story Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Only in Nebraska

Charting a Course to Survival

May 18, 2022 by Katie Squier

By Ed Rider

Cutting-edge Clinical Trials Provide New Hope for Early Detection of Pancreatic Cancer

“You have pancreatic cancer.”

These four words are among the most devastating a person will ever hear. The difficulty of diagnosing cancer of the pancreas early makes it one of the most lethal and aggressive types of cancer — the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. These individuals have just a 10% chance of living beyond five years. Most are diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and have little hope of long-term survival.

On average, 115 Americans die from this dreadful disease every day.

“Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek and baseball Hall of Famer Bob Gibson both died from pancreatic cancer about a month apart in the fall of 2020. Every year, more than 60,000 people in the United States are faced with a similar diagnosis — people like Linda Kimball, the owner of Old School Clipper, a men’s barber shop in Atlantic, Iowa.

“I was in shock and a little scared because I knew that it was a bad cancer to have,” Kimball said.

PANCREATIC CANCER CENTER OF EXCELLENCE

Despite the dismal outlook for survival, researchers and clinicians at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and its clinical partner, Nebraska Medicine, believe pancreatic cancer can be detected in its earliest stages. That belief is so strong that in 2018, the University of Nebraska Board of Regents approved establishing the Pancreatic Cancer Center of Excellence at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, which celebrates its five-year anniversary this summer.

James Armitage, M.D., and Shirley Young both lost their spouses to pancreatic cancer. Jim Young, former chair of Union Pacific Railroad, died in 2014, two years after his diagnosis. Nancy Armitage died 16 months after her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

“It’s hard to describe how much this disrupts your life,” said Armitage, the Joe Shapiro Professor of Medicine in UNMC’s division of oncology and hematology and a cancer physician at Nebraska Medicine. “I went to talk to Shirley’s family about developing a pancreas cancer program, and she understood the situation.”

The result was the development of the Pancreatic Cancer Center of Excellence, which features a comprehensive program of research and care. Sunil Hingorani, M.D., Ph.D., an accomplished and internationally recognized pancreas cancer researcher and clinician, has been named the inaugural recipient of the Nancy Armitage Pancreas Cancer Clinical Research Presidential Chair and the first director of the Pancreatic Cancer Center of Excellence at UNMC and Nebraska Medicine.

Dr. Hingorani’s research success is well documented. He helped develop a model to accurately mimic human pancreas cancer from its precancerous inception to its advanced stages.

THE PATH TO BETTER OUTCOMES

Kelsey Klute, M.D., assistant professor of internal medicine at UNMC’s division of oncology and hematology and a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Nebraska Medicine, has treated more than 300 patients with pancreatic cancer, most of whom had advanced disease. Klute said that UNMC’s world-class researchers and clinicians are working diligently to find new ways to detect pancreatic cancer earlier through four clinical trials and a recently developed program in early detection — initiated by Tony Hollingsworth, Ph.D., the Hugh & Jane Hunt Chair in Cancer Research at UNMC — that screens family members with an inherited risk for developing this cancer.

Klute said she and her colleagues hope to expand the availability of clinical trials at UNMC and Nebraska Medicine. She said she is confident the trials, which will focus on early detection, will help lead to increased survival of the disease.

“Clinical trials are our best way to improve survival not only for patients diagnosed with pancreas cancer over the next five or 10 years, but also for patients facing pancreas cancer today,” Klute said. “Their best chance at beating the status quo is by enrolling in a clinical trial.”

ROAD TO RECOVERY

Kimball never considered in March 2021 that she might have pancreatic cancer when she began to experience pain in her stomach that radiated to her back. Although she had developed acid reflux disease, high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes in her 50s, she considered herself to be healthy for a woman in her early 70s. Thinking her acid reflux medication was no longer working, she went to see her physician in Atlantic. Additional tests at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center revealed pancreatic cancer.

“I went into it thinking, ‘OK, it’s stage 1. Let’s get it fixed,’” Kimball said. “I just decided that I was going to take things one day at a time because I wasn’t ready to lie down and die.”

