He tells the story of a boy in pain.
His right leg hurt. A disease called linear scleroderma was slowly taking it over — “suffocating it,” he says, stunting it, starting the year he was 4. While the boy’s body grew, that leg did not. He walked with a weird gait.
The boy’s heart hurt, too, because some days at school his pain was so bad that he couldn’t go out at recess to play. Some nights, his mom would stay up with him, rubbing his back as he cried.
Why is this happening to me? I don’t deserve this. I’m just a little kid.
But the people surrounding him took away some of the pain.
His friends stayed and played with him inside at recess time as he sat with an icepack on that leg. His teachers and coaches and the whole community of his hometown, Aurora, Nebraska, treated him like any other kid. So did his parents and two big brothers, who gave him lots of love but never any extra stokes when competed on the golf course. His brothers never took it easy on him when they wrestled with him in the house (before their mom told them all to stop).
Most everyone in his world, he says, saw that he was able, not dis-abled.
And that made him see it, too.
And everyone is the reason, Luke Grossnicklaus says, that he stands before young people today, whenever asked, and tells the boy’s story — his own story — because he knows it might help them overcome their pain, too.
Luke, who was UNK’s 2016 homecoming king, is studying business education. He would love to become a high school principal somewhere in Nebraska one day, maybe a coach. He was recently president of his fraternity.
Whenever asked, he tells his story to schoolkids.
He tells them that if they’re from broken homes or feel broken inside, that they can’t let their situation define their future.
He tells them they can get out of their own pain by helping other people in pain to cope.
He tells them there’s hope, even on the darkest day.
He tells then about his darkest day, which was when he was 12, and the doctors said they had to amputate that leg.
“Imagine being a kid who loves sports being told that,” he says.
He tells them that a kid with an amputated leg can be a college athlete and how he played on the UNK golf team his first two years, walking on as a freshman and then earning a scholarship his sophomore year.
One day, after speaking at a high school, a student approached Luke. Her parents had divorced and she hated one of them, she told him, for not being there for her. She thought her life was only going to get worse. She thanked him for his message.
“It felt good to help her,” Luke says. “It feels good to be that mediator between teachers and students and to encourage students with — ‘Hey, I’ve been here before. I know what it’s like. It may not be the same situation, but, hey, you’re not the only one going through it.’”
Luke tells his story because he’s able to. ABLE to. He emphasized that word whenever he tells his story. Not DIS-abled.
“That’s a big part of my message, why I’m so passionate, because I had a lot of people who helped me,” says Luke, who graduated this spring from the University of Nebraska at Kearney. “My whole message is that I wouldn’t be where I am today without the people surrounding me at my toughest and my darkest moments. That’s where we get stuck — when we don’t have the people around us.
“We need to be the people who are willing to help others in need.”
Support for students like Luke was one of UNK’s priorities in the University of Nebraska Foundation’s recent Our Students, Our Future fundraising initiative, which ended Dec. 31, 2017.
Luke says he sees a lot of young people like him who are already finding ways to give back. Millennials, who have grown up digitally connected to the world, he says, tend to care about the future and feel able to make the world better place.
A few examples of other UNK students and why they give back:
Miguel Baeza Aguilera
Recent graduate, degree in general studies
Hometown: Grand Island, Nebraska
Why do you give back?: My parents educated my siblings and me that it is always better to give than to receive. Impacting lives and seeing someone smile is the best feeling in the world. I also give back because I wouldn’t be where I am today everyone who took the time to support me throughout my life. You have to remember that someone is always looking up to you as their role model, so why not keep the chain reaction of giving back going.
Jaime McCann
Graduate student in the MBA program
Hometown: Kearney, Nebraska
How/why do millennials give back to the world?: After traveling to South America, I gained a new perspective on what it means to live in “poverty.” I believe that other millennials who have traveled abroad will attest to the same sentiment — once you are exposed to the lifestyles that those across the globe live in, you become so much more thankful for what we have here. This, in turn, provides inspiration to give back to others.
