UNO Magazine | UNO's Global Impact Summer 2010
From a small, comfortable office in UNO’s College of Information Science and Technology, Dr. Yong Shi carries out world-class research.
Studies cover things like data mining and data warehousing, information overload, optimal system designs, multiple criteria decision making, decision support systems and telecommunication management. A bit arcane-sounding, perhaps, but areas for which businesses, governments and the military all have a use.
In general, Shi focuses on how to better use, search through and store information — often in huge amounts.
Now his work is receiving international acclaim.
First came the Georg Cantor award from the International Society of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM.) The society’s highest recognition, the award honors “a researcher who, over his distinguished career, has personified the spirit of independent inquiry … .”
An even more prestigious award followed in November — the Fudan Prize, often considered China’s version of the Nobel Prize.
Shi shared the award with two other professors in China for their contributions to management science. He traveled to Beijing last November for the ceremony at the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The three shared a monetary prize of 1 million Chinese yuan (about $147,000).
“The most important thing to me is the recognition of my work,” says Shi, who came to UNO in 1991 and joined the IS&T faculty in 1996.
Shi is not just a man of science and technology. He’s also a networker who understands the importance of staying connected to people. His office includes a class photo from China’s Dalian University of Science and Technology. In 1983, Shi was part of a first wave of Chinese students receiving a new kind of degree in the People’s Republic — an MBA.
He keeps in touch with many of his classmates and the faculty members who taught them nearly 30 years ago. Four of those former MBA students went on to become governors of Chinese provinces.
He’s also stayed connected to the people he’s learned with, taught with and researched with here and abroad. Shi earned his doctorate in management science from the University of Kansas in 1991.
Those connections benefit UNO.
“This guy is dynamic in the pursuit of exchanges between UNO and China,” says Tom Gouttierre, dean of UNO International Studies. “He’s just great with suggestions and relationships to share.”
Shi has been instrumental in getting Chinese students interested in UNO, particularly from his hometown of Chengdu. He describes that kind of higher education ambassadorial work as “just my side job.” Connections he once made with phone calls and faxes are quicker and easier now thanks to the Internet and e-mail. Computing power, which makes his research work possible, also has shrunk the world.
Five years ago and earlier, it was easier to recruit international faculty and students to the United States, where they often would stay permanently. Just like Shi.
If he were a 30-year-old now, he says, he likely would take his degrees and return to China. The research, the relationships between scholars, and the funding for work all have been internationalized. Major corporations — Intel, Citigroup, AMD, etc. —have a presence in China’s major cities.
From Shi’s point of view, international exchanges — a strength at UNO — are more important than ever.
“It’s a much better route that makes the most sense for us today,” Shi says.
– Tim Kaldahl
Ten UNO students this summer are digging into the New Testament without even having to open a Bible.
UNO students, along with more than 100 other students and numerous faculty from around the world, are in Israel with the Consortium of the Bethsaida Excavations Project (CBEP), headquartered at UNO and composed of 20 universities worldwide.
Bethsaida, situated on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, was founded in the 10th century BCE as the capital city of the Biblical kingdom of Geshur. It is one of the most frequently mentioned towns in the New Testament.
Bethsaida was identified in 1838 but wasn’t excavated until beginning in 1987. UNO faculty and students have participated in digs for more than 20 years.
The Bethsaida excavation is an interactive education project in which students learn the skills of biblical archaeology.
“The work is divided into stations,” says Rami Arav, director of CBEP at UNO. “Students rotate positions within the stations and learn skills such as land surveying, mapping, log keeping, elevation, technical drawing, stratigraphical excavation and analysis of finds and pottery.”
Recently, an extremely rare piece of artwork was discovered at the site. According to Arav, this style was first discovered on the western slope of the Acropolis at Athens (now called the Western West Slope). It is a unique white and red decoration on a glazed pottery bowl. The decoration depicts white lilies and red ivy leaves on a black background.
This year, CBEP for the first time is offering a course called “Photography and Archaeology” with the UNO School of Communication.
“The course will train students in photographing archaeological sites and objects,” Arav says. “This course is good also for training photographers working for CSI who take photographs for documentation.”
CBEP this summer expands to include universities from Australia and New Zealand. Two faculty members — Greg Jenks from Charles Strut University in Australia and Jacqui Lloyd from Laidlaw College in New Zealand — will accompany students to the dig. Student and faculty representatives from several other U.S. and international colleges and universities also are attending the three dig sessions, which began in May and continue through June.
“Each and every expedition to Bethsaida is extremely costly,” Arav says. “We appreciate any donation to CBEP. This makes this work possible.”
Donations are accepted and dig updates provided at www.unomaha.edu/bethsaida
– Becky Bohan Brown
UNO students participating in Global IT Project Management (GlobITpro), a unique study abroad experience, are gaining a new world perspective with support from a $194,000 ATLANTIS Mobility Grant.
The College of Information Science and Technology (IS&T) is one of only 25 U.S. schools to garner such funding, which comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) program.
The four-year grant provides students with an opportunity to pay local tuition and receive a stipend for living expenses while studying abroad at two UNO sibling universities — the Management Center Innsbruck (Austria) and the Braunschweig University of Technology (Germany).
During the course of the grant, 48 students are expected to take part in the exchange, including representatives from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, the fourth partner in the GlobITpro program. Select faculty will join in the collaboration with shorter visits to host lectures and workshops.
