a total of 3,748 degrees.

FUN FACTS

• Of the graduates, there were 240 Nebraska communities represented, 47 states (plus the District of Columbia and Guam) and 59 countries.

• Marie was the most common middle name of those graduating, showing up 123 times on the diplomas.

craig chandler

PRIORITIZING EXCELLENCE. LIKE ONLY NEBRASKA CAN.

Only in Nebraska: A Campaign for Our University’s Future

is a historic initiative that seeks to engage 95,000 unique donors to raise $1.5 billion for the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

UNL is focused on enhancing faculty and academic excellence as part of this campaign. Private funding allows us to establish endowed professorships and chairs to recruit and retain expert faculty. With your support, we can attract and retain the highest-caliber scholars and support their programs, ensuring UNL remains a desirable workplace for top talent. It’s all possible. And it’s all happening right here. Only in Nebraska.

The university boasts nine distinct colleges, each led by an individual dubbed the “dean of the college.” What do those deans do in their downtime? How do they relax when they aren’t consumed by the task of overseeing their college? Find out on pages 30-33.

SHARING THE VIEWPOINTS OF OUR ALUMNI, FACULTY AND STUDENTS

LUCI PACKARD VANITY/MIRROR (DETAIL)

22 x 30 inches, acrylic gouache on paper

Luci Packard graduated with distinction in May with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. Packard is an active participant in the local art community in her hometown of Lincoln. During college she served as the UNL Painting Club president for two terms and acted as a student ambassador in the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts. Packard’s work focuses on the exploration of self, ownership of space, and adding nuance to femininity.

Empowering Our Future

Coach Osborne and his mentoring program thrive for three decades

BY DR. TOM OSBORNE (’63, ’65) Head football coach 1973-97

In 1991 my wife, Nancy (Tederman, ’62), was watching a rerun of 60 Minutes . She was impressed by a story involving a businessman named Eugene Lang who had been invited in 1981 to address the 6th grade graduation ceremony at the East Harlem elementary school he had attended years earlier.

Lang was surprised at the changes which had occurred since he had gone to school there. The surrounding area had gone from a wealthy suburb to an inner-city environment. The building had aged and the student body’s demographics had shifted. He asked the principal how many of the 61 young people were likely to go on to college.

The principal predicted that maybe one student would eventually attend college. When Lang attended school there nearly every student planned to enter college. When Lang addressed the students, he departed from his prepared remarks and told the young scholars that if they stayed out of trouble and graduated from high school, he would pay their way to college.

Nancy was impressed by Lang’s offer and asked if we could do something similar. Our income level was far short of Eugene Lang’s. I told her I would see what I could do, so the next day I got up in front of the Nebraska football team and asked how many of them would be willing to volunteer to serve as mentors for some 7th grade and 8th grade boys in Lincoln schools.

Twenty-two hands went up. We matched the players with 22 junior high boys whom school officials identified as students who could benefit from having a mentor.

Things went smoothly, but after a couple of years I realized that many of these mentees were approaching 16, an age when young people tended to drop out of school. I was concerned, so I got in front of the group and told the mentees that if they stayed out of trouble and graduated from high school, we would pay their way to college — shades of Eugene Lang.

The only problem was that I did not know how I would fund this promise. It turned out that a large amount of money had been raised at a banquet recog-

nizing 200 football wins — 100 under Bob Devaney, the coach preceding me, and 100 wins under me. The University of Nebraska Foundation agreed that this money could be used for TeamMates scholarships for those who went to college in the University of Nebraska system.

As time went on, we were gratified when 21 of the 22 mentees graduated from high school on time and 18 went on to college. The one mentee who did not graduate high school on time graduated a year later. He had been racing on a motocross circuit.

On the flip side, the football players serving as mentors enjoyed serving someone who could not, on the surface, do anything for them in return. They

Kathy Schubauer and her mentee, Amou Majok, mark TeamMates graduation day in 2018. Majok went on to graduate from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2022.

learned that sharing the gift of time is the most precious gift anyone can give. Serving and giving adds a measure of meaning and purpose to life. Some of those players are still in touch with their mentees now, more than 30 years later.

Because of our experience with the initial 22 mentees, we decided to expand the TeamMates Mentoring Program. We began in Lincoln, and, in addition to student-athletes, we recruited mentors from the community at large. We then expanded across Nebraska and into Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming. Today we are serving approximately 10,000 young people annually, and have served more than 45,000 students since 1991.

The TeamMates model is fairly simple. All mentoring is one-on-one with a 3rd through 12th grader, and done in a school setting. Once that student graduates from high school, they can join our TeamMates+ post-secondary program with their current mentor or a new one.

TeamMates+ has been very effective, particularly for students who are first-generation college students. We have found that providing a mentor who has been to college and understands some of the early challenges students face has been very helpful. The persistence of first-generation students from year one to year two increases to over 85% if they

have a mentor. Once a student gets past the first year of college the odds of going on to graduation increase dramatically.

We also provide our mentees with scholarships so they can successfully reach their full potential. In the 2022-23 school year, TeamMates and our partners awarded $4.5 million in scholarship funds to mentees. We have consistently measured mentoring results over the years by gathering data. Around 85% of our mentees report being more hopeful and optimistic about the future because of their mentoring experience. Gallup research shows that the best indicator of success is hope, seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. By caring unconditionally and showing up consistently, a mentor can point the way through difficult circumstances and toward a productive life.

We are very grateful for the thousands of mentors who volunteer their time and the nearly 200 school districts who support TeamMates. It started with 22 Nebraska football players. Now, we’ve seen this experiment cause a ripple effect across the Midwest and beyond. Of our 300 post-secondary mentees, almost 120 students attended a school in the University of Nebraska system with a TeamMates scholarship last year — 53 of those are Cornhuskers. This makes me proud to be a Nebraskan and a mentor. I hope to see you become one too.

Nancy and Tom Osborne worked together to create the TeamMates mentoring program.

Going Home (Burlington Route)

BY WILLA CATHER (CLASS OF 1895)

How smoothly the trains run beyond the Missouri; Even in my sleep I know when I have crossed the river.

The wheels turn as if they were glad to go; The sharp curves and windings left behind, The roadway wide open, (The crooked straight And the rough places plain.)

They run smoothly, they run softly, too. There is not noise enough to trouble the lightest sleeper. Nor jolting to wake the weary-hearted. I open my window and let the air blow in, The air of morning, That smells of grass and earth— Earth, the grain-giver.

How smoothly the trains run beyond the Missouri; Even in my sleep I know when I have crossed the river.

The wheels turn as if they were glad to go; They run like running water, Like Youth, running away . . .

They spin bright along the bright rails, Singing and humming, Singing and humming. They run remembering, They run rejoicing, As if they, too, were going home.

STATUESQUE

A bronze sculpture of Willa Cather was unveiled June 7 in National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol in Washington D.C. She is the first Pulitzer Prize winner and first graduate of the University of Nebraska to be honored in such a way.

The ceremony included remarks from fellow Husker alumni Gov. Jim Pillen (’79) and Sen. Deb (Strobel) Fischer (’88). At the unveiling, Fischer praised Cather’s lasting impact on the state’s history and literature. “Cather’s vivid, reflective writing has become synonymous with the pioneer spirit of Nebraska,” Fischer said. “Cather herself grew from that land.”

Cather spent her formative years in Red Cloud, and graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1895

with a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1917 she received an honorary Doctorate of Letters and Library Science from Nebraska. While attending college Cather was managing editor of the university newspaper, The Hesperian, later renamed The Daily Nebraskan

She once said in an interview, “I had searched for books telling about the beauty of the country I loved, its romance, and heroism and strength and courage of its people that had been plowed into the very furrows of its soil, and I did not find them. And so I wrote O Pioneers!”

The statue’s creator, Creighton University Professor Littleton Alston, also made history at the event as the first Black artist featured in the collection. Cather joins Ponca Chief Standing Bear, installed in 2019, as one of two new sculptures that represent Nebraska in the U.S. Capitol.

Gov. Jim Pillen and Sen. Deb Fischer, both Husker alumni and part of the Nebraska Congressional Delegation, participate in the statue dedication and unveiling ceremony in honor of author Willa Cather.

Downtime with the Deans

Dean Tiffany Heng-Moss

College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources

Q: What do you enjoy doing when you are not wearing your Dean hat?

A: Spending time with my family — frequently that involves doing something golf-related.

Q: How did your family become interested in golf?

A: My son started at age 3 when my husband placed a putter in his hands. My daughter came to golf later, but picked it up quickly and has since competed at the state high school tournament.

Q: What mental and/or physical benefits do you derive from participating in golf?

A: I am very competitive, so watching my kids compete in tournaments can be stressful. Running is my go-to for my health and wellbeing.

Q: If you were granted three wishes for your college what would those be?

1) My wish for the college is to be the place for all learners who are passionate and curious about food, energy, water and societal systems.

2) For the college to continue being a community where everyone challenges themselves and each other to thrive, grow and reach their fullest potential. Together, we will boldly shape the future and positively transform the lives of our learners, Nebraskans and global society.

3) To continue its positive trajectory for the next 150 years, to remain at the forefront of agriculture and natural resources teaching and learning, research and discovery, and extension and engagement to serve Nebraska and beyond.

Tiffany HengMoss watches her son, Max, on the putting green. She boasts three degrees from Nebraska, earning them in 1995, 1997 and 2000.

Dean Richard Moberly College of Law

Q: What do you enjoy doing when you are not wearing your Dean hat?

A: I try to do things that bring me joy. Those often focus on hobbies that are active, such as basketball, stand up paddleboarding, bike riding with my wife, pickleball. I would say golf, which I do play, but it does not really bring me joy, yet.

Q: How did you become interested in paddleboarding?

A: During the pandemic I was looking for an activity that I could do outside and that was distanced. Stand up paddleboarding was perfect — I got to be on the water, it was incredibly calming, and no one was around.

Q: Do others participate with you?

A: No. Part of the joy is just being on the water by myself. It gives me a chance to be reflective and let my mind wander.

Q: If you were granted three wishes for your college what would those be?

A: I already received one of those wishes when the Acklie Family provided the College with the largest gift in our history this summer — a gift that will be transformative (see page 16). So, I feel like I am pressing my luck to wish for more. But, since you asked: I would wish (1) that our students pass the bar exam in record numbers; (2) that we continue to hire great new faculty as part of a generational change at the college; and (3) that our reunion weekend is packed with alumni so that they can see all of the tremendous changes going on at the College of Law.

For video interviews with the deans, scan this QR code with your smartphone.

Richard Moberly takes advantage of some quiet time on Pawnee Lake.

Dean Shari Veil College of Journalism and Mass Communications

Q: What do you enjoy doing when you are not wearing your Dean hat?

A: I enjoy running. Actually, I enjoy running road races and trail runs with friends. I do the training runs so I don’t look like a fool on race day.