Emma Neil
Senior, 7-12 social science education major with endorsement in ESL (English as a Second Language) and minor in political science
Hometown: Papillion, Nebraska
How do you give back to the world?: I enjoy going on mission trips to different parts of the world and learning about other people’s cultures and countries. I know I was born with so many things that others could only imagine. For example, I am incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to receive a higher level education. I think it is important to meet others and learn about their lives and how they are different, yet so similar to my own.
Clark Pohlmeier
Senior, business administration major
Hometown: Grand Island, Nebraska
Why do you give back?: Because it makes an impact in people’s lives. If I can spend a few hours positively impacting someone’s life, it’s worth it. Giving back strengths the communities. It’s also an avenue to meet other people and share experiences.
Whether you are a longtime supporter or a new graduate, you can impact students immediately through the UNK Fund. Every dollar invested in the UNK Fund provides scholarships, supports talented faculty, enhances your college’s priorities, and much more. And it all happens because of you.
If you would like to help, please contact the University of Nebraska Foundation at 800-432-3216 or send us a message.
Many generations of Kearney-area children and university students preparing to be early childhood teachers are at the heart of plans for a new facility at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
UNK will name its new 20,000-square-foot Early Childhood Education Center in honor of Dr. LaVonne Plambeck of Omaha, who made a leadership gift toward its construction and established permanently endowed funds to forever support its related academic programs. The board of regents will be asked to approve the naming at its June 28 meeting.
“This will be the premier early childhood education center in the Midwest, and we are so grateful to Dr. Plambeck for her leadership in this area,” said Dean of the College of Education Sheryl Feinstein.
The new center is the first academic footprint on UNK’s developing University Village and will become a model for exemplary early childhood education, early childhood educator preparation, and research.
Programs to involve campuswide, statewide collaborations
In addition to training undergraduate and graduate students and integrating coursework from all across all three of UNK’s academic colleges and University of Nebraska Medical Center, the new center will serve Kearney-area children and families with developmentally appropriate early education for a diverse population.
Undergraduate and graduate experiential learning will occur in the building in the forms of practicums, internships, observations and diagnostic testing. For example, working with a curriculum designed for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, teaching early literacy strategies, and diagnostic testing in the areas of speech, language skills and cognitive development. The building will facilitate learning and improve undergraduate and graduate students’ skills working with young children including relationship-building, classroom management and age-appropriate expectations.
“This education center will improve service to area children and enhance educational experiences for UNK students and faculty. That improves our community,” said Feinstein. “The project will grow our early education program to increase the quality of services provided and the number of young children enrolled. Early education programs, majors and minors across campus will benefit from state-of-the-art learning environments. This larger facility will also enable UNK and ECEC to increase collaborations that involve academics, research, and outreach to the community, and state and national organizations.”
Feinstein said the facility will also advance and create new partnerships at the community, state and national levels.
“With the Buffett Institute, we can increase the early childhood workforce in Nebraska while developing a high-quality component to the workforce; increase our partnership with Buffalo County community partners in curriculum and mental health collaborations; work on early literacy programs and research with the Nebraska Library Commission and the Nebraska School Librarians Association; and work with the National Coalition for Campus Children’s Centers and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research on resources supporting and educating student parents.”
New center to educate more, serve as a home to research-based learning
The facility replaces the Child Development Center in the existing 1950-era Otto Olsen building, which cares for and educates 60 children – with an ongoing waiting list of 75 from infants to age 6. The capacity for the new LaVonne Kopecky Plambeck Early Childhood Education Center will be 176.
When completed in fall 2019 the center will feature three research-based philosophies of Early Childhood Education: Eclectic (Waldorf, Reggio and others), Montessori, and Project Based. One classroom will be devoted to Project Based Early Childhood Education, two classrooms to Montessori, and eight classrooms to Eclectic.
The Plambeck gift brings the total project cost to $7.8 million and 19,900 square feet that will include two dedicated Montessori education classrooms.
The naming recognizes a leadership gift to the University of Nebraska Foundation by Plambeck, for her undisclosed gift for construction, endowing a Montessori education professorship and establishing endowed excellence funds for early childhood programs.
“Dr. Plambeck’s generosity and vision will make a profound difference in the lives of children and in the preparation of highly qualified early-childhood educators for generations to come,” UNK Chancellor Doug Kristensen.