Klute presented Kimball with the opportunity to take part in a clinical trial that incorporated a heart failure medication called digoxin with FOLFIRINOX, a standard chemotherapy drug. Kimball said she jumped at the opportunity.

“I had no reservations once Dr. Klute explained that this was not a new medication, that it had been around for years and had been used for heart conditions,” Kimball said.

The trial included eight rounds of chemotherapy, each consisting of six hours of treatment at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center and another 48 hours of treatment at home. The process was repeated every two weeks. Six weeks after completing this treatment regimen, Kimball underwent Whipple surgery, a complex, eight-hour procedure to remove the head of the pancreas, where most cancerous tumors are located. After recovering from surgery, Kimball completed four more rounds of chemotherapy independent of the trial.

Despite some lingering effects from the chemotherapy, Kimball is feeling better about her prognosis. On Dec. 30, Kimball received news that her most recent CT scan showed no signs of cancer.

“At this point, my body is still healing. I’m getting stronger every day,” she said.

All the Right Moves

May 18, 2022 by Katie Squier

By Susan Houston Klaus

How the UNO Pitching Lab Is Helping Athletes Improve Their Games

The digital images generated in the University of Nebraska at Omaha Department of Biomechanics might prompt a double take. Human skeletons appear to be pitching a baseball or softball, spiking a volleyball or swinging a golf club. But these bundles of bones are actually living, breathing athletes — from UNO, the local community, the region and the country.

They’ve come to the UNO Pitching Lab in the Biomechanics Research Building for movement assessments designed to improve their performance and prevent injuries from taking them out of the game. It’s the first time the department has combined biomechanics, athletic training and data gathering to benefit the athletic community. And like other unique programs happening in the Biomechanics Research Building, it’s giving students experiences they wouldn’t find anywhere else.

The Biomechanics Research Building garners envy around the world for both its people and its equipment, said Jeff Kaipust, UNO’s assistant director for biomechanics. Opened in 2013 and expanded in 2019, the building represents the generosity of Nebraskans, particularly the Ruth and Bill Scott family, who provided the lead donations for the building’s construction and expansion, and the support of the UNO administration and University of Nebraska System.

“None of the wonderful things we do in UNO Biomechanics would have been possible without private support, especially from the Ruth and Bill Scott family,” said Nick Stergiou, Ph.D., assistant dean and director of the UNO Division of Biomechanics and Research Development.

“This support is fundamental for construction of our facilities,” Stergiou said. “It is also essential for retaining and attracting talented young scientists who work in the pitching lab.”

Together, those elements have created a place that puts a high value on collaboration — a place where, Kaipust said, “one lab doesn’t belong to one researcher; every space in our facility is shared.”

The lab is populated by people from around the world with all kinds of expertise, including in mathematics, engineering and kinesiology.

“From the brain to the individual muscles to the different properties of the ligaments, tendons and bones, we’re just trying to solve interesting problems on the way we move,” he said.

The idea for the pitching lab started with an athlete.

Tyler Hamer is a former NCAA Division I pitcher who played at the University of Illinois before transferring to UNO for his last two seasons. As he was completing his master’s degree in biomechanics at UNO in 2019, he mulled over his next move.

“As a player growing up, a pitcher in high school and also in college, baseball’s been a lot of who I was and who I still am now,” he said.

He wondered if it was possible to pursue a doctorate with his dissertation focused on baseball pitching. Hamer talked it over with his faculty adviser, Brian Knarr, Ph.D., an associate professor in the UNO Department of Biomechanics. For a decade, Knarr has been doing his own research on understanding how people move, how injuries can be prevented and how to optimize rehabilitation from an injury. He’s also a lifelong baseball fan.

With Knarr’s support, Hamer outlined an idea for a lab focused on the unique needs of athletes. He tested the system out on himself, again stepping on the mound to deliver pitch after pitch — this time, in the name of scientific research. Soon, the lab had the interest of others on campus.