Q: How did you become interested in that?

A: I had some friends who were putting together a marathon relay team. I agreed to do the 3-mile leg. Someone got hurt, and I agreed to do the 7-mile leg instead. Two weeks later I ran my first half marathon. I’ve run four marathons and 30+ half marathons since then. I’ve even captained a 200-mile, 12-person relay team — twice!

Q: Do others participate with you?

A: Yes! Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve picked up a new running buddy or two. One of my sisters from North Dakota, a friend from Oklahoma and another friend from Kentucky are my most loyal running buddies. We’ve run New Orleans, Las Vegas, Lexington, Louisville, Fargo, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Fort Worth and now Lincoln together. We usually add in another adventure with our runs like hiking, kayaking, zip lining or rock climbing. It depends on whether we are doing a marathon or a half marathon and how much energy we have left after the race.

Q: What mental and/or physical benefits do you derive from participating in that activity?

A: Running helps me clear my mind, so I can focus on what’s ahead. It also gives me a boost of confidence. When I’ve knocked out a 7-mile run before even getting to campus, I feel like I can accomplish anything.

Q: If you were granted three wishes for your college what would those be?

1) For society to recognize a free press doesn’t come without a cost. If we want a free press, then we need to invest in it. A free press isn’t 100% government subsidized or a corporate mouthpiece; it is paid for and supported by a responsible, informed citizenry. Informed decision making is central to a democratic society, and a free press makes that possible.

2) For our students to find their calling or find our college isn’t for them early in their academic careers. The professions our graduates go into take commitment and a lot of grit. Our students who go all in and embrace every opportunity in our college are incredibly successful and have wonderful, fulfilling careers. But you’ve got to love it. Otherwise, why do it?

3) I’d wish for our alumni to know they are always welcome home. Our commitment to our students doesn’t end when they cross the stage to get their diploma. We don’t just want to help our graduates find their first job; we want to support them throughout their careers.

In addition to long distance running, Shari Veil went rock climbing in Kentucky last spring and hiked Yosemite over the summer.

The Great Card Caper

Hijinks and flashing ruled the 1972 Husker game

BY GARY KUKLIN (’72) Commercial real estate broker

We called ourselves “The Missouri Seven,” there were only six of us, but we felt that if the administration figured out who the pranksters were, they would always wonder who the seventh one was. The six, including me, included Donovan Ketzler (’76), Ross Mahoney (’75), Barb Naughtin, Steve Polikov and Sam Brower (’73, ’76). I was the past president of Corn Cobs and had been the group’s pep rally chairman. Donovan was the past vice president and had been the card section chairman along with being the past president of Sigma Phi Epsilon. Ross was the Phi Delta Theta intrafraternity representative. Sam was an Innocent and member of Kappa Sigma fraternity. Steve was a sophomore member of Corn Cobs, and Barb was Donovan’s girlfriend.

For those that aren’t familiar with Corn Cobs, we were members of the national spirit fraternity, Pi Epsilon Pi, who along with the female Tassels organization, and the Yell Squad were tasked with getting Husker fans to cheer at athletic events. Our groups raised money for the organizations by selling Big Red balloons and carnations with a red N on them. We also designed the graphics and filled out the instruction cards placed at each seat along with the colored flashcards to display at halftime.

It all started innocently enough at lunch in the Intrafraternity Council/Panhellenic offices on the second floor of the Student Union. Because of our association with IFC over the years, Donovan, Ross, Sam and I would eat lunch each day in the offices and then play cards until it was time to go to class.

Nebraska football had just come off two national championship seasons and were hopefully heading into another one. When Nebraska was part of the Big Eight, its primary rivalries were Oklahoma, Colorado and Missouri. And Missouri was coming to town on Oct. 14, 1972, to play a game the Huskers really needed to win.

During lunch we were lamenting that most of the crowd left their seats at halftime for the concession stands. The Husker band was a great show band, but not a marching, military-type band. Their music just wasn’t peppy and if we heard Spinning Wheel by Blood, Sweat & Tears one more time we were going to scream. Plus, the band had taken over the design of the card section show from Corn Cobs, and we felt their graphics weren’t keeping fans in the seats either.

During our discussion, Ross told the story about how the card section was changed when his dad was at Stanford in the early 1950s and the furor it created. Ross asked, “How tough would it be to change out the card section?” The four of us looked at each other, smiled and a plan was hatched.

The card section consisted of 1,160 seats in the East Stadium. Most of those seats from the field up to the middle railing were comprised of fraternity and sorority students along with professors and university administrators. The Greek students got those seats because they promised to stay in their seats at halftime to be part of the card section program. Under each seat was a spiral bound book that had colored hard cardboard pages roughly 30-inches by 30-inches and an instruction card telling each seat what color page to hold up for each flash.

The instruction card showed seven potential flashes for presentation. The colors were red, white, blue, yellow, green and black. Right before halftime the Corn Cob flash chairman would walk up to a microphone with instructions for the participants. He would say the number of the graphic, count to three and then say, “flash.” At that moment each student would hold up their assigned color at a 45-degree angle from their nose until they were told to lower their card and get their next color ready.

All we had to do was get 1,160 instruction cards and graph paper, then draw out our designs and replace

Donovan Ketzler, left, and Gary Kuklin at their 1972 Corn Cob initiation banquet.

the correct instruction cards with our cards.

During the week, Donovan found his leftover instruction card stash with more cards borrowed from Steve Keist (the current card section chairman’s fraternity room), and extra pages of the graph paper. We decided to meet off campus so no one would know what we were planning. After much discussion during the week, we decided on these flashes.

TNE Theta Nu Epsilon was a sub rosa fraternity established early in the university’s history. Membership was secret and after they lost favor as the university student population grew, they turned to pranks. So, we thought we would let the university think TNE was active again after all these years.

HI LYLE The premier broadcaster everyone listened to on the radio for the play-by-play of the Husker games was Lyell Bremser. We were hoping he’d see his name from the press box and mention our section. We didn’t realize he’d left the press box for the restroom or that we had spelled his name wrong. Probably a good thing he missed it.

JOHNNY R IS SHIFTY This flash paid homage to Johnny Rodgers.

DEVANEY FOR PRESIDENT was created because we felt if our group was discovered, Bob was so well loved we wouldn’t get kicked out of school.

SCREW MIZZOU This one needed no explanation since they were a heated football rival.

Friday evening before game day, we got to work. Then all we had to do was replace the correct card with our revised flash instruction card Saturday morning.

Normally the Corn Cobs met at the stadium and inserted the flash notebooks and instruction cards at each seat by 8:30 a.m. The band would be arriving at that time to start their practice. On Saturday before the game, Sam recruited a group of his Kappa Sig pledge class and others to pull out the initial card and insert our instruction card. During the new instruction card placement, the band director had looked up and waved assuming we were doing our normal job since he recognized a few familiar Corn Cob faces. Donovan politely waved back.

Now it’s showtime, literally! Halftime comes and Nebraska is leading 21-0, Donovan and Steve go down to the microphone to help the current chairman run the flashes. (We tried to make sure that at the Corn Cob primer before the game the current chairman had enough to drink so he was feeling no pain and wouldn’t realize what we had planned.) What we didn’t know, was that this halftime show was going to be dedicated to the Navy’s 197th anniversary. So, when we flashed No. 1, instead of the familiar white background and blue script GO NAVY, they saw a white, red, blue and black TNE. Then our rotation

of HI LYLE, JOHNNY R IS SHIFTY, DEVANEY FOR PRESIDENT and finally SCREW MIZZOU replaced the band’s, UNL, PEACE and VOTE flashes.

We were ecstatic that we six had pulled it off without really a hitch. Now, we’d wait to see if anyone noticed or mentioned what had taken place. We wanted people to pay attention to the card section and band to excite the crowd, not leave at halftime. It only took two days when it “hit the fan.”

Most of the administration at the game with the military generals weren’t paying attention to the card section nor were a lot of fans. The Daily Nebraskan ran several articles about the prank, but the Omaha World-Herald was upset about disrespecting the Navy and some questionable language. The newspaper was pushing for an investigation. How did they break in? Where did they get the instruction cards?

After a few days everything died down when the administration realized that they were the ones who opened the gates to the stadium early in the morning without any security. The instruction cards came from the University of Nebraska’s printing and duplicating department and the Student Affairs administrator figured out who did it, but thought it was humorous and wasn’t going to take any action.

Unfortunately, we proved our point that most people at halftime didn’t watch the band or the card section. But, for a few weeks in late October, there was a lot of interest in our card section.

As Paul Harvey famously said, “Now you know the rest of the story.” Go Big Red!

An instruction card, shown above, was placed under individual seats to create messages like JOHNNY R IS SHIFTY.

Iconic Memorial Stadium celebrates century milestone

BY STU POSPISIL (’84)

Memorial Stadium turns 100 years old this season, and my, how it has grown.

Its birth was a statewide effort in fundraising led by the Nebraska Alumni Association. When it was of high-school age, the Cornhuskers had a Rose Bowl season.

It was reaching middle age when an Irishman (from Michigan by way of Wyoming) named Bob Devaney, brought back winning football in 1962. The 31,000seat stadium couldn’t be enlarged fast enough to accommodate fan demand as the nation’s longest sellout streak started.

Expansions in 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1972 took capacity to 73,650.

At 70 in 1993, Memorial Stadium had its first sign of aging. Not in its original structure, but an add-on. Part of the 1964 south end zone addition collapsed.

To get to 100, and its current capacity of 85,458, the stadium underwent more expansion in 1999, 2006 and 2013. Memorial Stadium is a centenarian. An age of only 14 other stadiums at Power Five conference schools. It continues to belie its years.

university of nebraska-lincoln archives

While blowing out those figurative 100 candles, here are some takes about the making of Memorial Stadium:

It took only a month after the war’s end for the state to consider a World War I memorial. UNL’s N Club suggested dedicating it to the memory of Roscoe Rhodes, captain-elect of the football team, who was killed in action four weeks before Armistice Day. The Lincoln newspapers took it a step further, saying Rhodes’ name should be on a new football field.

It took two tries to launch such a project. The first effort, priced at $1 million in 1920, was for an athletic complex with a multi-use field and running track, on the present site but with only a west grandstand, and a gymnasium. Over the next two years, the field was dropped from the plans, the Nebraska legislature withdrew a $250,000 appropriation, pledges totaled only $117,000 and only $14,740 was paid.

It took a new fundraising campaign and new architects to hone in on a stadium. Architects Ellery Davis of Lincoln and John Latenser of Omaha collaborated after the death of C.E. Chowins, who made the preliminary drawings. Their concept was patterned after Ohio Stadium at Ohio State, which the architects visited. It was to be in the Roman aqueduct style of architecture, enclosed with colonnades and entrances at the four compass points. Capacity was announced as 40,000, but it shrank to 31,000 once seat width increased by 25%.

