As I’ve been pondering my intentions for this year I was struck again about how much curiosity can play a part in planning and practice. Okay, I know that’s a really broad statement, but curiosity really can lead us in very definitive directions. Consider what we’ve achieved as a species by saying to ourselves “how can we do this better” or “I wonder what it would be like to _____” or “what’s that over there?”

Case in point, I was driving by a small airport on Amelia Island recently.

Now, Amelia Island is pretty small – eleven thousand people in total, and this tiny airport had just been built. That it was new wasn’t what caught my attention, but the fact that the terminal is in the shape of a plane!

You drive up and it looks like a giant plane sitting by a field.

I was curious about it and I thought it would be fun to go inside. So I drove into parking lot. As I was walking up to the door of the tiny little place – which is basically a single room the size of a small coffee shop – I noticed a small sign by the front that said “Knitting Group Meeting: 2nd floor”

When I asked the lady behind the desk (yes, there was just one lady) about this, she confirmed there was in fact a knitting group meeting at the airport and she said that other days other groups like to use that space.

What I love most about this here is this town commission and airport authority who had built a multi-purpose gathering place for anyone in the area. It went beyond air services. That’s thinking outside the box (or the terminal).

I loved it because it built community.

This kind of creative openness allows for solutions that reflect rewarding partnerships and builds support for more. We could definitely take a cue from that.

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

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.

The 4th of July was all about the fireworks for me growing up.  

I remember all the colors, the screeches and pops of the smaller fireworks, the thud and boom of the bigger ones, their light trailing across the sky before fading into faint smoke trails. It was like big, beautiful, collective dream. It brought us all together – friends and family and strangers alike – under one sky, in awe. I loved it.

When my husband Wally and I were raising our young children, we didn’t have a lot of birth family around, so there weren’t any big family gatherings for us on the 4th. However when we moved to Omaha in 1973 we were able to find families with whom we became friends. Our children were similar ages, we got along really well, and we were all in major kid/young family life stages. I’m pretty sure most parents out there know the exquisite kind of chaos I’m talking about.  

Over the years, this became our family.

And our extended family. The family we chose, that we made. We took turns hosting family cookouts, potluck barbecues, and Fourth of July celebrations. The holiday took on a new but familiar cadence: kids with sparklers, lively conversations, grilling on the BBQ, and watching fireworks together.

One of my favorite July 4ths came when I traveled to Chicago with our oldest daughter, Katie. She and her friend were competing for a national award from a high school organization, Future Business Leaders of America. We were staying in a hotel across from a park on Lake Michigan and from our balcony that evening we heard the Chicago Symphony was playing the 1812 Overture while the fireworks danced over the lake. It was spectacular.

As I thought about the reason we were there – an incredible educational opportunity for my daughter – I felt incredibly proud and overwhelmed by how blessed I was to be in this country.

Today, there’s much to think about. I think about the risk the writers of the Declaration of Independence accepted. I think about how immense their dream was and how amazing their ability to inspire the whole country to risk it all.

I hope we understand how important it is that we educate all our citizens to be an active part of a country that started as a beautiful and wild dream. A country that is built on the principles of justice, equality, and freedom for all. As I watch the fireworks tonight, in that brief period of collective awe, I will be thinking about how we can all walk a path together that lives up to the declaration written on that July 4^th long ago. 

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

*Photo Cred: Jim DeVleeschouwer, Jr