That included Adam Rosen, Ph.D., and Sam Wilkins, Ph.D., at the UNO School of Health and Kinesiology. Both have been Division I baseball athletic trainers; now they train the trainers who work with UNO athletes and bring a clinical aspect to the lab. Hamer and the team also got buy-in — and an old pitching mound they reengineered to use in the lab — from UNO baseball coach Evan Porter.

The pitching lab officially hosted its first subjects in October 2019, bringing in UNO Baseball pitchers. They’ve returned regularly to check their progress. Porter said players have tweaked their movements and improved their velocity on the mound. But there’s also the unmeasurable part of the assessment he’s glad they have access to. Catching movements that may lead to injuries is crucial to preventing them and staying in the game. Having that information gives them added confidence as athletes, Porter said.

“It provides them with more knowledge about how their bodies work, how their mechanics work, and that leads to better tendencies, better performances and more wins, hopefully, for the Mavericks for the long term,” Porter said.

The collaboration among biomechanics, athletic training and the athletes they serve has been valuable for biomechanics as a program and for its students, said Knarr.

“It’s something that is incredibly attractive for students coming into the program,” Knarr said. “We’ve seen increases in recruiting and increases from the student body to come to our program to work with our athletes, to work with our faculty doing the science.”

Students also get a tremendous opportunity to work with athletes at an elite level, he said.

“Not many places in the country and across the world really have the opportunity to work with high-level athletes,” Knarr said. “Often, they’re either on professional teams or they’re siloed off in their academic or athletic programs. But some of the best opportunities to learn and to understand the sport are to work with athletes that are great at that sport.”

Baseball assessments were just the beginning for the lab.

In the past couple of years, the lab has expanded to include testing for UNO athletes in softball, volleyball, golf, swimming and diving, and men’s soccer, as well as players of middle-school age and up from the greater community. The lab has developed a reputation not only as an assessment destination, but also a learning resource for local students. Athletes with their eyes on the Major League Baseball draft have also made the trip from around the country to get advice on how to improve their performance and throwing velocity.

Marriah Buss recently visited the lab with her UNO Volleyball teammates for an assessment. An outside hitter, she’s been a standout on the court for years: In high school, she finished her years at Lincoln Lutheran with the second-most kills in Nebraska history. So, a particular finding from her assessment was more than a little surprising.

“One thing we learned about me is I have really bad shoulder mobility,” she said. “So, we’re wondering how I’m able to hit the ball, and how I’m able to hit it hard. Through the biomechanics testing, we learned it’s not through my shoulder that I’m hitting the ball, but it’s because of my hips, how they rotate and the speed at which they rotate.”

Buss said she was “just really shocked” by the information.

“Now I know that by working out my hips, it will improve my arm swing and how well I’m hitting the ball,” she said. “It’ll definitely become something I’m way more focused on now than I was before.”

Buss is looking forward to putting the newfound knowledge to work so she’s even more powerful when the season begins again in late August.

For Hamer, research in the lab has provided a bigger view of where his career may lead. In October 2021, he joined biomechanists from UNO Pitching Lab collaborator Wake Forest University in the Dominican Republic at the MLB International Combine in Santo Domingo. There, he operated the biomechanics pitching lab, collecting data for MLB teams to review for the draft season. His paper, co-authored with Rosen, was published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine in March 2021.

Those experiences wouldn’t have been possible without those who originally put UNO Biomechanics on the map, Hamer said. “It’s really just the hard work that happened before I ever arrived here that’s allowed me and others working in the lab to make it what it is today,” he said. Hamer said, ever since he started playing baseball, he’s wanted to make it to the majors. Today, his work in the lab has helped him achieve that dream — just not in the way he imagined.

What’s next for him?

“It’s just kind of seeing where life takes me and just going each day as best as I can,” he said. “I’ve always been a believer in hard work, and if you work as hard as you want to, you can make anything happen.”