It took the leadership of Nebraska Alumni Association and secretary Harold Holtz to make the fund drive successful. Students and faculty were first approached, well surpassing their quotas, followed by businesses in Lincoln and Omaha. The last stage was greater Nebraska

and out-of-state alumni. Law alumnus Marcus L. Poteet (Class of 1922) was the drive’s field secretary.

It took all sizes of donations: $250 from Dr. George Flippin, the university’s first Black football player; $25 from students at Benson High School in Omaha, the first of $1,200 from high schools; $231.16 from the inmates at the state penitentiary, the proceeds from a performance by their Penitentiary Dramatic Club. The largest contribution was $10,000 from the Miller & Paine department store.

It took a change of plans the week of the groundbreaking ceremony on April 26, 1923, after Parsons Construction of Omaha won the bid at $548,849. Available funds were $440,168. The stadium’s corner towers were delayed. Postponed, and never built, were the north and south colonnades and the sports courts designed for under East Stadium. Only the 1/3-mile indoor running track (known as the Mushroom Gardens) survived the change orders.

It took catchup, in part because of a small tornado on Aug. 4 damaging work on the east side, to get the stadium substantially completed before the season. Thirty-one of the contracted 89 working days for construction were all or partially lost due to weather.

It took 40 men, 50 horses, two tractors, a giant shovel and four wagon trains to grade out eight feet for the field. It took 660 tons of steel and 16,000 cubic yards of concrete for the stadium. To make the seats, it took 16,500 wood blocks held in place by 78,500 screws.

It took the Cornhuskers one more year of playing on a dirt-and-sawdust field. Sod was a year away.

Chancellor Samuel Avery breaks ground for Memorial Stadium at an April 26, 1923, ceremony.

It took philosophy professor Hartley Burr Alexander to provide the inscriptions on the towers. The two on the east side reflect the war sacrifice; the two on the west side the nobility of sport. Those read: Southeast: In Commemoration of the Men of Nebraska who Served and Fell in the Nation’s Wars Northeast: Their Lives They Held Their Country’s Trust; They Kept its Faith; They Died its Heroes Southwest: Not the Victory but the Action; Not the Goal but the Game; In the Deed the Glory. Northwest: Courage; Generosity; Fairness;

Honor; In These Are the True Awards of Manly Sport

The opening game in the new stadium was a 24-0 victory over Oklahoma on Oct. 13, with the Cornhuskers wearing blue because the Sooners had only their crimson jerseys. Capacity was limited to 20,000 because balconies weren’t finished, but only 7,500 came.

Why was the stadium not dedicated then, waiting for the following week? Nebraska was reciprocating the invitation Kansas made to it the previous year when the Jayhawks dedicated their new stadium. Even up. And that’s how the Oct. 20 homecoming game ended, a 0-0 tie watched by 11,500 in the stands and countless kids in the Knothole Club.

One question without an apparent answer. Where is the stadium cornerstone, laid with fanfare on June 1, 1923? Could it still be there? Its location is described as the parapet in the center box of the center section on the east side of the West Stadium.

UNL Chancellor Samuel Avery, on that June day, said he hoped the building would stand for 1,000 years. Memorial Stadium is well on its way.

Class Quotes

QUESTION

What is your favorite remembrance from Memorial Stadium?

“I was in 6th grade and my parents had season tickets. They dropped me off at the knothole section and for 50 cents I could sit in the bleachers in the north end zone and watch the game with the Boy Scouts as our ushers.”

Sally (LeBaron) Stovall (’73, ’74) is living in San Diego and is a member of the San Diego Huskers chapter.

“Taking my wife to the Garth Brooks concert in the summer of 2021. It was an awesome time with fellow country music fans filling the entire stadium while singing Friends in Low Places — my favorite Garth Brooks song. Russ Meyer (’06) lives in Lincoln where he has spent the last 12 years as a Realtor and associate broker, currently with Nebraska Realty.

More class quotes: page 58

1972 Husker hijinks: page 34

Northwest stadium Hartley Burr Alexander inscription.

Memorial Stadium in 2018.

craig chandler, aimee erickson, university of nebraska-lincoln archives & special collections

TO AI

Given the same prompt as the cover artist and asked to replicate his style, visual AI tool Midjourney created something in the vein of Mario Zucca’s work, but nothing that matched.

ON THE COVER

Nebraska Quarterly hired artist Mario Zucca to develop an idea and illustrate this issue’s cover. As an exercise in artificial intelligence, we used the same prompt to ask visual AI tools to come up with illustrations in his style. Midjourney produced the illustration on the facing page.

BY MEKITA RIVAS (’12)

OR NOT TO AI, THAT IS THE QUESTION

Alot can change in no time at all.

That’s what Matt Waite (’97) realized late last year. As the fall 2022 semester neared its end, a little something called ChatGPT burst onto the scene. Seemingly overnight, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot became the topic du jour.

Waite, a professor of practice at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications, began experimenting with the tool. As someone who teaches reporting and digital product development, ChatGPT exists exactly at that nexus point of his interests. He was curious about its capabilities; could something like this potentially expand the footprint of a single reporter in an era when fewer and fewer of them exist?

“So, I’m immediately thinking that way,” Waite said. “I went and tried it myself and was blown away.”

For Waite, it became “pretty obvious right away” that this technology had plenty of possible applications.

Some are more glaring than others. “One of them was students could cheat,” he said. “And cheat exactly on the types of tests and prompts I was giving them.”

After some tinkering around, he decided to plug a question from a test he had recently given into ChatGPT. The end result? A response written solidly enough that it could very well pass for a student’s real response.

“Poof, in a second and a half, a flawless answer to the question was sitting right there,” Waite said. “I realized the whole ballgame had just changed.”

OpenAI is the Silicon Valley developer behind ChatGPT, which went public on Nov. 30, 2022. In the lessthan-a-year since, it’s become synonymous with the dawn of a new age in AI. Though AI tools have been around for quite some time — think of the popularization of voice-powered assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa — AI-driven natural language processing tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have the potential to upend just about everything.

In a January 2023 faculty meeting,

THE PROMPT

Draw a high-resolution magazine cover illustration that is 9 inches wide by 8 inches tall on the topic of artificial intelligence and academics. It can include themes of higher education research along with academic integrity. The illustration should be colorful but should not use dark blue as a main color. Ideally it should show diverse University of Nebraska-Lincoln students and may feature buildings or locations from its campus. Specific AI tools featured in the story accompanying this illustration include ChatGPT, Google Bard, Midjourney, and Adobe Firefly. Please draw this illustration in the style of the Philadelphia illustrator Mario Zucca.

SEE MORE AI-GENERATED ART FROM THIS PROMPT ON PAGE 45.

Waite demonstrated for his journalism college colleagues exactly what he had done that day of his test experiment. This time, he instructed ChatGPT to respond to the same question but in a specific word count of 200 to 250 words.

“There were a lot of jaws that hit the floor,” he said. “And there were a few people in there that just didn’t believe the tests they give could possibly be beaten by this AI.”

That mixed-bag reaction among faculty speaks to the general uncertainty associated with all things AI, especially in the world of higher education. On the one hand, it could simplify menial tasks. If a journalism student is struggling to write headlines, they could use a tool like ChatGPT or Bard for thought-starters. On the other hand, it could compromise how classes are taught and administered altogether.

“Some of us with a little more gray in our hair have joked about going back to blue books,” Waite said. “I sort of half-joke with students to knock it off if you’re doing this. Because there’s gonna be a day where you’re going to handwrite a test in a blue book in class with no technology allowed.”

The rate at which AI technology is evolving further complicates the policymaking process. To date, the university has taken a “neutral stance”

on the issue, according to Andie Barefield, director of student conduct and community standards. It’s up to each individual faculty member to determine what constitutes academic misconduct and whether or not that includes the use of AI tools like ChatGPT.

And what happens when students must navigate differing views from multiple instructors at a time? “They don’t have a choice to say, ‘Well, I like this faculty’s approach so I’m just going to do whatever they said to do and all my other faculty will just have to adjust,’ ” Barefield said. “A lot of students don’t understand that. That’s not how academia works.”

Some students know they shouldn’t be using ChatGPT for certain applications, while others are surprised to learn that artificial intelligence powers some of the tools they’re already using. Take, for instance, the cloud-based typing assistant Grammarly, which reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation and common mistakes.

“A couple of years ago, Grammarly would help you with your tone,” Barefield said. “There wasn’t an AI there. It was really just using its understanding of English to help you reword or rework long sentences, run-on sentences and sentences that weren’t sentences.”

Andie Barefield

“There were a lot of jaws that hit the floor and a few professors (during the experiment) that just didn’t believe the tests they give could possibly be beaten by this AI.” —Matt Waite, at right

But now it has artificial intelligence included.

“There’s the other camp that thinks this is academic integrity and they shouldn’t use this at all,” Barefield said. “And so, if a student is using Grammarly without the permission or knowledge of their faculty, then are they cheating, per (that) camp’s approach or thought process.”

At present, campus policy encourages faculty to meet with the student before they refer an allegation of misconduct to the office of Student Conduct & Community Standards. In that conversation, an instructor might recognize a miscommunication in what kind of AI use is allowed and not allowed.

“It’s, ‘Let’s work on how to fix this. I’m not going to consider that to be academic misconduct. How do I help you educationally?’ ” Barefield said. “And then sometimes it’s, ‘No, it’s very clear what you did was an attempt to cheat.’ ”

Having these conversations is crucial for establishing where educators stand on the issue. If AI isn’t addressed outright, it can lead to confusion and a lack of clarity in the classroom.

“What are the expectations of you using it by your faculty member?” Barefield said. “We see this in computer science classes where faculty has an expectation that you learn to write code, not that you Google how to write code. I think a lot of students think, ‘Well, if I found the answer, does it matter if I copy and pasted it?’ ”

AI presents an added layer to consider in the age-old conundrum of how to confront and counteract plagiarism in education. And since the tech is evolving with lightning speed, establishing set rules and regulations is easier said than done.

“The advancements we’ve seen in artificial intelligence since December 2022 are almost unprecedented when you think about it in comparison to previous advancements,” Barefield said. “How many programs and applications are looking for how to enhance and utilize artificial intelligence in their work? It’s almost every day that we have to think, ‘Are we sure that’s not AI?’ ”

In the future, she’d like to plan more proactive interactions with students about AI and academic integrity through in-person visits and information sessions.

“Our hope is we can more visibly go into classrooms and share information directly with students before they are referred to our office,” Barefield said. “There’s this gap where we’re trying to catch up to where that technology is, but also trying to figure out how we incorporate it or not incorporate it into the work they’re doing in college. Our students aren’t utilizing artificial intelligence more than other campuses, but it is definitely advancing at an astronomical rate.”

From the vantage point of Allie Reynolds, a junior sociology major, AI is helpful for certain tasks like finding sources online and kickstarting brainstorming sessions. But as with any platform, it has the potential to be misused.

