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Open Door, Open Mind

Open Door, Open Mind

Open Door, Open Mind

Weitz Up Office Hours: Round 1

Open Door, Open Mind

Weitz Up Office Hours: Round 1

Just the other day I did something for the first time – I held my office hours… virtually. Or is it digitally? In any case, as I promised in my campaign, I did my very first livestream Office Hours talk!

Communication is very important to me. As a Regent, it’s my job to represent you, to listen to you, to understand what’s important to you, and then to take that and run with it when helping to make important decisions that affect the University of Nebraska and the community at large.

That’s what these office hours are all about! This will be a monthly occurrence and I invite you to send me all of your thoughts, questions, ideas, either online beforehand or during the virtual office hours. Any questions that I don’t get to during the livestream, I’ll make sure to respond to afterward, or even at the beginning of the next office hours discussion.

On Thursday, September 19, I sat with my copywriter Kate and we talked about everything under the Nebraskan sun.

I shared an update on the Presidential search, and described the process of how we’re working hard to find the very best fit, and why confidentiality is an important part of that process. We also talked about the gift that is Susan Fritz, and how her role as interim President – as well as the first female President – is critical in shaping and smoothing this important transition.

We had some excellent questions about Nebraska’s hemp production (for which I’m seeking out detailed information to share) as well as how new students can navigate the challenges of adjusting to university life (community and time management are critical).

I gushed about my recent experience at the University of Nebraska women’s volleyball match against Stanford, and shared where to find more information about the wonderful variety of events that all Nebraskans can attend, not just university students, staff and faculty.

There are also some questions that I get quite often, such as:

“Do you get paid to do this?”

No. This is an unpaid position. I do get a couple football game tickets, though.

“How much time do you spend on Regent work?”

Well, given that Regents have roughly three hundred pages of information to read weekly to prep for a committee meeting, not to mention other research, meetings and engagements, I’m currently spending 40-60 hours a week on Regent work, typically.

“What’s in it for you?”

In a word: learning. I’m a huge believer in lifelong learning and as your Regent, I have the most incredible opportunities to meet new, diverse, and interesting people. I get to discover innovative programs. I’m fortunate enough to work toward Nebraska’s future, inviting the best, brightest, most creative ideas.

That sounds pretty good to me.

If you missed the first office hours livestream, check out the video in full here! If you caught it and had a question or were looking for resources, check back for that information, we’re working on getting it for you.

And please don’t be shy – send us your questions, your thoughts, and your ideas for who might make a great guest on the next office hours talk – we want to hear from you!

 

*Barbara’s thoughts as written by Kate based on weekly (fascinating) conversations.

Chaos Theory

Chaos Theory

Chaos Theory

Change is a constant. Sometimes it happens slower than we’d like, sometimes it happens faster than we can grasp, but embracing change – and some of the chaos that ensues – is part of embracing life as we continue to learn how to navigate it.

I think back to being a senior at Carleton College in 1969, and how we were going through a sort of revolution.

Back then men and women lived in separate facilities and would have an “open house” on a semi-regular basis where you could invite a male friend to the dorm for a half hour, but were required to keep the door open. There was also a curfew in place and there were big penalties for women who came in late, though the men rarely faced any such punishment. Now, we’re talking about adults, here.

Earlier in my collegiate career I had gotten involved with student government when I had the opportunity to be an assistant for the director of activities.

I was fortunate to have the chance to work with faculty and other students on all sorts of levels. So as seniors when we decided it was ludicrous that only the women were being punished for not meeting curfew, we simply refused to hand out penalties. 

Change was in the wind. And in our willpower.

In the fall of ’69 it was grudgingly decided that we could have coed dorms. Each floor held a vote on it. All but one floor voted for coed dorms. Guess who was hired to be the R.A. on the one all-female floor?

It was a year of incredible change on campus.

Change and chaos. The Vietnam War was raging and the draft lotteries began. I remember we’d be watching and listening and waiting and every time they’d run through the numbers you’d hear a scream somewhere in the building. JFK had been assassinated years before. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated the year before. Two weeks before graduation the Kent State students had been shot. 

Chaos had been a part of my life for a long time.

It’s hard, sometimes, to find your way through it. But you do. You keep your eyes open and you continue to learn, to draw strength and ideas and hope from all those around you, and from those who are different from you. 

Whether it’s change or chaos or both, in my experience it’s always best navigated with compassion. With community.

 

*Barbara’s thoughts as written by Kate based on weekly (fascinating) conversations.

Town Hall

Town Hall

The Town Hall

I always find town halls really interesting – the blend of people, concerns, questions, ideas. I’m always interested in ideas. It’s a great way for people and their elected officials to communicate directly, so when Senator Wendy DeBoer invited me to just such a forum at the American Legion Hall in Bennington, I said yes right away.

There has been a lot of rapid growth in Bennington recently.

A lot of families are moving in and that’s a wonderful thing, it just prompts some important questions on how best to support it. These are good problems to have, really.