The Ties That Bind

May 18, 2022 by Katie Squier

By Robyn Murray

UNK, UNMC Work to Bring More Medical Professionals to Rural Nebraska

When Sandra Bresnahan, M.D., was a child, she often came with her parents to doctor appointments. Her parents were immigrants from Mexico and didn’t speak much English. So they needed her to explain their symptoms to the doctor and translate what was told to them.

“As a young kid, that’s kind of hard,” said Bresnahan, who now works as a family physician at Lexington Regional Health Center. “Kids should be sheltered from having to do that or knowing what the health issues of their parents are, because it creates anxiety that they don’t need growing up.”

Bresnahan is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Kearney and the University of Nebraska Medical Center. She grew up in Lexington, a town of about 10,000 people in central Nebraska. As with many small Nebraska towns, Lexington is becoming more diverse. The town’s Hispanic population has boomed in recent years as immigrants have been drawn to work at local meatpacking plants. That means more and more Lexington patients need physicians who can speak Spanish.

“We tend to relate to people that are similar to us,” Bresnahan said. “For somebody, if they have a doctor that speaks Spanish, that understands their cultural beliefs, it does make them feel a little bit more understood or safer in that environment.”

Getting Bresnahan to practice as a physician in her home community was a coup for Lexington. Lexington Regional Health has kept tabs on Bresnahan since high school, when they first learned she was interested in medicine.

“[We said,] ‘Hey, we definitely want to follow this person and see where things go,’” said Francisca Acosta-Carlson, M.D., the chief medical officer at Lexington Regional Health Center. “And when she ended up getting into medical school, there was definitely a bigger push for recruiting her.”

But Lexington’s need for Spanish-speaking physicians is just one piece of a far more complex puzzle. Rural towns across Nebraska are facing dire shortages of all types of medical professionals. According to a 2020 study by the Nebraska Area Health Education Center Program and UNMC, 14 of Nebraska’s 93 counties do not have a primary care physician; 16 counties have no dentists; 17 have no pharmacists; and the north-central region of the state has virtually no occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists or medical nutrition therapists. The study said Nebraska’s population shifts are exacerbating the problem, and the result is growing inequity and unmet health care needs.

Part of the challenge is it can be difficult to convince people to move to a small town — particularly physicians and other medical professionals who may be eyeing big-city opportunities and need to ensure they can pay back hefty medical school tuition loans. But UNK and UNMC are committed to changing the status quo.

In 2010, the two teamed up to establish the Kearney Health Opportunities Program. KHOP offers students interested in health care careers a full-tuition scholarship to attend UNK and guaranteed admission to UNMC if all requirements are met. Currently, more than 100 UNK students are receiving their pre-professional training in one of 10 medical fields. In 2015, the UNMC-UNK Health Sciences Education Complex opened its doors, offering start-to-finish programs in nursing and allied health professions on campus in Kearney. These programs have proven success based on the 50/50 maxim: 50% of graduates find a job within 50 miles of where they completed their residencies.

“If we want health professionals to practice in rural communities, we have to train them in rural communities,” said Nicole Carritt, MPH, director of Rural Health Initiatives at UNMC.

The benefit of keeping medical professionals in rural communities is multifold. Not only do small towns need the services those practitioners provide, but they also need their economic impact.

“An advanced practice registered nurse contributes about $250,000 annually to a local economy,” Carritt said. “And when we’re talking about a physician, we’re talking about $1.3 million annually. So they’re certainly important in increasing access to care and the health of the population, but also to the economic viability of our rural communities.”

Highly educated graduates also become leaders in their communities, taking on volunteer roles or sitting on boards. Andy Craig, M.D., is a family physician at Kearney County Health Services in Minden. He grew up in Minden and said he always wanted to be a physician.

“We had a family physician I really looked up to,” Craig said. “So even as a child, I knew that I wanted to be a physician.”

Craig got his bachelor’s degree at UNK and enrolled in KHOP in one of the program’s first cohorts of students. He said his experience there helped him succeed both in Kearney and Omaha, where he completed medical school and his residency at UNMC.