“AI can be a tool that students use to get through school without retaining or learning any information on their own,” Reynolds said. “It is very easy to get too much information from AI. It ends up doing a majority of the work for some students.”

Reynolds initially heard about ChatGPT and AI for schoolwork long after her peers. It was around finals last May. At that point, it had become an unavoidable topic on campus. She “completely understood” the sudden popularity of AI among her peers.

“It greatly benefits students in terms of learning in areas they didn’t feel confident with,” Reynolds said. “I knew many people that used AI to help understand materials and obtain further knowledge about the subjects they were learning in class.”

Judging by AI’s growing use in student circles, it’s clear there’s no going back to the way things were. Educators should learn how to navigate its existence instead of hoping it will vanish.

“Honestly, that’s one of the conversations that we’re having: You can’t bury your head in the sand,” Professor Waite said. “That’s not real life. The reality is this tool does exist, and employers are going to have them using large language models to do things.”

Teaching students how to use AI to make themselves better and improve their work is possible, it will just take the right mix of patience and open-mindedness.

“Learning the technology and learning what they do well and what they don’t do well is part and parcel of that,” Waite said. “I’m trying to be a realist about it. I know students are going to use it.”

His main focus, then, is to be upfront and talk about AI out in the open.

“This is a good use, this is a bad use, this is making

Student Allie Reynolds warns that the AI platforms can easily be misused.

yourself a smarter, better student, this is cheating,” Waite said. “And if it makes you a smarter, better student, great. I’m happy — go wild.”

This fall, Waite is teaching a special topics class about AI in journalism. At the time of this interview, he wasn’t sure what the course material would specifically entail. With subject matter that’s shifting by the second, it’s challenging to finalize syllabi.

The overall objective is to experiment with large language models to see if students can produce journalistically-relevant material. “One thing I want to do is train an AI voice model to sound exactly like one of our broadcasting professors, Rick Alloway,” Waite said.

What most parties seem to agree on is that ignoring the elephant in the room is not the approach to take. Educators and students alike know AI is there, so pretending to look the other way isn’t fooling anybody.

“This is something that will not go away and professors will not be able to ban AI use,” Reynolds said. “Being open to technological advances and allowing students to use AI in a helpful way is the best approach.”

As with any new technology, there’s the question of who gets to use what. While the basic version of ChatGPT is currently free, that may not always be the case. Similar AI-powered platforms could go the subscription route or increase prices outright.

“Access to this kind of technology is unequal,” said Nick Monk, director of the Center for Transformative Teaching and courtesy professor of English. “This tends to be available to people who are in positions of privilege. There are always those structural imbalances when it comes to new technology.”

The Center for Transformative Teaching produced a collection of resources to assist faculty as they work to better understand and grasp AI tools in the classroom. These resources, which are available online at the center’s website, include written examples of AI policies for course syllabi, sample AI interactions, classroom implications, and more.

“What we need to do is find creative, intelligent and helpful ways to use it to help our students learn better,” Monk said. “Instructors need to change the way they assess student learning. That’s where we are and that’s the advice we’re giving.”

The center encourages faculty to — at a minimum — familiarize themselves with AI in the classroom. Taking that first step is essential for demystifying the tech and dialing back broader concerns.

“For some people, they’re really worried about this and they think that it could literally destroy us,” Monk said. “It could certainly overwhelm higher education. I’ve heard mostly that people are just kind of strapped in and they’re waiting to see what happens next.”

INTELLIGENT ARTIST VS. INTELLIGENT CHATBOT

BY QUENTIN LUENINGHOENER (’06) NEBRASKA QUARTERLY ART DIRECTOR

With a two-decade career in journalism, graphic design, illustration and art direction, I’ve had trepidations about using the rapidly developing AI tools at my disposal. I thought the best introduction to it may be seeing how it compares to a professional illustrator.

The staff of Nebraska Quarterly decided to give a professional illustrator, Mario Zucca, and a handful of visual AI chatbots the same prompt for a cover illustration and compare the results. I also asked the AI tools to draw their illustration in the style of Zucca. He seemed like a good fit because his prolific work is all over the internet, he’s got a distinct style and I thought his unique name would help the AI find and identify his work for reference.

Of the handful of visual AI tools I tried, Midjourney is the clear leader in terms of the art it developed. But it had broad weaknesses, too. Compared to a creative, professional illustrator, its concepts were surface level. It took the key words from the prompt — academics, students, buildings — and collaged them into visually appealing, symmetrical montages. Our pro illustration, on the other hand, provided ten rough sketches, each with unique concepts that had a strong point of view and told a story, as seen on the finished cover. Zucca understood the need to give the illustration a sense of place and could research what landmarks and buildings looked like from his studio in Philadelphia, while Midjourney entirely missed on a sense of place. When it comes to mimicking his style, I thought Midjourney’s images were in a similar vein, but no one would ever mistake them with the real work of Zucca.

At this stage, I think even the best AI can’t produce a finished illustration that’s worthy of publication. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have uses.

Adobe Firefly’s images appeared amateurish and would be best suited for very basic sketches. And that’s just fine. In fact, that may be AI’s best use case right now. Used as a tool to augment brainstorming, or generating ideas early in the process, I can see its value. The images it produced made UNL’s campus look like European parliamentary buildings and its figures were little more than stick people, but it presented a few rough ideas on how to tie the ideas of the prompt together. I wouldn’t use one of the images it created — and in truth I’m not likely to use one of

its ideas, either — but I can see how it may nudge me down a path to a better idea. That’s valuable.

To Firefly’s honorable credit, it would not allow me to instruct it to make the drawing in the style of Zucca — or any other artist.

I noticed one constant in all of the images the AI tools generated: Each focused on buildings and architecture first and people second (if at all). That may be a product of how I wrote the prompt. It also may be a safer, easier image for AI to create. Even for emerging illustrators (and this illustrator), buildings are easier to draw than people. They’re geometric and static, and the well-designed ones are easy to visually parse. People, on the other hand, are totally unique and organic. They don’t sit still, and subtle changes in posture or facial expression can dramatically change the visual message they’re sending. That’s hard for an artist — or an AI — to master.

A selection of Mario Zucca’s sketches, above, using the prompt on page 41, plus results from various AI programs using the same prompt.

Imagine.art

Adobe Firefly

DALL-E

Midjourney

LEAVE YOUR LEGACY THROUGH ESTATE PLANNING.

University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni have made a tremendous impact on our students and our state through private philanthropy. October is National Estate Planning Awareness Month, and the perfect time to make an even bigger difference in the lives of current and future UNL students. You may think you have to be wealthy to contribute. However, to get started, all you need is the passion to ignite positive change and the desire to support Only in Nebraska: A Campaign for Our University’s Future.

For more information on making a gift from your estate, contact a gift planning representative at the University of Nebraska Foundation or download our estate planning kit to get started. We are here to help you leave your philanthropic legacy.

BETTERING OUR STATE. LIKE ONLY NEBRASKA CAN. 800-432-3216 gift.planning@nufoundation.org nufoundation.org/estate-planning

UNLOCKING THE POWER OF AI*

BY MIKE REILLEY (’89)

In the fall of 2017, I was part of a traveling Google News Labs training program that visited newsrooms and colleges around the country. As a Nebraska alumnus, one of my stops was the Wick Alumni Center to train students, faculty and staff on Google tools for teaching and communication.

One of the tools I shared was AutoDraw.com, one of Google’s early stand-alone artificial intelligence tools. I used it to sketch a bicycle on the interface, and Google’s AI produced a professionally-drawn, rights-free icon of a bicycle. Presto! We were all suddenly graphic designers.

During that session, I mentioned that AI-driven tools would flood the market in the next few years. By fall 2022, ChatGPT, Google Bard, Midjourney, Adobe Firefly and thousands of other AI tools arrived.

So how do we keep up with busy work schedules? Start by incorporating one new tool into your workflow a week, then two, then others. Pace yourself and watch your productivity improve. And edit everything.

Here’s a CliffsNotes version to get started with some (mostly) free AI tools. And yes, we all used CliffsNotes back in college. Don’t lie.

WRITING AND EDITING

Rather than asking AI tools to write for you, instead prompt it to analyze or edit some prose you’ve already written — perhaps your year-end holiday letter or an email you are sending to a friend. A few helpful tools:

Hemingwayapp.com: This free tool evalu ates your writing and flags adjectives, adverbs, pas sive voice and many other things spellcheck and grammar check don’t cover. Quillbot.com: Use this free paraphrasing tool to tighten your writing and make it more clear. HeadlineHero.io: Cut and paste your copy in the field on the right; set up the headline length and keywords you want to include in the headline. Zapier.com: Automate your social media posts with this tool.

IMAGES

Adobe Firefly: The text-to-image tool lets you prompt cool illustrations and images that you can use rights-free. Firefly doesn’t have the copyright concerns other tools have because it pulls data from thousands of rights-free Adobe stock images. Midjourney and Discord.com: Midjourney is an AI tool that creates images from text descriptions. You can create fantastic images in a matter of seconds for free (though there are paid upgrades for more images). But you also can violate copyright and trademark law, not to mention step over many ethical boundaries. Be careful with this tool.

While these tools can be fun, we all need to do our due diligence when using them professionally. It may produce some useless results, just as any search tool might. We’re not obligated to use everything AI produces. Be selective. And “trust your gut” if you don’t feel right about using it on a project or in your daily workflow.

ONLINE

To dive deeper into how to use AI, scan this QR code for a video tutorial.

PAGE 64

A love story, told with the help of artificial intelligence.

*Editor’s note: This story’s headline was written with the help of Headline Hero. The illustration was produced by Midjourney with the prompt “colorful spot illustration drawing of AI unlocking padlock.”

EVER SO FNBO.

SWEET TREATS

Tessa Porter merges chemistry and candy.

57

MYSTERY PHOTO

Who are these 1960s students indulging at the Dairy Store?

58

CLASS QUOTES

What is your best memory from Memorial Stadium?

61 ITEMIZED

He’s kept this bowling trophy since 1975.

BULLETIN

EVENTS

SEPT. 9

BOULDER

Husker Huddle at Colorado

Before Nebraska takes on the Colorado Buffaloes, fuel up with a big breakfast and Big Red hype. The spirit squad, Husker mascots and university dignitaries will come together at this pregame huddle away from home.

OCT. 23-28

LINCOLN Homecoming

It’s that time of year again — reunite with your alma mater and enjoy a parade, concert and fresh ear of corn at the Cornstock Festival. On Saturday, head to the stadium for Huskers vs. Purdue.

NOV. 12-13

LINCOLN Nebraska Career Catalyst

The university system is collaborating to help alumni jump-start and advance their careers. Invest in yourself with interactive sessions and networking at the Nebraska Innovation Campus Conference Center.

NOV. 18

SIOUX FALLS, S.D.