The Plambeck gift includes an endowed professorship in Montessori education, which will enable UNK to increase its offerings in Montessori education by hiring a professor of excellence in Montessori. It also includes an endowed excellence fund for early childhood programs. These funds will help UNK deliver outreach services to early childhood providers in Nebraska with a focus on rural communities through workshops, professional development, and in-service through on-site and online modes.
Plambeck ‘fierce advocate’ for early childhood education
Kristensen said LaVonne Kopecky Plambeck of Omaha has been a “fierce advocate” for early childhood education for nearly 50 years. Described as an educational legend and visionary, Plambeck has understood and invested in high-quality experiences for babies and young children decades before recent research confirmed her actions.
Inspired by the Montessori teaching method, based on a philosophy that puts much of the responsibility and freedom for learning within a child’s control, she opened Omaha’s first Montessori Educational Center in 1968 and later added seven locations and opened schools in Denver and Fort Worth. She launched the Mid-America Montessori Teacher Training Institute to provide professionals with training and certification.
In addition to working on early childhood education extensively with UNO, UNK, the Buffett Early Childhood Institute, College of Saint Mary’s and Concordia University, she has served the Nebraska Association of Young Children, the American Montessori Society Board of Directors and Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education. She also served on an advisory committee on early childhood education for the State of Nebraska and was appointed to a White House conference on families.
“Dr. Plambeck’s support for this new facility in Kearney and her permanent support for UNK faculty members and academic programs is yet another extension of her tremendous interest in education and her life’s work in this vital area of early childhood education,” said University of Nebraska Foundation President and CEO Brian Hastings.
Pending board approval, the building will be funded by state funds through LB 957 and dedicated facility funds from the Plambeck gift.
A celebration and ceremonial ground-breaking for the building is planned for September.
About the LaVonne Kopecky Plambeck Early Childhood Education Center
Construction Start: Contractors will break ground later this summer (August)
Completion: Summer 2019
Size: 19,900 square feet
Cost: $7.8 million
Capacity: 176 children from infant to age six.
Other: A model for exemplary early childhood education, early childhood educator preparation, and research, the facility replaces the Child Development Center in the existing 1955 Otto Olsen building. In addition to training undergraduate and graduate students and integrating coursework from all across all three of UNK’s academic colleges and University of Nebraska Medical Center, the ECEC will serve Kearney-area children and families with developmentally appropriate early education.
Classrooms: When completed in fall 2019 the ECEC will feature three research-based philosophies of Early Childhood Education: Eclectic (Waldorf, Reggio and others), Montessori, and Project Based. One classroom will be devoted to Project Based Early Childhood Education, two classrooms to Montessori, and eight classrooms to Eclectic.
PHOTO: George and Venetia Peterson (center) made Kearney their new home in the early 1900s and raised sons Peter (left) and John. Peter Peterson has created a scholarship at UNK for students who are first in their family to attend college.
George and Venetia Peterson immigrated to Kearney in the early 1900s with nothing but a third-grade education and the desire to work hard so their children would have a better life – and the opportunity for education.
Their son, Kearney native Peter G. Peterson, has honored his family’s tenacity and Nebraska roots by establishing a new scholarship for students at the University of Nebraska Kearney who, like him, are the first in their family to ever attend college.
“I was lucky enough to live the American dream, and my story began in Kearney,” Peterson said. “This scholarship will help make it possible for more first-generation students to realize their own American dream by accessing the world-class education offered by the University of Nebraska at Kearney.”
The Peter G. Peterson Scholarship Fund was created as a permanently endowed scholarship with a $50,000 gift to the University of Nebraska Foundation. Annual net income from the fund will be awarded by the UNK office of financial aid as scholarships to first-generation students from Nebraska who are studying any major and maintain at least a 3.0 GPA.
“Throughout its history, UNK has been a welcoming school where many first-generation college students completed an education that was both affordable and of the highest quality,” said Charles Bicak, senior vice chancellor for academic and student affairs at UNK. “This remains true today, and because of Pete’s generosity, many more generations of students who otherwise would not be able to afford college will have an opportunity to realize their dreams at UNK.”