UNO will have four program participants this summer, UW-Eau Claire two. The students will split their time between Austria and Germany, though future exchanges will allow participants to choose which campus they attend for the duration.
In addition to their studies, students will visit several foreign corporations, including major world players like Volkswagen and SAP AG, a multinational software development and consulting firm.
“We hope the program positively influences the way students look at the world,” says Deepak Khazanchi, principal grant investigator and associate dean for academic affairs in IS&T. “It is an excellent opportunity to receive a better understanding of other cultures and technology, as well as enhance the reputation of UNO.”
Additional grant details are available at www.GlobITPro.org.
– Beverly A. Newsam
UNO’s Office of Latino and Latin American Studies staged its fourth edition of Cumbre (“summit” in Spanish) this past May, focusing once more on significant international issues with world-class presenters.
“By now, so many people know us,” says OLLAS Director Lourdes Gouveia. “They aren’t surprised by what we put together, but they are continually impressed.”
OLLAS faculty and staff who sponsored and created “Cumbre 2010: The Fourth Latino/Latin American Summit of the Great Plains” see what they do as providing a unique space for academics, community organizations, elected officials, students and the public at large to meet and discuss ideas at the forefront of world and local issues. The major theme for this Cumbre centered on human mobility and the promise of development and political engagement.
An estimated 200 million people now live outside their country of origin, pushed from their homes by politics, economics and a variety of other issues.
Previous Cumbres addressed immigration policy and transnationalism, and integration. Hundreds of participants attend each Cumbre. Presenters this year included a director of immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the former director of the Pew Hispanic Center.
Though the conferences are based in an office with a Latin American focus, Cumbre presenters understand the necessity of looking at comparative realities. An immigration issue in South Asia can be seen and understood by someone facing similar issues in Europe or Africa or the Americas, Gouviea says. Presenters this year came from and addressed issues concerning South Africa, the Philippines, India and elsewhere.
“We’ve been especially good at capitalizing on our network of colleagues and friends,” Gouveia says. UNO’s faculty have a deep and diverse international experience to drawn on. How OLLAS operates and puts together Cumbre makes it unique not only in the University of Nebraska system, but also the nation.
“I always like to say we address issues ‘from the grassroots to the grass tops,’” Gouveia says. “So many of our colleagues look forward to Cumbre. We know it makes a difference.”
As a graduate student, Art Diamond learned an easy and relatively effective way of taking notes and tackling cumbersome research — documenting his findings on four-by-six-inch note cards.
Diamond would jot down important information and their accompanying sources to use on his thesis and other projects.
When the time came to return to his notes, it was as easy as flipping through the healthy stack of detailed, color-coded note cards.
Diamond still uses this method today, now as a UNO economics professor. His media, however, replaces note cards with the World Wide Web.
Since 2005 Diamond has maintained a blog focused on economics. It’s part-classroom tool, part-public bulletin board for stories, facts and other content Diamond finds while conducting research and staying atop current events.
“The blog provides the same benefits of those notecards, with quotes and examples, but in a high-tech way,” Diamond says. “It’s definitely an aid to my research and teaching.”
And his students aren’t the only ones visiting the Web site. The Kauffman Foundation recently recognized Diamond as one of “the country’s most prolific and influential economics bloggers.”
Diamond is a self-taught blogger who uses an open-source platform for his blog, available at www.artdiamondblog.com. He enrolled in a few courses on Web page creation through the Nebraska Business Development Center, a branch of UNO’s College of Business Administration.
News articles constitute many of Diamond’s frequent blog postings, but he also keeps his eyes open for relevant videos on the Web that supplement his undergraduate and graduate teaching. Many entries also feature brief or lengthy commentary from Diamond about the topic at hand.
“Blogging helps me find and highlight recorded evidence (on today’s economic issues) that are made accessible to everyone,” Diamond says.
Although Diamond hails from a background deep in academics, he admits that traditional forms of sharing information — specifically, vetted and peer-reviewed journal articles — have their issues.
“There are times when articles can be made worse when reviewed by pre-certified experts,” he says. “And then there’s the delay of publishing these articles. Blogs most certainly have a role in today’s communication age.”
– Wendy Townley
What Dean Louis Pol calls “The Carl and Joyce Mammel Halo Effect” has yielded further support for UNO’s College of Business Administration.
Omaha resident and UNO supporter Virginia Schmid made a $1 million gift to the University of Nebraska Foundation for the college’s new home, Mammel Hall, opening this fall near the University of Nebraska Peter Kiewit Institute at 67th and Pine Streets. The dedication ceremony will be held Oct. 15.
Schmid, who is close friends with the Mammels, learned of their support for the new facility and also wanted to help. Schmid’s donation will support Mammel Hall’s state-of-the- art auditorium.
The auditorium will comfortably seat nearly 200 students. Professors will utilize the space’s technology features when teaching courses.
The auditorium also will allow CBA to expand its guest lecture series, including panelists whose research and expertise is focused on innovation, entrepreneurship and investment management.
Pol envisions that the space also will be used for outreach events focused on UNO alumni and faculty research, as well as by local organizations such as the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce.
UNO colleges and departments also could jointly host events at the new auditorium, Pol says.
“We greatly appreciate Virginia Schmid’s generosity and support of our building project,” Pol says. “The auditorium will be an important gathering place in our new home, bringing together students, faculty and the community in a beautiful, modern setting.”
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