Husker Huddle

Artistic Visions

Ryan Crotty, in his Auburn studio, describes his art this way: I use unconventional painting techniques to create all-over compositions of color that spread beyond the edges of the canvas. The resulting process-intensive paintings are an investigation of formal relationships. By applying layers of translucent paint, I generate aberrations in color and surface that reveal evidence of the painting as a physical object.

Two hours before the Huskers hit the basketball court against Oregon State, alumni and fans are invited to the Sanford Pentagon for food, drink and lots of fun.

Alumni Profile

Illuminating Modernity

Ryan Crotty paints a colorful career path from small-town Nebraska

BY KEVIN WARNEKE (’85, ’12)

Ryan Crotty admits he sometimes catches himself watching paint dry.

Crotty (’04) watches while he waits for the latest layer of paint on his latest painting to dry. He watches so he can see whether the colors emerge as expected through the layers he previously applied. When applying paint — he uses only primary colors in his work — there is no brush in sight. His tool of choice is a three-inch paint scraper to apply the paint and a larger piece of plexiglass to remove it. Before working on a piece, Crotty diagrams the expected outcome in his notebook. This one came out nearly as planned with only a slight blemish near a corner of the 1-foot-by-6-foot canvas. Crotty resists the urge to correct that blemish, which he says could alter the entire piece. He sets it aside for the 12 or so hours needed to allow the paint to dry and the colors from the previous layers to fully reveal themselves. The painting is now one step closer to being finished, with just a protective coat of varnish remaining. Soon, it and some companion pieces will be on their way.

This piece is destined for a gallery in Aspen, Colorado. His work was part of a group exhibition there in February. All of his pieces sold which prompted the gallery’s request for additional work. The show and the request for additional pieces reinforce Crotty’s ascent in the art world. The show further reinforces that he’s a busy man with a product in demand. Crotty mixes this piece with his other obligations, starting with a solo exhibition this fall in Amsterdam — his first solo show in Europe. “That will be a lot. It’s all me.” Next comes Art Toronto in October, followed by a two-person show in Montreal at Galerie Robertson Arès (one of two galleries that represents Crotty) in December. Then, an art fair in Miami through High Noon Gallery in New York, the other of the two galleries that represents him. He will spend a portion of the winter as an artist in residence in Paris. Next spring, he has a solo exhibition in Toronto. For this

run of events, Crotty will ship about 100 paintings. This is where Crotty acknowledges that living in Auburn and away from the New York art community has its advantages. “I can buckle down and produce my work — without the distractions.”

Being in Nebraska has another advantage. The imagery Crotty creates better comes from places devoid of city lights, says Jared Linge, whose gallery in New York City represents Crotty’s work. “You need expansiveness and access to changing lights. That sort of imagery doesn’t happen in the city.”

“There’s kind of a darker palette on the East Coast, specifically in New York,” Crotty says. “Go out to California. There is something different about the light there.”

At right is a Ryan Crotty creation made this year. He’s named the 24-by-20-inch piece Virtual Deliverance. Acrylic, gloss gel, modeling paste and archival varnish are applied to a linen canvas to create this look.

“Since I am kind of on my own, I can float here in the middle. I get these beautiful sunsets in Nebraska and these open skies. It’s not like my work is directly taken from nature, but I can’t help but to be influenced by the colors in my surroundings. They change drastically with the seasons. And that comes out in my work.”

Crotty, an Auburn native and University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate in fine arts, creates his paintings in his first-floor studio situated in a former department store in his hometown. He uses display cases rescued from the building’s basement to plan and execute his work. The process involves pieces of PVC pipe held in place by Velcro that Crotty strategically places in a frame to manipulate where paint remains and where it is pushed and pulled away.

The Crottys — Ryan, his wife, Janny (Breen, ’05), and their two teenage children — choose to live in Auburn. The couple considered remaining

in New York after Ryan earned his master’s degree at Syracuse University or relocating to California. Instead, they returned home, he says, trusting over time he would find his way with his work.

George Neubert, former director of the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, noticed Crotty’s work and recalled his Nebraska roots. “I was extremely impressed with his talent and his ability to be here and have a national reputation.”

Terry Van Gundy, a retired art teacher in Auburn, has followed Crotty’s work since he was his pupil. Crotty was more serious than most high school students in his classes — and more talented, he says. Van Gundy says he understands why his former pupil’s work has found a stronger audience away from Nebraska. “He is not creating regional landscapes. That doesn’t mean abstract work doesn’t sell around here, but he’s doing the right thing by the direction he’s going.”

Reviewers describe Crotty’s work with words

Artist Ryan Crotty spreads a layer of paint on a canvas in his studio in Auburn.

that often reference light, space and color. That’s appropriate because Crotty’s work has been described as a progression of the Light and Space movement that emerged in California during the 1960s.

Mark Jenkins, in a 2020 review in The Washington Post , described how Crotty creates his work: “… Crotty mixes pigments with modeling paste to make a thick syrup. This he manipulates with large sheets of clear plastic, pushing the mixture across the fabric in surges. The resulting pictures feature both single-hue expanses and half-submerged colors that glimmer below the surface like metallic gravel under a stream. Around the soft edges of the paintings, which are finished with gloss gel, the pigment-paste mix resembles melted wax.”

“Ryan Crotty … does a spin on modernist formalism, making translucent abstractions with an acrylic gel medium that creates ethereal and iridescent results that look almost holographic,” Martha Schwendener wrote in a New York Times review.

“Despite what your eyes are telling you right now, this canvas is not transparent, and the surface is not emitting light. Crotty has found a new way to paint,” David Behringer wrote in 2019 for Design Milk, an online design magazine.

Crotty says describing how he creates his work — his elevator pitch of sorts — can be challenging so people can understand. “I use a piece of plexiglass to pull paint over canvas. And I layer it one color at a time and let it dry. I might then add that it’s translucent paint, but there you start to lose someone — what’s translucent?”

It’s easier to describe what serves as inspiration for his work. Crotty views the animated images of video games, the glow of neon beer signs, lightsabers, kaleidoscopes and county fairs differently than most. The colors they create can inspire his work. “It’s all of those things and none of them specifically,” he says. “It’s chasing the sublime in the hopes of seeing something new and different that radiates with an inexplicable energy. I’ll catch something — say a fluorescent light — just right and I think I can incorporate that.”

Janny Crotty says her husband takes note of simple things. “Ryan sees the world differently. Most of us are just walking around not taking note of the way the light hits and reflects, or the way the shadows are working. He’ll be examining how the light reflects off the iridescent shell of a beetle floating in a pool, or pointing out Fibonacci sequence on a thistle we pass by on a walk.”

Step back several decades, and Crotty is attend-

ing college in Lincoln and taking Mo Neal’s beginning sculpture class. Neal recalled Crotty tackling “an albatross of a project.” The kinetic project involved gears and a bicycle chain that Crotty wanted to move around the outside of a cube with four-foot sides. It failed.

Make that a great failure, she says, but one that came with a lesson. “It was a turning point for him. It was the kind of project if you succeeded, you probably didn’t learn anything because it works — and you probably didn’t know why.”

Crotty — art degree in hand — left school and eventually became a catastrophe claims adjuster for an insurance company in Lincoln. Opportunities to advance within the company were possible but he wasn’t happy. He created art when he could — typically on weekends and in his garage, but realized he was giving his passion only part-time attention.

So, he bet on himself. “It was a bit of a blind belief in myself — and Janny believed in me that it could happen one day if we took the chance.”

Graduate school followed in New York, then a return to Nebraska. His work eventually caught the attention of his agent Linge, who had just opened his gallery in New York City. Crotty’s work first appeared in Linge’s gallery, High Noon, as part of a group show. His work garnered attention, including a strong review, but didn’t immediately sell.

Linge soon offered him a solo exhibition. “I believed his work needed to be seen in context.”

Linge realizes now that he and Crotty needed each other at this moment in 2018. He was trying to establish himself as a gallerist in New York having relocated from California. Crotty’s work needed to get noticed. “We both started together not knowing what would become of each other’s trajectory. We’re now in it for the long run.”

Linge’s first step was to raise Crotty’s prices. “They were selling for $800 each at the time. We made it $1,500 — and they were still incredibly cheap,” Linge recalled. All 10 sold during Crotty’s solo exhibition. “New Yorkers don’t go outside in the winter. But they did this time.”

And they keep selling — well over 100 through his gallery, Linge estimates. “What’s interesting about Ryan’s work is that it connects to all sorts of audiences — emerging collectors, established collectors, other artists, curators. He’s using this medium that’s being explored by a number of artists, but he seems to be doing it the best.”

And he’s doing all of this living in a town of 3,458 in southeast Nebraska.

Alumni Profile

Sweet Success

Candy chemist cooks up confectionary magic

BY JESSICA SIMPSON MARSHALL (’11)

Tessa Porter (’09, ’18) has always been known for spreading joy.

Growing up, she hole-punched her own confetti and placed it atop ceiling fans at home to surprise unknowing family members when the blades began to spin. In third grade, she collected items adorned with smiley faces simply because they were joyful.

Cooking has also been a constant in Porter’s life. She starred in pretend cooking shows in her maternal grandmother’s kitchen where she learned to cook and bake. When she worked for her dad’s concrete construction business during summers in high school, she imagined she was spreading frosting instead of mortar. She also worked at a café in her hometown of Albion, Nebraska, where she made desserts before joining the construction crew in the afternoon.

When it was time to consider colleges, she figured she would enroll in a culinary program. She visited a few out-of-state schools and then decided to tour UNL.

“I just figured I’d be a chef,” Porter says. Her campus visit to Nebraska led her down a different path.

“I went on a tour of the culinary department at UNL, and I thought ‘this is great,’ but I remember asking if I could take chemistry as an elective. I wanted to be a food inventor,” she recalls. “Luckily for me, they sent me out of their department and to East Campus the same day. They called ahead and said we were on our way and we toured the food science building. It was instant after walking through the door — this was what I wanted to do.”

Porter was inspired by the old food science building, the Dairy Store and the Food Processing Center where photos showed products that had been developed there. This was her calling. During

Tessa Porter used her Grandma Norma’s elderberry recipe to create a gummy brand she named after her. courtesy (2)

her time on campus, she worked in the Food Processing Center’s product development lab and got her first taste of candy development.

Her interest in candy chemistry and development is what catapulted Porter’s career.

She vividly remembers sitting in her Burr Hall dorm room thinking about how to continue paying for school. She always knew she’d need to contribute to her education. “I sat at my computer thinking, ‘What do I like?’ ” she says.

She searched the words candy scholarship and a $5,000 scholarship from the American Association of Candy Technologists popped up.

She applied, submitted her application and won.

Thanks to the candy scholarship, doors opened for Porter. She attended the association’s conference and met a Hershey food scientist who helped her secure an internship, and today she serves on the education committee that selects finalists for the scholarship.