Having grown up in Kearney, Pete Peterson graduated from Kearney High School in 1942 and then graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University in 1947 before earning an MBA at the University of Chicago.
Peterson’s distinguished career includes contributions and accomplishments in public service, business and philanthropy. He has served in government roles including as U.S. Secretary of Commerce in the early 1970s and as chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2000 – 2004. His highly successful business career includes serving as chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers and founding The Blackstone Group in 1985.
In 2008, Peterson founded the Peter G. Peterson Foundation as a non-partisan organization dedicated to addressing America’s long-term fiscal challenges. In addition to his current work with the foundation, he is chairman emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, founding chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., and founding president of the Concord Coalition.
The University of Nebraska at Kearney conferred on Peterson an honorary doctorate degree in 2006.
Peterson has five children and nine grandchildren. He lives in New York City with his wife, Joan Ganz Cooney, a director and co-founder of the Children’s Television Workshop.
What happens when the sun turns off?
Well, it won’t literally turn off, but what can you expect to experience this Aug. 21 near the end of the noon hour when the moon covers the sun and a total solar eclipse occurs, cutting a narrow, dark path through this part of the planet?
Four University of Nebraska at Kearney professors who came to Kearney from four different educational paths can tell you. This past semester they gave talks about the eclipse in the dark of the UNK Planetarium, telling their audiences about this rare celestial event from the vantage points of their four areas of expertise: physics, biology, art and history.
“This is called the great American eclipse for a good reason — the entire North America, the entire Central America and parts of South America will be able to actually see at least the partial eclipse,” said Mariana Lazarova, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy who also is the planetarium’s director. “So you’re talking about hundreds of millions of people looking up in the sky.”
So what happens to this part of the planet when the sun turns off?
It will get darker, colder, Lazarova told her audience.
You will see a black disk over the sun. You will see the pearly white glow of the sun’s corona. You will see the brightest of the stars, and you will see Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Mercury all straddling the sun. Looking across the land at the horizon, in all directions, you will see beyond the moon’s shadow to where the eclipse isn’t experiencing totality, and it will be an eerie twilight of yellow and orange.
Kearney will experience the total eclipse for 1 minute, 54 seconds, starting at 12:57 p.m.
In Lincoln, totality will began at 1:02 p.m. The city lies along the northern edge of the shadow, so totality will be shorter. Even a few miles will matter. If you’re standing on the grass of the State Capitol, you’ll experience totality for 1 minute, 25.5 seconds, but just a few blocks north — on the 50-yard line of Memorial Stadium — you’ll get five seconds less.
Lazarova serves as Nebraska’s coordinator for the Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Experiment, called “Citizen CATE.” She will observe the eclipse in Ravenna, Nebraska, while also managing observations of the sun during the eclipse at eight different locations across the state, from Mitchell to Beatrice. And this summer, she’s running a workshop at UNK to train the observers, who are volunteer citizens passionate about astronomy.
According to the project’s website: The goal of CATE is to produce a scientifically unique data set: high-resolution, rapid cadence white light images of the inner corona for 90 minutes.
“The coolest thing about Nebraska is that that path of totality has the longest stretch within the state of Nebraska — close to 500 miles because we’re a pretty long state to begin with,” Lazarova said. “And then it crosses kind of diagonally, from upper left corner to lower right, so the shadow is going to move very fast. It crosses the entire United States in 90 minutes.
“It moves about seven times faster than a passenger airplane, faster than the speed of sound.”
So what happens to animals when the sun turns off?
Confusion.
Nate Bickford, a professor of biology, can tell you about it. (The tongue-in-cheek title of his talk was “Wildlife Behavior When the Sun Turns Off.”)
Some animals in the moon’s shadow, he said, will think it’s a thunderstorm and will hide.
Some birds will fly toward their roosts. Most birds will fall silent. Their songs will begin again as it ends, as if it were daybreak.
Nocturnal animals will act as if it’s the early morning. Cocks will crow. Owls will hoot. Crickets and cicadas will chirp. And then, when the sun emerges, they will stop.
