Recent accomplishments for the university community were earned by faculty members Sue Burzynski Bullard, Sang Lee and Jessica Shoemaker. Other awards include the student affairs case study team from educational administration winning first place for a case study presented at a regional conference.

Faculty/Staff

Sue Burzynski Bullard, journalism, has been named to the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications task force. The eight-member task force is working on bridging the gap in such a way that benefits the industry and academia. Bullard said one idea she has for the task force is to summarize research immediately after it is presented at a conference and publish it on websites already accessed by media professionals instead of waiting for it to make its way through the lengthy peer review process for academic journals. For more information on the AEJMC, click here.

Sang Lee, emeritus in the College of Business Administration, received the Presidents Medal for his contribution to Albanian higher education during the nation-building period after the end of the communist system. Albanian President Bujar Nishani presented the citation and medal to Lee in a ceremony at the President’s Palace on Oct. 27. The Albanian parliament speaker also recognized Lee when he was invited to the chamber on Oct. 28. Lee served as the director of the USAID project “Management Training and Market Economics Education for Albania” for 12 years. He led a team of American and global scholars and entrepreneurs to train more than 5,000 government leaders, public enterprise managers and university faculty in Albania. The project also established the first ever Master of Business Administration and Master of Public Administration degree programs at the University of Tirana. In addition, Business Assistance Centers were developed at the four main universities in the country to train the trainers of modern management principles, entrepreneurship, small business and technology management.

In the most recent edition of Great Plains Research, Jessica Shoemaker, law, was announced as one of 10 scholars invited to serve a three-year term on the journal’s inaugural editorial board. Great Plains Research is a peer-reviewed journal that began 25 years ago. For more information about the publication, click here.

Students

Stephanie Benes, a second-year master’s degree student in the student affairs program, has been selected for the NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education Region IV-West Graduate Student Rising Star Award. As part of her program in the Department of Educational Administration, Benes is a graduate assistant with the Nebraska Unions where she is responsible for overseeing the operations of the welcome desk. The Rising Star Award is awarded to a student in each state in NASPA Region IV-West. Nominees must be actively involved with the division of student affairs at their institution and have intentions of pursuing a professional career in student affairs. For more information, click here.

Marketing students from the College of Business Administration triumphed at the inaugural Yahoo Advertising Knock-Out Challenge held at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Senior marketing and advertising majors Megan Nelson and Hannah Paxton collaborated with University of Nebraska at Omaha students Joe Franco and Elizabeth Stevens to create the winning team. The challenge for teams included identifying a target audience and developing a marketing plan to get more people playing Yahoo Fantasy Football. For more information, click here.

Departments/Colleges/Units

The student affairs case study team from the Department of Educational Administration won first place for their case study “Supervision, Accountability and Confidentiality” presented during the NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education regional conference. They were presented with a case study and given 21 hours to answer questions, discuss how it applies to current literature and NASPA Competencies, and prepare a case study presentation before three judges from different universities. This year’s case study was even more competitive because the competition was part of a joint conference of regions IV-W and IV-E held Nov. 15 to 17 in St. Louis. Team members included Stephanie Blair, Ashley Hurt, Linh Phu and Kassi Woods. For more information, click here.

The Holland Computing Center is being recognized for its key role in a research project that is considered one of the biggest science discoveries of 2016. HCC received two HPCwire Top Supercomputing Achievement awards at the 2016 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis in Salt Lake City, Utah. The awards were received in collaboration with Open Science Grid and other collaborators for the use of high throughput distributed computing to verify the existence of gravitational waves. HCC and OSG shared Readers’ Choice and Editors’ Choice awards in HPCwire’s online publication with SDSC, XSEDE and TACC—all heavy hitters in the computational science field. For more information, click here.

The University of Nebraska Rodeo Association recently celebrated its 2015-2016 season at an awards ceremony held in Lincoln. Honored members include Reed Kraeger for his reserve regional championship in steer wrestling, and team ropers Logan Dibbern and Whitley McBride for their regional championship. Dibbern was also recognized as a Scholar American, along with Lindsay Adamson and Wade Overturf. The Scholar American is college rodeo’s equivalent of an Academic All-American. For more information about the Rodeo Association, click here.

This column is a regular Friday feature of Nebraska Today. Faculty, staff and students can submit their achievements to be considered for this column via email to achievements@unl.edu. For more information, call 402-472-8515.