“Looking back on that experience, it was so positive,” he said. “When your aspirations are to do something [that requires another four years of coursework], you have people that are so supportive, people that want to push you to do your best, and people that care about your success.”

It also helped that his younger brother, Cade, was following in his footsteps.

“It’s not something I head-locked him about or anything,” Craig joked, “but I always thought it would be awesome to work together.”

Cade Craig, M.D., attended UNK four years after his older brother and followed him to medical school in Omaha after receiving his bachelor’s degree. He said when his brother started talking about going into medicine in seventh grade, the idea just stuck, and now he feels fortunate they get to work together in the same clinic in their hometown.

“Medicine is kind of a team sport nowadays,” Cade Craig said. “Especially with complex cases, having colleagues that you trust and value to discuss the findings and to see what their thoughts are based on that data is pivotal to being able to really take good care of people.”

Cade Craig said practicing in a rural community has many benefits, including the variety general physicians experience as opposed to specialists. Andy Craig agreed and said the relationships physicians build with their patients are what make the work fun.

“Building those relationships among generations of families is really a joy,” he said. “And it really does provide a more holistic opportunity to care for the patient because you know things that are going on in their lives — their stressors, their joys. It allows you to care for the patient in a better way because you know what’s going on behind the scenes.”

The Craigs are living out their dream, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. But their careers might not have gone the way they did. They each spent seven years studying and completing their residencies in Omaha, and as Carritt said, “life happens” when people move away. Sometimes it’s tough to come back.

“Once you make that step, sometimes it’s really difficult to go back,” Carritt said. “You’re exposed to new things; you meet folks. The reality is, the closer that we can keep them to home and where we want them to practice, the more likely they are to stay in our rural communities.”

UNK and UNMC work hard to ensure the ties that bind students to their rural communities are nurtured throughout their educational careers, whether they are in Kearney or Omaha, said Peggy Abels, director of health sciences at UNK. KHOP students are grouped together in learning communities; they live together and form connections that last beyond graduation, and UNMC provides opportunities for rural rotations whenever possible.

But not only can studying in Omaha draw students away from their rural roots, the prospect of moving to a big city can also be a deal breaker for some students considering health care careers.

“Forty percent of our students are first-generation students,” Abels said. “For a lot of them, to move to a city with several stoplights is kind of a monumental move when they start college.”

Medical school is also one of the most challenging educational experiences, and leaving a support network can make it that much more daunting.

Bresnahan, who was also a KHOP student, said she would have loved the opportunity to attend medical school within a short driving distance from home.

“Medical school is really overwhelming,” she said. “I would try to come back as much as I could. But with how much work there is, it was really hard to even come back on the weekends. So it would have been nice to just be close to home.”

UNK and UNMC are working to expand their collaboration to create more opportunities for future physicians, pharmacists, public health professionals and others to complete their studies closer to home. Those efforts were supported tremendously when Nebraska lawmakers approved $60 million during the spring legislative session to help fund the UNK-UNMC Rural Health Education Building, which will cost $85 million in total. But the work is not done yet. Private support will be crucial to raise an additional $25 million needed to complete the project, and collaboration will be key to its success.

“There’s not one piece of that puzzle that’s more important than the other,” Carritt said. “It’s not the resources or the community or the academic system. We all have to kind of work in concert to problem-solve and keep our finger on the pulse of what’s happening.”

After a Life of Adventure, Love Inspires a Gift

May 17, 2022 by Katie Squier

Bill Nelsen has led an interesting life. He has traveled all over the world, surveying land in far-off places — from Greenland to Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia to Mexico — for the U.S. Department of Defense. Bill, who is a Burnett Society member, worked for 41 years in what was previously known as the Army Map Service. The AMS produced military topographic maps for the armed forces, so Bill spent time trekking through remote areas, often walking at night so he could watch the stars to create map points on the ground.

It’s not necessarily what he imagined when he graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha with a degree in mathematics in 1962.

