Colleagues:

Now it’s official. UNL is a member of the Big Ten Conference.

The Big Ten represents much more than a new group of teams with which we will compete; this new relationship, which includes our membership in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, is an enormous leap forward for UNL academics. The Big Ten is a historically prestigious and stable academic community of scholars and students, highly regarded in academic circles.

It may be surprising how an athletic conference helps fashion the way people perceive a university and a state, as well as how a university and a state perceives itself. To prospective faculty, students and businesses, and when we look in the mirror, we are a Big Ten university in a Big Ten state. Today, we celebrate this fact and the opportunities that come with it.

Tomorrow, it remains up to us to take full advantage of these new opportunities.

• Chancellor Harvey Perlman