Recent achievements for the campus community were earned by Brooke Bode, Tristan Curd, Seth Daup, Kayla Enfield, Lauren Gatti, Amanda Gonzales, Jason Hawkins, Samuel Ingledue, Lauren Ostrowski, Tan Phan, Bridget Peterkin, Julie Uribe, Joselyn Vacek, Bryan Wang and four online graduate programs.

Honors

• Three Husker entrepreneur teams were awarded monetary prizes this week in the first-ever Nebraska Governor’s New Venture Competition. The competition was open to any student enrolled in college. Nineteen teams submitted proposals and later pitched their ideas virtually to a panel of judges. First place and $20,000 went to Samuel Ingledue and Tan Phan for their company Privy AI. Second place and $15,000 went to Brooke Bode and Seth Daup for their company, Cattle Kettle, for stock tank management. Third place and $10,000 went to Bridget Peterkin and Tristan Curd for Dyslexio, a dyslexia accessibility tool.

• A Husker team placed third in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Invent2Prevent competition. The annual contest, open to college students throughout the United States, challenges participants to develop programs that prevent targeted violence and terrorism in their local communities. The Nebraska team — Kayla Enfield, Lauren Ostrowski and Joselyn Vacek, along with Bryan Wang, associate professor of advertising and public relations — was named as a finalist, was invited to present their campaign on Jan. 24 in Washington, D.C., where they were awarded third place.

• The Research and Communication in Accounting class was recently recognized as an innovation in business education by the MidAmerican Business Deans Association. Taught by Amanda Gonzales, associate professor of practice in accountancy, and Julie Uribe, an Emmy-winning lecturer in the university’s Johnny Carson School of Theater and Film, the course empowers future accountants to communicate effectively in the workplace. Gonzales focuses on strengthening students’ research and written communication skills while Uribe uses her improv training to expand verbal communication. Read more about the class and the award here.

• Jason Hawkins, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, was awarded the 2021 the Eric Pas Prize at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, held Jan. 7-11 in Washington, D.C. The prize is considered one of the most prestigious awards in the travel behavior field for a Ph.D. student. One winner is selected from myriad international submissions. Hawkins received the award for his doctoral dissertation, “Modeling Spatial Location Choice and Transition for a Changing Urban Landscape,” which he presented while a graduate student at the University of Toronto in 2021.

• The university recently earned six rankings in the U.S. News and World Report’s Best Online Programs. The master’s in engineering online program was No. 5 for engineering programs, and No. 4 in best programs for veterans. The online master’s in business (excluding MBAs) was ranked No. 25. The online MBA program was ranked No. 29 overall, and No. 24 in best online MBA programs for veterans. The master’s in education was ranked No. 58. More information about the rankings can be found here.

Publications

• Lauren Gatti, associate professor in teaching, learning and teacher education, co-authored a new book, “The New Political Economy of Teacher Education: The Enterprise Narrative and the Shadow State,” with Viv Ellis of Monash University, and Warwick Mansell, an independent scholar and journalist. It was published with Bristol University Press. Adopting a political economy perspective, the text provides a comparative analysis of three contrasting welfare state models — the United States, England, and Norway — following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Arguing that a new political economy of teacher education began to emerge in the decade following the crisis, the authors explore key concepts in education privatization and examine the increasingly important role of shadow state enterprises in some jurisdictions.