“My parents always wanted me to go to school,” Bill said. “They knew I’d be better off going to school and getting a degree. Fortunately, I was. My degree opened up a lot of doors.”

Bill returned to the U.S. in the late 1960s and settled down with an office position in Washington, D.C. Soon after, he met the woman who would become his wife at a Christmas party in the city.

“I got her phone number and gave her a call,” Bill said. “We dated the whole year of 1969, and we married in January 1970.”

Leoni Peperis Nelsen, who grew up in Tarpon Springs, Florida, in a tight-knit Greek community, worked at the U.S. State Department in diplomatic security until she retired. Public service was an integral part of the Nelsens’ married lives. So it made sense when Bill decided to make a planned gift to the University of Nebraska. In fact, Bill had been giving to the university since 1972.

“I had to thank them, thank the school, because if I didn’t have the degree, I wouldn’t have the job with the Army Map Service,” Bill said. “I was just giving money as an appreciation, giving a thank you to them for allowing me to get that degree, which really helped me.”

Bill’s planned gift, which he has directed to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, is also a gift of thanks — but not for his degree or his career. It’s a gift of thanks to his wife.

Leoni passed away just a few days before Christmas in 2019, and Bill’s grief for her still feels raw.

“It was a very quiet Christmas,” he said, “a very sad time for me.”

Leoni suffered from dementia and died from complications of the disease. Bill cared for Leoni while she endured it, and he helped care for his two sisters-in-law, who also have dementia. His gift to UNMC supports research into dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, along with macular degeneration, which he suffers from.

“I thought to myself, maybe we can find a cure for some of these diseases,” he said. “It won’t help Leoni, my wife, but it will help other people in society.”

Bill established a charitable gift annuity to make his donation. A charitable gift annuity provides a dependable income stream for the donor, who can allocate the remainder to support an area of the university that is personally meaningful to them.

For Bill, even after a lifetime of travel and interesting adventures, what was most meaningful was the memory of his wife — and helping others in her name.

“I wanted to do something,” he said. “I figure my wife is worth it.”

Alumni Kaye and Jud Jesske used planned gift to establish ag scholarship

February 17, 2022 by Robb Crouch

Burnett Society members Kaye and Jud Jesske both grew up on farms in rural Nebraska. After moving to Lincoln to study at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, they both went on to successful careers. Jud is a vice president at Farm Credit Services of America, and Kaye is a senior director of development at Bryan Health. But Kaye and Jud never forgot their roots or the values of family, hard work and service that their small-town upbringing instilled in them.

In alignment with those values and their gratitude for the education they received at UNL, Kaye and Jud have established a scholarship fund through their estate to support agriculture students at the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at UNL.

This Q&A was presented to Kaye and Jud in February.

What was the first job(s) you ever had?

Jud: The first job I had related to growing up on a diversified farming operation in south-central Nebraska. It involved caring for livestock and growing crops. From my early years on until leaving for college, there were farm-related responsibilities that needed attention on the farm. I am still involved with managing the family farming operation near Blue Hill.

My first employment after college was being an agricultural loan analyst at the National Bank of Commerce. This gave me solid footing for a lifelong career of financing various agricultural industries. I currently work as a managing director of capital markets at Farm Credit Services of America.

Kaye: I was a waitress in a small-town café in southeast Nebraska. I enjoyed visiting with the guests and learned how to converse with all age groups. However, the most important thing I learned was how to provide quality customer service and enjoy my customer interactions.

What is the best advice anyone ever gave you?

Jud: Professionally, the best advice given to me was: 1. Work for a solid company that you are proud to represent. 2. Choose your customers wisely, because in the beef industry, there will be a time when you have to go to bat for that customer when no one else will. This advice was given to me early in my lending career by James Herring at Friona Industries, the third-largest cattle feeder in the United States.

Kaye: My mother always said, “Everything happens for a reason.” I don’t know if I believed her when I was younger, but as I have grown and raised my own children, I think she was spot on.

