And the winners are ...

We recently announced two winners in the Win Dean Manderscheid’s Money contest by showing up in their classrooms and we will soon announce our final runner-up. Congratulations again to Benjamin Kantack and Sara Schroeder!

This year we asked students what I could learn from their favorite assignment. We received many great entries. They were so good that the selection of our three winners (one grand prize winner and two runners-up) was incredibly difficult.

The easy part was announcing our winners. With the help of our “Prize Patrol” (other representatives from the Dean’s Office) we made a surprise appearance in the winning students’ classrooms and presented their cash prizes. Check out their reactions in the video we captured here: http://ascweb.unl.edu.

Benjamin’s entry described an assignment from his 300-level political science course to interview an immigrant to the United States and about that person’s experience. “What I learned — and what Dean Manderscheid could learn — is to never forget that our actions, opinions, and policies have real-world consequences and should be considered carefully, not carelessly," Benjamin wrote.

Sara wrote about writing declamations in her 300-level English class that has taught her the importance of rhetoric. “He would learn the art of persuasion and be trained to align his skills with the great historical rhetoricians such as Socrates and Plato. Lastly, he would know how to effectively analyze and navigate an argument to his own advantage,” Sara wrote.

Making the announcement was a treat for me because I always like going into the classroom and seeing students learning. Fundamentally, I’m a teacher and I love to do that.

I’m looking forward to our third and final classroom visit next week. Where will we show up? Stay tuned.

Big Ten news

I was in Chicago on Monday to meet with deans from other Big Ten arts and sciences colleges. Getting everyone in the same room was a great opportunity to address issues we all face and to continue discussions about how we can benefit from our shared strengths.

I fielded a few questions about our world-renowned Center for Digital Research in the Humanities — certainly one of our strengths. More generally, everyone is interested in digitization across disciplines. People want to digitize everything, from books to images and data, and for good reason. We see the Committee on Institutional Collaboration, the Big Ten’s academic arm, playing a key role in addressing storage costs and concerns.

We talked about summer research opportunity programs, which allow students to go to various campuses in the Big Ten. Course-sharing also remains a hot topic.

Although we won’t become a part of the Big Ten officially until July 1, the doors are beginning to open even more and excitement continues to build. As Graham Spanier, President of Penn State, said when he visited campus recently, joining the Big Ten was a game changer for them. I am sure it will be for us also.