From there her career flourished. Porter’s Hershey internship led to a full-time position. She worked there before pursuing her master’s degree in food science from the University of WisconsinMadison. After finishing the program, she was offered a job at the candy manufacturer Ferrara in Chicago where she quickly moved into management. As a member of Ferrara’s research and development team, she worked on legacy candy brands like Brach’s candy corn, Lemonheads and Trolli gummies.

She grew into her management role and pursued another master’s degree this time in business administration. She considered some of Chicago’s well-known MBA programs but landed on Nebraska’s online program. “Taking names out of it and ranking the tuition, value and flexibility of the online program, UNL was easily in the top three without any loyalty to the university. Add that in, and it was a super easy choice,” Porter says of her decision-making process.

Porter completed Nebraska’s MBA program online while thriving as Ferrara’s research and development leader and applying her knowledge in real time. At this point, she began thinking about her long-term goal of returning to Nebraska as an entrepreneur.

Like most of life’s plans, her path wasn’t linear. She left Ferrara, briefly explored sports nutrition, and was approached by Ferrara again to help lead them through the major acquisitions of Italian candy company Ferrero, known for Tic Tacs, Ferrero Rocher and Kinder brands, and Nestle con-

fectionary brands.

“I ended up giving them a short-term contract to come back, lead the integration and bring new teams together,” she says.

By the end of her contract, Porter had spent another year and a half in Chicago. Now it was time to move back to Nebraska and launch her own company: Sprinkk.

Sprinkk, based in Omaha, is a product manufacturer with a mission to make snack and confectionary manufacturing accessible and smooth.

“Why isn’t there a playground where we can test and validate and produce on a smaller scale?” Porter asked herself.

That’s where Sprinkk comes in. Porter’s goal is to lower the hurdles to manufacturing. Her equipment will allow others to produce on a smaller scale with more flexibility.

Porter’s future goals include hiring more team members and building out the Omaha facility with manufacturing equipment for smaller-scale production. Her former intern, Katelynn Teh, recently became a full-time member of Sprinkk’s research and development team.

Teh comes with her own set of confectionary credentials. She graduated last May with a bachelor’s degree in food science and technology and holds a degree in baking and pastry arts from Johnson & Wales University.

Her curiosity and penchant for problem-solving led her to food science from her role as a pastry chef.

“A favorite aspect of Sprinkk is the collaboration. We bounce ideas off each other to see how far we can push the limits of a product and test them out. Sometimes we are onto something and we keep it as data for client work. Other times it comes out a pile of liquid that we can’t use. Either way the creative process is very fluid,” Teh says of working with Porter.

Porter’s Nebraska pursuits also include a Sprinkk manufacturing facility in Albion where production is run for her own gummy brand, Norma’s, named for her grandmother. The equipment at the Albion facility was sourced from auctions and restored by Porter’s dad. Eventually the facility will have the ability to produce fruit chews, hard candy, gum mies and jellies for other companies, in addition to running Norma’s.

Sprinkk and Norma’s are only the cusp of what’s to come for Porter as a food scientist, entrepreneur and leader. Wherever the path leads, there’s sure to be plenty of joy along the way.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO? TRACK’S KYLE WYATT

When Kyle Wyatt (’03) ran cross country, indoor track and outdoor track at Nebraska, he achieved what many don’t: lettering seven times, winning a junior national championship in steeplechase and becoming an Academic All-American. As a result of the steeplechase title, Wyatt got to represent the United States at an international track meet, which he says was “pretty amazing.”

However, Wyatt’s success on these teams did not always correlate to positive experiences. It was the early 2000s, and homophobia was commonplace.

“I am gay and I was on a team that was, in many ways, a very homophobic environment. I was not ‘out’ while a student-athlete,” Wyatt said. “There were a lot of comments that you couldn’t make today that people were making, and oftentimes, they were very painful.”

Wyatt found solace and support within the English department, in the form of his major and professor emeritus Dr. George Wolf. Wolf, a former English professor and queer activist, mentored and influenced Wyatt as he progressed through his honors English degree. Wyatt excelled, even being named to the Innocents Honor Society his senior year.

After graduation Wyatt spent the next two years working as a UNL admissions counselor where he transitioned out of his student-athlete role. “I think it was the best post-college job for me. I loved it,” Wyatt said. “I got to talk about my alma mater, I got to travel a little bit, I got to take people to football games on the 50-yard line.”

In 2005, Wyatt took this representation all the way to Canada where he attended the University of Toronto on the Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Fellowship. There he would simultaneously earn his masters and Ph.D. in English.

“The professor at Toronto who became my Ph.D. supervisor got his Ph.D. at Nebraska. So, in graduate school, I had a connection back home. I (still also) had that strong relationship with George Wolf … so I wasn’t entirely left to my own devices,” Wyatt said. “I had someone who kind of helped guide me through those first few months.”

Wyatt’s connection and academic determination led to earning the best dissertation of 2011. Wolf even attended Wyatt’s Ph.D. defense. And a mere five days later, he started working full-time at the Canadian magazine The Walrus.

“It was definitely jumping into the deep end and learning very quickly how to get a magazine published every month. It was a deep learning curve,” Wyatt said.

It was during Wyatt’s stint at The Walrus when the Boston Marathon bombing occurred. Wyatt, who’s track roots run deep, felt moved.

“(A marathon) is very special. You have the cream of the crop, the world’s best runners running at the same time, and the same race and courses. Then you have someone like a 75-year-old grandmother running as well. No other sport brings those two types of extremes together. It’s a very beautiful thing.”

In 2013, he decided that he wanted to train to run marathons.

After training and running marathons in the Chicago area, Wyatt qualified for the Olympic Trials at the 2018 Chicago Marathon. Around the same time, he was also offered an editor-in-chief position at the Literary Review of Canada.

On Feb. 29, 2020, Wyatt raced in the U.S. Olympic Trials in Atlanta, placing 101st with a time of 2:25:04. He was seeded 240th coming into the race and was identified as one of the oldest racers. He was 36.

Under Wyatt’s guidance, the Literary Review of Canada won numerous awards and was nominated for “magazine of the year” at the National Magazine Awards.

As successful as Wyatt’s been since his years at Nebraska, he says that the underlying thread of all his experiences comes straight from his time in Lincoln. “That sense of collaboration and that sense of community that I developed is really important. And those professors who went out of their way to mentor me and those professors who went out of their way to read my dissertation and to champion what little ambitions I had, has been remarkable,” Wyatt said. “I’m very proud of the strong connections I have to the university and to them.”

—Victoria Baker

Kyle Wyatt, pictured today, and above right in 2003 during his track days at Nebraska.

University

Mid-1960s ice cream sales

Class Quotes

Share a remembrance from Memorial Stadium.

1960s

“The 1963 Nebraska-Oklahoma game where we had tickets on the 30-yard line. When the all-female pep squad came out, I told my dad there were more good-looking ladies on the field than we had on the whole campus at Iowa State University. I transferred to Nebraska that Monday.”

Don Armstrong (’68), of Prattville, Alabama, is president of the Autauga Forestry and Wildlife Stewardship Council.

1970s

“We were seated in the student section on a freezing football Saturday. We sat in plastic trash bags, trying to keep our feet, legs

and butts warm in the continuous sleet. It created quite a Husker bond.”

Thomas Broad (’72, ’77) lives in Kingwood, Texas, and is enjoying retirement from the Memorial Hermann Health Care System.

“Being a part of the Corn Cobs spirit group in the early 1970s on Husker football game days and doing the card stunts in the card section. It was a great way to show our Husker pride.”

Larry Griffiths (’74) lives in David City, Nebraska, and is a new grandfather to identical twin girls in Omaha.

“The 1978 Oklahoma game. I was sitting in the north stadium where John Ruud put the hit on Oklahoma’s Kelly

Phelps; and now-Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen recovered the Billy Sims fumble on the other end of the field to give Coach Osborne his first win over Oklahoma. I still remember the field being stormed and the goal posts coming down.”

Larry Miller (’74) is a Nebraska Alumni Association life member from Crookston, Nebraska.

1980s

“The homecoming game on Oct. 31, 1981, against Kansas. I was honored to be a homecoming queen finalist and walked on the field during halftime. That was a tremendous honor made all the more bittersweet because that was the last day I saw my mother. She was battling cancer and made sure to

come to the game to see me being honored.”

Carolyn Cohn-Morros (’83) is a federal administrative law judge in Orange County, California. Her oldest daughter will graduate from Nebraska next May.

“I was with the Nebraska Football Recruiting Program as a Husker Hostess. I will cherish the moments of walking across the field early Saturday mornings, Husker recruit and family in tow, feeling that warm autumn morning sun

shining down on us.”

Kara (Siegfried) Acino (’89) was a member of the Scarlet and Cream choir in college and is a life member living in Grand Island, Nebraska.

“The student section would stack empty pop cups together creating a ‘snake’ that grew and grew as cups were added.”

Debra (Hoskins) Stuchlik (’89) is a life member living in Lexington, Nebraska, and was also one of the nearly 69,000 people that attended Farm Aid III held in Memo-

rial Stadium in September 1987.

1990s

“Kenny Walker’s Senior Day in November 1990. The Sea of Red has never been so loud without making a sound as when they gave Kenny a pregame ‘deaf clap.’ Still sends chills up my spine.”

Jason Lamprecht (’98) lives in Silver Lake, Kansas, where he works as a research analyst for the State of Kansas and is designing an eForm system for the Kansas Sentencing Commission.

1975

“When I was 11 in 1965, I took a job selling Coca-Cola during football games. I earned $1 for every tray of 24 Cokes I sold. I usually made about $20 each game when the minimum wage was $1.25 per hour. For six years I never missed a play, for free.”

George Howard (’75, ’76) is an NAA life member living in Hastings, Nebraska.

it so loud or felt the ground move so much than at a game.”

Megan (Preheim)

2002

“The first time I stepped out onto the field as a member of the Cornhusker Marching Band for pregame is something I will never forget. It was August 30, 1997, and our opponent was Akron. The roar of the crowd in the sold-out stadium during the Tunnel Walk was overwhelming in the best way.”

Monica (Beethe) Freeman (’02, ’07) lives in Omaha where she is celebrating five years with the engineering firm HDR as in-house litigation counsel.

“Against Washington in 1998 — my senior year. The first time I felt the student section so hyped up, the stands shook. It was electrifying and terrifying at the same time.”

Leigh (Ramert)

Batten (’99) lives in Fort Worth, Texas, where she is a senior staff quality engineer for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics.

2000s

“I was in the student section for the 2008 Nebraska-Col-

orado rivalry game, where in the fourth quarter Alex Henery kicked his 57-yard field goal to pull us ahead with less than two minutes left in the game. Still high on the record field goal kick, we then watched as Ndamukong Suh returned a tipped pass 30 yards for a touchdown less than a minute later. It was a freezing night game at the end of November, but the energy and adrenaline that night was

something I will never forget.”