Spiders will begin to dismantle their webs in the dark. Then build them back up.
Mosquitos will come out to bite. Then vanish.
Creatures that live in caves or holes will just keep sleeping, Bickford said, because their internal clocks are too strong to wake them up.
“And how about dragons?” he said, smiling. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
To prepare for his talk, Bickford also researched mythical animals associated with eclipses. He found stories from China about how a dragon would eat the sun or the moon. He found stories of the Korean fire dogs that would steal the sun or the moon. He found a story from an indigenous tribe of North America about how a mean bear got in a fight with the sun and bit it.
And then for fun, he said, he googled “werewolves” and “solar eclipses.”
He showed his audience a scary photo of a Hollywood werewolf, its jagged teeth bared.
“Should we keep our eyes open and look?”
People laughed.
Bickford said that he’s not an expert in animal behavior. But preparing for this talk, he said, he found that no one seems to be an expert in animal behavior during total solar eclipses — there’s just not a lot of solid research out there yet.
That realization inspired him to study this summer’s eclipse himself. So along with UNK biology colleague Dustin Ranglack, he sought and won a grant from NASA to study animal behavior during the August eclipse.
He encouraged the people who attended his talk to “science the heck out of it” as well and consider becoming “citizen scientists.”
“Your research may not be earth-shattering, but who cares? It’s cool,” he said. “So if it’s something you’re interested in, find somebody else who’s interested in it and do a little study.”
So what happens to the art world when the sun turns off?
Inspiration.
Derrick Burbul, a professor of art and design, talked about the artistic history of eclipses, focusing mainly on photography.
Art is just a part of the stories we tell, he said, and stories are important. Some researchers believe our ability to communicate stories, he said, is a big reason that humans have been so successful as a species.
“How do you want to tell your story?”
How should you photograph it?
Remember a few things, he said:
Plan your shot ahead of time. What do you want to juxtapose with the eclipse in the foreground, for example? What story do you want to tell?
Learn how to use your camera at night, so you’ll be ready for the totality.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
“And don’t try to do too much,” Burbul said. “You want to enjoy the experience. You want to see it. You don’t want to be so caught up in your equipment that you don’t actually experience what’s going on.”
So what happens to humans when the sun turns off?
A sense of the sacred.
Eclipses have evoked wonder and awe and have sparked something spiritual inside of people, whether they were religious or not, said James Rohrer, a history professor whose talk centered on the religious significances of solar eclipses across time and cultures.
“No matter how you respond,” Rohrer said, “you will be in good company with many people who have gone before us.”
Christians, Muslims and Jews have historically used eclipses as occasions to reflect upon the glory of the Creator God, Rohrer said, and in modern post-Enlightenment times Christians have also used eclipses as a way of trying to prove to non-Christians in colonized lands the superiority of Western Science and Christianity by showing them that their traditional stories about eclipses were false.
But, Rohrer said, this insistence upon debunking the myths of other people ignores the way that mythology conveys meaning. In a very real sense, stories about dragons or demons eating the sun, although not grounded upon empirical science, nonetheless convey spiritual truth that makes sense within the framework of traditional cosmology.
Eclipses have evoked intellectual curiosity.
Eclipses have inspired the poets and the preachers. The teachers.
And the students — young people like Kayla Gade, a UNK Honors Program student who attended most of the talks at the campus planetarium.
“This is something that really made me proud of UNK,” says Kayla, a humanities major who also has a strong interest in science. “The fact that UNK did this series really emphasizes to me this interdisciplinary approach is something that UNK values.
“And I think that says something about the student experience here at UNK.”
This coming eclipse will be a rare chance for all the people of Nebraska to experience astronomy and biology and art and history in action all at once and to stand in the dark, just as people have done since the dawn of time.
And, together, look up.
Whether you are a longtime supporter or a new graduate, you can impact students immediately through the UNK Fund. Every dollar invested in the UNK Fund provides scholarships, supports talented faculty, enhances your college’s priorities, and much more. And it all happens because of you.
If you would like to help, please contact the University of Nebraska Foundation at 800-432-3216 or send us a message.
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