What is the question that you like to be asked the most?

Jud: What do you do for a living? I help finance the food that feeds America and the world. I was raised in rural America on a farm, and I am blessed to continue to be affiliated with an industry that provides the most plentiful and safest food on the planet. I love living in Nebraska — “The Beef State”!

Kaye: Did you like growing up in a small town? I loved my childhood and the opportunity to know everyone in my community (population 250) and treat everyone like family. I realize we all knew everything about one another, but that is what made it really special.

Who has influenced your life for the good, and what have you done to help others lately?

Jud: I have had many positive influencers that include WWI and WWII veterans that provided day care for me as well as family, teachers and friends throughout my life. The greatest influence came from a person I never knew — my great grandfather, Ferdinand Wademan. He came to this country with very little and walked from Baltimore, Maryland, to St. Louis, Missouri. In St. Louis, a complete stranger gave him a ticket to ride the train to his final destination in Nebraska. This act of kindness from over a century ago will continue to be shared with the next generations in our family to show the importance of helping others. Ferdinand made a point the rest of his life to help others who were immigrating or traveling past his farm with a warm meal and bed as needed.

My assistance to others comes in the form of contributions and involvement with specific service and philanthropic organizations, including Christ Lincoln church, People’s City Mission, Cedars Home for Children, FarmHouse Foundation and the Nebraska FFA Foundation.

Kaye: My mother — she was compassionate, smart, funny, ornery and energetic. She loved to help others, especially children. Her passion passed on to my family, as we enjoy supporting children and youth causes and participate in community events and fundraisers as a family.

Why do you plan to leave a gift to the University of Nebraska in your estate?

Jud: Having an agricultural major at the University of Nebraska means there are numerous scholarships available to assist with college expenses. I was blessed to receive scholarships while attending, and many companies and individuals have made it a priority to help the next generation at UNL. I believe it is my responsibility to do the same. I have named the University of Nebraska College of Agriculture as a beneficiary in my estate. This is my commitment of service to the next generation of agricultural majors at UNL as well as my commitment to honor the legacy of my great grandfather, Ferdinand Wademan. As he said, to help others “may at times require a sacrifice of time, pleasure and comforts.”

Kaye: Tuition, room and board and fees continue to climb each year. Because of the situation, we decided to set up scholarships to help defray the cost for students. As we were raised on a farm, there were not a lot of scholarships or funds available when we went to school. Education is so important, and we feel that everyone should have the opportunity to further their education. We obviously have a passion for rural students, but we will help out where needed.

The Burnett Society recognizes those who support the university through a planned gift, usually from their will or trust. The group takes its name from Edgar A. Burnett, a chancellor at the University of Nebraska during the Great Depression, who recognized the university would not succeed on state funding alone. He called on 30 business and civic leaders, and together they created the University of Nebraska Foundation to raise private funds for the university.

Gutschow family ‘pay it forward’ with compassionate care awards

February 17, 2022 by Robb Crouch

Editor’s note: Jim Gutschow’s beloved wife, Pam, sadly passed away Jan. 13. We hope this story pays some small tribute to her and Jim’s lasting impact.

When Jim Gutschow first met Philip Bierman, M.D., at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, he had already resigned himself to bad news. His wife, Pam, had stayed home in Kansas City, not wanting to drive up to Omaha just to hear the same devastating diagnosis: Jim had just five years to live.

But that’s not what Jim heard that day.

Jim had been diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Two hospitals had already told him there was nothing they could do.

But at UNMC, doctors were doing something different. It was one of the few places in the world at the time conducting successful stem cell transplants. Dr. Bierman told Jim he could cure him with this lifesaving technique.

“I basically blanked out,” Jim recalled. “All I could think about was I’m 38 years old; I’ve got these three little kids at home. I can’t wait to go home and tell Pam this.”

Jim began his treatment at UNMC in December 1994. A practicing Catholic, he talked to his priest before the surgery. His priest predicted that Jim would experience a time when he would be so sick that he would believe he was dying. He said to pray with all the strength he could muster and not to give up the fight.