Margaret (Dempsey)

Schneider (’09) and her husband welcomed their first child, Barrett, to their family in January.

2010s

“The Northwestern Hail Mary win in 2013. The bulk of the game was frustrating, cold and rainy. But the last few seconds were one of the coolest moments I’ve ever experienced in the stadium. I have never heard

Favela (’12, ’17) lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and her family took her two daughters to their first Husker game at Minnesota in August.

“Bringing my 93-year-old great grandpa Clyde Chester Stoll to his first Husker football game to be recognized for his service in WWII at the November 2021 game against Ohio State. He said that was the most appreciation he has ever received for his service. He has now passed away and it brings me joy to know he got to have that experience and feel appreciated.”

TJ Wynn (’18), a school counselor, lives in Waverly, Nebraska, with his wife and two daughters.

2020s

“My graduation ceremony in May allowed

me to reminisce on some of my favorite memories of the past four years: releasing red balloons after a touchdown; eating Valentino’s, Runza and red hot dogs; the

Garth Brooks concert and the homecoming games. It was also a full circle moment that allowed the class of 2023 to come together in the same place where we had run onto

the field back in 2019 for a class picture.”

Kayla Reynolds (’23) lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, and served as the Student Alumni Association president in 2022-23. She is pursuing further education.

2003

“As amazing as football Saturdays are, Memorial Stadium looks even better on graduation Saturday. Handing out diplomas to our College of Business graduates at one of the most iconic Nebraska locations is the best part of my job.” Rachel (Klemme) Larson (’03, ’06) currently serves as the assistant dean of academic and career development for the College of Business.

SHARE YOUR MEMORIES

What winter campus memory do you reminisce about?

Do you want to be featured in the winter issue? Email your answer to this question to gfitzgibbon@huskeralum.org.

NEBRASKA Authors Authors

Featured books by Nebraska alumni, faculty and staff

Eyes That Do Not See

Kent Kearney (’71)

The captivating journey of Henry Kearney, an Irish orphan who de ed the odds. From the workhouses to a steeplechase jockey, surviving a famine ship, ghting in the Civil War, nding love, and homesteading in 1880’s Nebraska. A must-read for descendants of Irish immigrants, Civil War enthusiasts, and fans of frontier tales.

Available at Amazon

Teaching Is for Superheroes!

Daniel Bergman, Ph.D. (’99, ’02)

Teaching Is for Superheroes! unpacks the “teacher-assuperhero” metaphor to provide research-based application in the classroom and beyond. Topics include origin stories, strengths (& weaknesses), gadgets, sidekicks, and more. Great for new, veteran, AND future educators!

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Wiley.com

From the Sandhills to the Big City

Juanita Reed-Boniface (’59)

From the Sandhills of north central Nebraska, Juanita Reed-Boniface grew up a “child of the prairie.” The values she learned there kept her grounded as a modern ag woman through her education at the University of Nebraska and a career with 4-H, where she built networks with agricultural organizations and leaders throughout her life.

On Distant Service

Susan M. Stein (‘95)

A Yale attorney who drove an ambulance in the Great War, witnessed the Russian Revolution, and tracked Russia’s civil war from Finland to Crimea, Robert Imbrie led a life of daring and diplomacy. His murder in Tehran in 1924 changed the course of U.S.-Iranian relations.

Available at Amazon, Potomac Books and the University of Nebraska Press

Available at Amazon or email AgriFolks@gmail.com

ITEMIZED: A look at a treasured college relic

GARY MILLER’S BOWLING TROPHY

Gary Miller (’76) bowled the best game of his life where it really mattered — at the bottom of Nebraska Union. A bowling tournament was just one activity during the 1975 Winter Walpurgisnacht late night festival. Back then the city campus union boasted 10 lanes, which 50 competitors filled out in a straight scoring tourney for their chance at glory and a cool trophy. The top five players went headto-head in a Professional Bowling Associationstyle roll off, the winner advancing to the next in line. Miller scraped by at number five and barely made his way to face off with number one, a hot shot who’d been on the bowling team a year prior. Hot shot thought he had it in the bag. Then Miller bowled a turkey, and those strikes just kept on coming.

“I’d walk back to the chair after throwing the strike and my friends would be hooting and hollering and I’d be raising my hands like ‘I don’t know where they’re coming from,’ ” Miller said.

With a score of 255, Miller won the champion’s trophy. His friends and girlfriend cheering in the crowd were as flabbergasted as him — Miller’s average was between 155 and 170. They took that trophy out to party, and now, 47 years later, the hardware is still displayed with a foosball table and pinball machines in Miller’s Omaha game room. When he looks at it, it’s that familiar college stu dent elation at surprising yourself.

“I feel some pride that everything came together,” Miller said. “I was good enough to win that night.”

Luck plays a part, though bowling still takes a fair amount of muscle and hand-eye coordi nation. Miller had been bowling since middle school, but really corrected his form during his few years of bowling for the Acacia fra ternity league. His first-year roommate, a senior math major and top bowler on the university team, gave him pointers on the union lanes.

“‘He used to joke, ‘If you can do it with

the pencil you can do it with the ball,’ ” Miller said. Meaning: If you could write a strike on a scorecard you can bowl a strike too.

The year of the bowling tourney was Miller’s senior year in undergrad and first year in dental school. Along with 37 hours of lab time he was also in the builder’s association as chairman of the “buzz book” committee, or university directory — a great resource, Miller said, for calling up dates from class. After an intense first/last year, Miller took a leave of absence to decide if he truly wanted to be a dentist, meanwhile working at a home office insurance company in his hometown of Omaha. He eventually found his way back to finish what he started.

Returning again to Omaha, Miller worked as an associate for dentists until he opened up his own practice in 1981. That same year he met his wife June, also a dentist, and they’d later practice together for 35 years. She did surgery, he did root canals; it was perfect. Their son Heath (’12) is a business graduate of the university who never wanted to go anywhere else. Now enjoying traveling in retirement, Miller is proud to be noticed for the Husker hat he wears around

“I link a lot of that happiness and success to being a student at UNL,” Miller said. “It really

—Grace Fitzgibbon

Do you still have a cherished object from your college days? Tell us about it and we may

gfitzgibbon@huskeralum.org

Gary Miller with members of the Husker Spirit Squad.

BULLETIN

1930s

Lucretia Green (’38) Scottsbluff, April 17

1940s

Paula Jones

Wehrman (’47)

Everett, Wash., Jan. 21; Phyllis

Jones Johnson (’48) Decatur, Ill., April 27; Richard Knudsen (’48) Lincoln, May 5; Marion

Bahensky (’49)

St. Paul, March 21; John Dean (’49) Glenwood, Iowa, May 26;

Verle Denning (’49) Fremont, May 3; Norman

Rollins (’49)

Rochester, N.Y., March 24

1950s

Mary Viox

Davis (’50)

McKinleyville, Calif., May 1; Gwendell

Hohensee (’50)

Lincoln, May 12; Ramon Kunc (’50) Omaha, April 21; Beverly

Ludden Van Lund (’50) Covina, Calif., April 11; Warren Wise (’50) Arlington Heights, Ill., March 31;

Charles Hill (’51)

Overland Park, Kan., March 19; Harlan

Broekemeier (’52) Columbus, March 7; Edgar

Cleaver (’52)

Tulsa, Okla., March 26; James

Dinsmore (’52)

Omaha, March 22; Jayne Carter

Gotschall (’52)

O’Neill, March 24; Vaughn

Jaenike (’52)

Charleston, Ill., March 30; Martha

Stratbucker

Thibault (’52)

Omaha, May 11;

Gertrude Roesler

Todd (’52)

Waverly, March 11; Cathleen Cox

Weber (’52)

Beatrice, March 23; Dean Connett (’53) Lincoln, May 8; Leland

Korte (’53)

Dysart, Iowa, April 4; Jack

Needham (’53)

Charlotte, N.C., May 5; Robert

Swaim (’53)

Tucson, Ariz., May 9; Bruce

Eshelman (’54)

Swannanoa, N.C., March 12;

Donald Hammes

(’54) Valley, March 26;

Nancee Peterson

Neely (’54)

Rancho Mirage, Calif., March 30; Joseph

Pospichal (’54)

Lincoln, March 25; Wilma Larson

French (’55)

Broken Bow,

Obituaries

April 24; Donna Lorenz Goff

(’55) Fremont, May 25; Bruce

Mackey (’55)

Tampa, Fla., March 24; William Smith

(’55) Scottsdale, Ariz., March 21; Leon

Kroenke (’56)

Santa Maria, Calif., April 11; Margaret Moore

(’56) Green Valley, Ariz., March 18; James

Thorson (’56)

Albuquerque,

N.M., April 5; Jack Todd (’56)

Rolling Hills Estates, Calif., March 18; Jacy

Mathiesen

Zinnecker (’56)

Flagstaff, Ariz., April 9; Lauren Faist (’57) Scottsdale, Ariz., May 6; Jacklyn Stanton

Maupin (’57)

San Mateo, Calif., March

12; George Mink (’57) Greenwood, May 6; Marshall Nelson (’57) Falls City, March 18; Clark Springman (’57) Lincoln, April 9; Thomas Cambridge (’58) Amarillo, Texas, March 24; Lynn Christiansen (’58) Lincoln,

June 2; Larry Dillon (’58)

Grand Island, May 9; Donald

Holmberg

(’58) Lincoln, May 1; Mary Anderson Lowe

(’58) Colorado

Springs, Colo., April 22; Robert

Owen (’58)

Lincoln, April 20; James Peck

(’58) Scottsbluff, May 23; Merle

Schaal (’58)

Lincoln, March 15; Philip Starck

(’58) Louisville,

Tenn., May 25; Donald Stewart

(’58) Lincoln, June 1; Richard Babcock (’59)

Omaha, April 6; Gerald Eidam

(’59) Santa Cruz, Calif., May 2; Charlotte

Johnson Hermes

(’59) Lincoln, May 11; John

Kastl (’59)

Wahoo, May 12; Willis Nelson

(’59) El Dorado

Hills, Calif., April 8; Carol

Matcha Otten

(’59) Omaha, May 9; Donna Scriven (’59)

Washington, May 2

1960s

Donna Gies Aksamit (’60) Lincoln, March 18; Thomas Cowan

(’60) Lincoln, March 22;

John Wunder

John Wunder, professor emeritus in the Department of History, died June 25, at age 78. Wunder began his tenure at Nebraska in 1988 as a professor of history and served as director of the Center for Great Plains Studies until 1997. He also served as an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and as president of the Mari Sandoz Heritage Society and the Western History Association. His academic interests ranged from the American West and Native American history to the history of Nebraska and the development of six-man football. He authored or edited more than 20 books and numerous essays and articles on topics such as the Great Plains and American legal history. Retained by the People: A History of American Indians and the Bill of Rights won Phi Alpha Theta’s award for the best history book in 1995. Wunder received the 2021 Sower Award in the Humanities from Humanities Nebraska for his contribution to the public understanding of the humanities, and the university’s Annis Chaikin Sorensen Award for Outstanding Teacher in 1994.