Wendy also invited the Bennington Public School Superintendent and the Nebraska Public Service Commission District 3. She wanted to make sure there was a blend of people who aren’t often in the spotlight but who have an impact on people’s lives. It goes without saying I was honored to be there.

And what I heard from the people who came was fascinating.

There were questions about how varying access to internet across the state would affect jobs and education on all sorts of levels. I answered a few difficult questions about tuition and the University of Nebraska at large. 

To be frank, people are going to have to pay for education somehow, so we have to get creative and find ways to get that done. 

And there are other ways we can look at helping recruit, retain, and support students as well. Our Regent scholarships, for example, don’t charge recipients tuition, but they don’t help to cover the cost of room, board, and books like some other state universities do. For that reason we may be losing out on some really bright talents and minds. It could be something worth looking at.

One town hall attendee told us her friend’s son was transferring to a different University of Nebraska campus from Kearney and that a number of his classes don’t automatically transfer, which makes that process quite difficult.

We need to help students across all our systems. Parents discussed issues with efficiencies and had a number of questions about operations. And I don’t blame them. We have to start talking to each other – it would be wonderful if public schools and universities had better communication to sort through some of these problems that make life and education that much more challenging for our students and their families.

There’s no obligation, per se, but it simply makes sense.

We need ideas. We need discussion. We need to be able to come together – whether at an intimate town hall or on the highest levels across the state – and talk it out. And then make things happen.

I came away from that Bennington town hall with the hope that we can achieve that, one step at a time.

 

*Barbara’s thoughts as written by Kate based on weekly (fascinating) conversations.

 

The Big Move

The Big Move

The Big Move

I love move-in time. As the students and the faculty and University staff are all starting to get into their routines, I can’t help but think about the promise of that first move-in. There’s something about the air being fresh, the leaves starting to change color. 

All the hope, excitement, anticipation.

My son even met his future wife while moving into his dorm freshman year.

One thing that University of Nebraska faculty do (that I think is fantastic) is they help students move in the week before school starts. Not only is it a friendly gesture that adds some extra muscle, it also gives students and faculty the opportunity to mix in a more casual setting. It humanizes professors in a way that hopefully helps reduce potential anxiety or first-month jitters among new students.

There are always things we can do – some big, some little – to make life a little easier for students.

Sometimes it’s apparent what they are, sometimes it’s not as obvious, but it’s important that we always keep searching out those opportunities.

I was always excited to go back to school. The New Year for me never started on January first, but on that first day back in the class, surrounded by eager minds and all the promise in the world. I still run my life around the academic calendar, it’s very much a part of me and I’m grateful for it.

My hope is that we give our students that same promise, that same excitement. They deserve it. 

 

*Barbara’s thoughts as written by Kate based on weekly (fascinating) conversations.

 

It Was The Summer of ‘69

It Was The Summer of ‘69

It Was The Summer of ‘69

Summer jobs can be a lot of different things. They can be a rite of passage. A learning experience. A wild ride. Dreadfully dull. And just about everything in-between.

When I was an undergraduate student at Carlton (check this?) summer break started a bit later for us than other schools, so a lot of the higher-paying summer jobs were already taken. I had to get creative.

So I took the Civil Service exam. And I qualified for a job as a summer substitute mail carrier.

At that time I was also the first woman to pass the driving test for that wonderfully unwieldy mail truck. It was a manual, and basically a big metal block on wheels, but my driving instructor couldn’t find one thing that I couldn’t make that beast do. Except for fly, maybe. Never tried that one.

My purpose was to fill in for regular mail carriers that were taking a summer vacation, and so I did a lot of driving and A LOT of walking in different neighborhoods all around Omaha. I noticed that the more affluent neighborhoods were mostly driving delivery routes, while the parts of town that were considered rough or lower-income areas were primarily walking routes. Walking those routes gave me a chance to see these neighborhoods from a new perspective.

When I started walking the routes, I noticed a group of local people would sort of walk along with me, making sure I was okay, offering support of any kind.

The houses I delivered to would offer me lemonade, tea, water, and shade. It was such a marked difference from everything I’d heard about these neighborhoods.

What really struck me was how much we have in common. Those residents cared about my welfare the way my parents would. They looked out for each other, and they looked out for me.

I couldn’t help thinking: if only we took the time to know each other better.

That job carrying mail in the summer of 1969 laid the groundwork for a big shift for me to experiential learning, where you can expand on what you learn in books, where you can get directly involved and learn from experience where that gap between the printed page and the real world lies. And then bridge it. I think about that a lot.

Recently, while discussing tuition hikes and summer jobs, a Student Regent said, “I think of this [tuition increase] in terms of the number of days I would have to work to make up the difference… I would feel better knowing the Regents would spend that same amount of time trying to figure out how to get our tuition down.”

Students today have the highest tuition and debt rates ever. They have to work more and more just to get by. Something’s wrong with this picture. Maybe it’s time we think more about what it means to walk their route and what we can do to support them. 

 

*Barbara’s thoughts as written by Kate based on weekly (fascinating) conversations.