Select Page
New Year, New Heights

New Year, New Heights

by | Dec 23, 2019 | Regent Firsts, School Uniqueness, Uncategorized

New Year, New Heights

It’s time. Our university is ready to move into the higher echelons of public universities. Our impact reaches beyond our state into the whole country and the world.  

We have the honor and privilege of being on the front lines of many exciting advances. We are being acknowledged as a leader in treating HIV, ebola, and other deadly infectious diseases.

The Innovative Campus at UNL is developing a system that will allow general surgeons in small hospitals across Nebraska to do specialty surgeries that would otherwise require a long trip to a larger medical center. This increased access to life-changing surgeries has a ripple effect in rural communities. 

At the same time we are seeking answers to Parkinson’s, cancer, and antibiotic resistant viruses – one of the greatest modern threats to humanity. 

This research touches all our lives, and the lives of those oceans away.

On the agricultural front we are doing dynamic research that offers new and more efficient ways to manage crops and animals. These are just some of the ways our university is working to change the world.

All of this requires a leader that can understand, support, manage, fundraise for, and unite all the campuses of the university.

I believe in Ted Carter’s ability to be that leader, but I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the presence and work of our Interim President Susan Fritz. She stepped up to keep the university moving and preparing for a new leader. She knew that an inside candidate (someone working in NU) often discourages candidates to apply and so she took the interim position understanding she would not be considered. 

She took this job and made it her own.

A leader in her own right, she initiated the first tailgate party for the women’s volleyball team. She has supported the work of building databases of longitudinal data so we’re planning from a place of meaningful statistical analysis. She is great at bringing different constituencies together to enrich our work.  

Susan also created the Big Ideas project to challenge faculties on all of our campuses to think about big ideas that would move their research and teaching to new levels of excellence. The faculty on all campuses have responded with great enthusiasm and excitement. Leadership comes in all shapes and sizes, all genders, cultures and backgrounds.

Susan has been amazing and will be missed. It is my hope that we can continue to involve her as the university moves into the Ted Carter era.

The Board of Regents is committed to working with Ted to ensure he has the resources to accomplish our most ambitious goals. We are excited about the possibilities ahead and cannot wait to get to it.

 

 

 

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

 

about    blog     contact

Investing in the Future

Investing in the Future

by | Dec 20, 2019 | School Uniqueness

Investing in the Future

It has been quite a whirlwind since we voted to make Ted Carter our priority candidate. In our earliest listening sessions we kept hearing how much everyone wanted a strong leader for our university.

Opportunities to listen to him in public forums have solidified my belief that we made the right choice.  

Even so, there’s one big thing I think we should talk about. One thing I’ve received emails about both in support and voicing concerns. A lot of people are talking about the contract we are negotiating with Ted Carter. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of money. I remember thinking the same thing when Scott Frost and other coaches were hired for millions of dollars.

As was explained to me at the time of those hires, the market required these big dollars to sign Scott because of the belief that he could return the Huskers to their previous glory. Our hire of Ted Carter comes from this same belief that we can be an outstanding public university.

It comes from belief in our university.  

We were fortunate to have Hank Bounds willing to work at a lower salary but times and goals have changed. The national consulting firm that we hired advised us about the level of compensation that would be needed to bring a leader of this stature to Nebraska.

Maybe it would be helpful to be looking at this as an investment, rather than a payment. To whom great things are given, from whom great things are expected. We are seeking large national grants from the US government and national foundations and we need a leader that is respected and has the proven ability to work at a national level. Ted Carter can do this. His fundraising potential is immeasurable and he is up to the task.  

For me the bottom line is this: if we are willing to pay a football coach $5 million what does it say about us that we would not do the same for the person responsible for the university as a whole?

We may not like what the market requires but we need to be realistic about what is required to become the incredible university we know we can be. 

Now the big task ahead is to help our new president and his wife Lynda learn as much as possible about the university, Nebraskans, and the good life we have. So, what are your ideas for helping our new leader settle into this important work?

 

 

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

 

about    blog     contact

Regent vs. Regent: Office Hours Round 2

Regent vs. Regent: Office Hours Round 2

by | Dec 12, 2019 | Regent Firsts, School Uniqueness

Regent vs. Regent: Office Hours Round 2

On December 3rd I had the pleasure of sitting down with UNO Student Regent Aya Yousuf for a candid conversation during my second-ever Office Hours livestream. And wow, was it enlightening.

Even though we can both claim the title of Regent at University of Nebraska – her as a student, myself as, well, not a student – we’ve had very different paths to this point. For one thing, Aya’s remarkable story starts in Iraq.

During our Office Hours session Aya shared her story of coming to the United States with her family when she was just a child and how she came to be a Student Regent at UNO. We also talked a lot about the differences and similarities between the Regent and Student Regent systems and came to the conclusion that time management is probably one of the biggest challenges for both of us.

We also had a frank discussion about the university’s new presidential candidate Ted Carter including our first impressions, professional opinions, and what we’ve heard from colleagues and constituents in terms of how they’re feeling.

A couple of great questions came in, one in particular focusing on social work and mental health disparities in Omaha in connection to recidivism, which prompted a broader conversation about mental health and education in general.

There was a lot of ground we covered in our session, I highly encourage you to take some time, have a listen, and let us know what you think.

To watch it, click here.

Thanks again to all who tuned in for the livestream, check out the link above if you’d like to dive into the discussion, and I’ll see you on the next round of Office Hours – seriously, keep those questions coming!

I wish you all many curious conversations.

 

 

 

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

 

about    blog     contact

The Constant of Change

The Constant of Change

by | Dec 3, 2019 | Uncategorized

The Constant of Change

I’ve talked a lot about the direct impact of the University of Nebraska presidential search as well as my own impressions. Today I’d like to take a bit of a side road. Something that has been on my mind that relates to the search in a sort of roundabout way but isn’t about the process itself. What I’d like to talk about is change.

In the process of meeting a lot of really outstanding candidates for the university’s next president, there has been one major recurring theme.

Higher education is being forced to change in many different ways.

Now don’t get me wrong, that’s not inherently bad. In fact I see change as an inevitable (it really is the only constant in the universe) but also as an opportunity to learn from where we’ve been and conscientiously, intentionally shape where we’re going.

Speaking with these outstanding higher education candidates reinforced how we have to make the next big step up as a university and look at how the structures serve students and how they don’t. 

Let’s face the changes that are coming head-on. For example, I recall hearing about a company that desperately needed engineers on the west coast and how the regional engineers they were getting straight out of school were not trained in what they needed to be trained in. Engineering, like so many other tech-related fields, was developing faster than the syllabus. So one of the local schools made a decision to adapt.

They had a couple people from the engineering field sit down with the university and analyze the engineering curriculum.

Then, they adapted those changes to meet the urgent growing need for qualified engineers. Funny how something as simple as a conversation can feel so revolutionary at times. I often think about the 13,000 jobs in the greater Omaha area that aren’t being filled, and how there are lots of institutions that can help fill them, but we need to work in sync with each other.

Everything from IT to welding to med center technology changes so quickly that to keep up and really serve students and the broader community we need to be looking forward, not in the rearview mirror.

When money is hard to get it’s tempting to keep doing what you’re doing but it’s not okay now and as a state we can’t afford to be doing that if we want a really solid future.

We have an opportunity to create centers of excellence that would fill some of the gaps and yield serious results for students and state. And as I listened to the brilliant presidential candidates we had the good fortune of interviewing, amidst the fascinating perspectives and stimulating ideas, I felt like I needed to speak up.

 

 

 

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

 

about    blog     contact