Laurence Falk

(’60) Nebraska City, April 27; Robert Harry (’60) Denver, March 10; Harold Holland

(’60) Wichita, Kan., March 29; Genevieve Weyand Ramsey

(’60) Omaha, April 3; Shad Gager (’61) Table Rock, April 14; Darrel Hoffman (’61) Beatrice, March

1945-2023

17; Fred Howlett (’61) Brick, N.J., March 29; Margaret Queen Kimmons (’61)

Omaha, April 13; Christopher Sherer (’61)

Waverly, Iowa, May 26; Dennis

Schroeder (’62)

Columbus, June 1; Jean Schultz (’62)

Albuquerque, N.M., May 24; Lawrence Smith (’62)

Houston, March 25; Meredith

Leitschuck

Naviaux (’63)

Estes Park, Colo., May 6; Les O’Donnell (’63) North

Platte, May 22; Robert Portsche

(’63) Arlington, Va., May 1; Lyle Franklin (’64)

Springfield, Va., May 15; Michael

Hewlett (’64)

Portland, Ore., April 19; Ephriam

Hixson (’64)

Lincoln, Jan. 18; Jarold Peck

(’64) Rochester, Mich., May 19; Marilyn Lawson Peterson (’64)

Lincoln, March 29; Charles Licking (’66)

Lexington, April 9; Michael

Liddy (’66)

Omaha, April 10; Everett

Madson (’66)

Omaha, June

5; Glenda Woltemath Peterson (’66)

Louisville, Colo., May 16; Dallas Wegner (’66) Kearney, April 26;

Janice Curtis (’67) Lincoln, March 23; Marilyn Landis

Fagerstrom (’67)

Boulder, Colo., May 7; Lawrence May (’67)

Dardanelle, Ark., April 6; Densel O’Dea (’67) McCook, Jan. 28; Stephen Petsch (’67)

Omaha, March 31; Wesley Erhart (’68) Plano, Texas, March 23; Paul Haith (’68) Lincoln, April 23; Dwight Humphrey (’68)

Giltner, May 13; Gene Scholz (’68) Omaha, June 4; James Bryan (’69) Oconto, March 15; Robert Frank

(’69) Lincoln, June 2; Harlan

Jacoby (’69) St. George, Utah, April 1; Eugene

Liska (’69)

Sutton, June 6; Donna Andrews

Lynn (’69) Fort Atkinson, Wis., May 29

Ariz., March 15; Steven Crum

(’70) Omaha, March 18; Cheryl Powers

Herman (’70)

Omaha, April; Ronald Hull

(’70) Lincoln, April 20; Jeanette Larson McCormick

(’70) Choteau, Mont., April 30; Ronald Reutzel

(’70) Omaha, March 20; Larry Bucknell (’71)

Lincoln, March 18; Robert Denzin

(’71) Kearney, March 23; Francis Goodwin

(’71) Sioux City, Iowa, April 28; Thomas Hurt

(’71) Baxter, Tenn., April 11; John Jacobsen

(’71) Omaha, April 10; Kristine Zender Peterson

(’71) Lincoln, March 23; Joan Tomlinson White

(’71) Lincoln, May 2; Ivan Anderson (’72)

Lincoln, May 22; Edward Ely

(’72) Roseland, Va., May 4; Janet Dean

Luehrs (’72)

Captain Cook, Hawaii, May 17; John Neu (’72)

Portland, Ore., April 5; Lois

Timoney Semin

Lincoln, May 30; Romaine Stadler (’72) Minden, April 20; Michael Jensen (’73)

Omaha, March 29; Connie Lungrin (’73)

Kearney, April 6; Claude Wingrove

(’73) Lincoln, April 10; Max Bachman (’74) Grand Island, April 2; Larry Culhane (’74)

Lincoln, March 19; Robert Curtright (’74)

San Antonio, May 2; Stephen Danielson (’74)

Lincoln, May 17; Mary Labute

Doucette (’74)

Lone Tree, Colo., March 12; Richard Holquist

(’74) Omaha, May 7; Carl Johnson (’74) Chico, Calif., April 17; Barton McElligott (’74)

Omaha, May 10; Donald Miller

(’74) Lincoln, March 22;

Robert Mumm

(’74) Omaha, March 27;

Dennis LaVelle

(’75) Lincoln, March 23;

Deanna Lincoln

(’75) Bellevue, March 15; Wil

Macaulay (’75)

May 20; Pamela Sheldon Penke (’75) Omaha, March 17; Charles Hunter Mann (’76) Savage, Minn., March 21; Stephen Knouse (’76) Lincoln, March 27; Lynn Rice (’76) Farmington Hills, Mich., May 8; Marlene Matejka Rutledge (’76)

Ashland, May 14; Barry Blue (’77) Omaha, April 17; Paul Merritt (’77)

Olivebridge, N.Y., Feb. 27; Dean Rexroth (’77) Valdosta, Ga., April 17; Kermit Severin (’77) Smyrna, Ga., May 5; John Smigelsky (’77) Charlotte, N.C., May 20; John Smith (’77) Columbia, S.C., April 5; Mary Neild Beermann (’78) Gretna, March 11; Gregory Jackson (’78) Lyman, May 9; Karla

Kaufman Judt (’78) Waverly, May 8; Douglas

1980s

Rose Steyer

Walla (’80)

Valparaiso, May 27; Alyce Leners

Wallman (’81)

Adams, April 13; Gary Frantz (’82) Omaha, April 25; Irene

Ripp Marks (’83) Omaha, March 25; Allan

Munsey (’83)

Winchester, Va., April 18; Nancy

Ralph Nicholas (’83) Colbert, Wash., March 4; Lorri Ribble

Parsons (’83)

Omaha, April 21; Virginia Bryg

(’84) Omaha, March 15; Ricky

Burleigh (’84)

Gordon, April 24; Pamela Hanson (’84)

Lincoln, June 1; Ronald Stuhr (’84) Lincoln, April 19; Valerie

Van Ornam

Workman (’84)

Springfield, March 16; Mark

Iocca (’85)

Springfield, Ill., April 6; Steven Mitchell (’85)

Irving, Texas, May 24; Dennis Schneider (’85)

Schaele (’87) Bonesteel, S.D., May 12; Joyce Wilson (’87) Bellevue, April 14; Gregory Hamm (’89) Beatrice, April 2

1990s

Eric Reinhard (’90) Albuquerque, N.M., May 13; Von Sheppard (’90) Plano, Texas, April 11; Sandra Lanz Wacha (’91) Des Moines, Iowa, March 29; Esther Ortiz (’93) Lincoln, May 18; Douglas Krenzer (’96)

Omaha, May 15; Nicole Masek McCormick (’96) Lincoln, June 7; LuAnn Strong Behrens (’98) Omaha, May 5

2000s

Brian Russell (’06) Omaha, March 13; Luke Christiansen (’07) Omaha, April 12; Charles Messenger (’07)

Chalmers Cromer

(’70) Goodyear,

(’72) Seward, May 15; Gerald

Shedlosky (’72)

Lincoln, May 2; Jeffrey Munford

(’75) Lincoln,

Westerberg (’78) Lincoln, May 19; Mari Clark Wilson (’78) Lincoln, April 13; Richard Zubrod (’78)

Lincoln, May 11

Boise, Idaho, May 19; Darren

Dageforde (’87)

Blair, March 14; Carmen

Fletcher Dexter (’87) Lincoln, March 18; James

Crete, April 12; Terry Harms (’10) Independence, Mo., May 14; Jeffrey Danek (’12) Lincoln, March 28; Cole Pensick (’12) Columbus, April 8

See page 40

Transcending Time, Space and the Internet

Earthlings’ five-decade love match

BY JANE MENNINGA SCHUCHARDT (’74)

Take the letters A and I. Together, they stand for artificial insemination around Elgin, a town of 700, where I live on a nearby farm. And now, with computers touching every part of our lives, it stands for artificial intelligence. There are all kinds of intelligence computer programs out there. Some you may use every day. Think Google, iPhone’s Siri or Alexa. Ask anything and get a sensible answer. Can you trust it? Is it ethical? Important questions these days. When it comes to writing, AI is out there prominently, according to our son Philip, a software engineer. Give a computer command and get back results drawn from a database of tons of words, including from what we used to cherish as encyclopedias lining the bookshelf. In my most convincing mom voice, Philip was asked to run the following paragraph through one of those crammed-with-every-word computer programs.

ORIGINAL PASSAGE

May 18, 2023: It’s hubby Rick (’75) and my wedding anniversary. Forty-nine precious years. When you find the right one, it’s a beautiful thing. We met as incoming freshman at the University of NebraskaLincoln the day before classes started in August 1970. It wasn’t love at first sight. We were helping to fulfill a dating dream of two others from western Nebraska, one a high school cheerleader, and the other, a football star in a neighboring small town. Their story ended abruptly on that double date. Thankfully, ours continued into a deep friendship initialed by trusted teamwork spanning decades.

WRITE LIKE A TEENAGE GIRL

OMG, so like, May 18th is Rick and my wedding anniversary, and like, we’ve been together for 49 amaze years! Like, when you find your person, it’s just perf. So we met, right, when we were like, freshies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, like, the day before classes started in August 1970. I mean, it wasn’t instalove or anything, but we were on this double date

western Nebraska. One was a high school pepper, and the other was this total football star from a small town nearby. But like, their story didn’t last long after that date. Ours, tho? It turned into this incred friendship, and we’ve been like, serious huggers ever since.

WRITE LIKE AN INTERGALACTIC EXPLORER

Stardate: May 18th. Today, we commemorate a terrestrial ritual known as a “wedding anniversary” for the Earthlings Rick and his life companion. They have orbited around each other for 49 solar cycles, demonstrating that when two life forms share an enduring bond, it can resonate across the cosmos. The genesis of their union can be traced back to their time as younglings at an Earth educational institution called the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, just before the commencement of knowledge transmission in August 1970. At first encounter, their hearts did not synchronize, but the cosmic forces had a grander scheme in motion. They found themselves engaged in a social custom known as a “double date,” intending to forge a connection between two other beings from a region called western Nebraska. Alas, the celestial alignments did not favor their union, and their story disintegrated that very evening. However, from the stardust of that encounter, Rick and his partner embarked on an interstellar journey of companionship, creating a constellation of trust and collaboration that has remained luminous throughout their passage of time. Their story serves as a beacon to other spacefarers, reminding us of the transcendent power of love and camaraderie as we navigate the vast expanse of the universe.

(This column was first published in The Elgin Review and is reprinted here with permission.)

How artificial intelligence is affecting the classroom