That moment came at about 2 in the morning, when Jim crawled out from the bathroom in his hospital room on all fours. He felt as close to death as his priest predicted. But when he came out of the bathroom, a nurse was waiting for him. She stayed with him for several hours, holding his hand while he prayed.

By the time the sun came up that morning, Jim had begun to feel better.

Jim recovered from the cancer, but that wasn’t the last time he came to UNMC. He returned to UNMC and Nebraska Medicine, the university’s primary clinical teaching partner, for another surgery to treat pancreatic cancer several years later and again to be treated for polymyalgia rheumatica.

Each time, Jim says, he experienced remarkable compassion from his doctors, nurses and the entire care team. It strengthened him in some of his most trying moments, and it also inspired him and his wife, Pam to recognize that compassionate care with a generous gift.

In 2017, Jim and Pam established the Gutschow Family Oncology Compassionate Care Awards through two planned gifts. Their vision was to recognize those physicians, nurses and care technicians at Nebraska Medicine who demonstrate compassionate care for patients undergoing cancer treatment with an annual award and financial gift.

“I feel enormous gratitude for the level of care I received at UNMC and the compassion the doctors, nurses and staff showed me as I went through some of the most difficult periods of my life,” Jim said. “Today, I am thankful to say, I have been able to turn that gratitude into something special that I hope will ‘pay it forward.’”

In recognition of their planned giving, Jim and Pam are members of the Burnett Society.

In 2021, Jim realized he and Pam were in a position to execute one of their planned gifts early, during their lifetime, giving them a chance to witness its impact.

At an emotionally charged inaugural awards ceremony Dec. 3, attended by many of Jim’s care team and his children, Jim recognized the nurse, Susan Kruse, who helped him through that dark night 25 years earlier.

“Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think about how you helped me and my family,” he said. “Human touch is such a source of healing, and I know you holding my hand throughout the night helped me to heal.”

Tom Thompson, senior director of development at the University of Nebraska Foundation, said the profound impact of Jim and Pam’s gift will live on in perpetuity.

“It certainly is a high note in the time I’ve been with the foundation to work with a couple who have done something so special,” he said. “This is here for a long time. That’s why it’s so great for the kids to be here, because I think some day we’re going to see grandkids here.”

Jim said he hopes each year the awards inspire others to remember the importance of compassion and to keep going on tough days.

“This is an acknowledgement that you’re a really nice, great person,” he said. “People realize what you do.”

The Nebraska ties that bind

October 9, 2020 by Derek Dillon

Now that Greg Snyder is retired, he spends a lot of time at airports. As a volunteer with Travelers Aid, Greg, who is a Burnett Society member, staffs the information desk at Reagan Washington National to help people find their gates, hail a cab or even get patched up like one unlucky man who fell down an escalator.

“I can do something to help,” Greg said in a recent interview from his D.C. home. “And I meet all kinds of interesting people.”

If Greg is not at the airport, you might find him volunteering at a neighborhood library group or a COVID-19 testing site. He’s a person who likes to keep busy and likes to give back.

“I can always try to have an impact,” he said. “Volunteering at the COVID site, it’s like, I can’t fi x this, but I can do something.”

In fact, Greg considers giving back — especially when it comes to Nebraska, his home state, and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, his alma mater — sort of a duty.

“I got a good-quality public school education in Nebraska, and taxpayers helped make that happen,” he said. “I haven’t been a taxpayer in Nebraska for a long time, so I need to start paying that back.”

Raised in Omaha, an alumnus of Benson High School, Greg studied urban studies at UNO. It was an unusual major, which allowed him to plan his schedule and take some off – menu subjects.

“It was fascinating,” he said. “Those classes expanded my horizons.”

Greg loved his time at UNO. He loved to learn and felt inspired by many of his professors.

“College was the best time in my life,” he said. “You have all the advantages of being an adult but hardly any of the responsibilities. I really loved it.”

Greg received a small scholarship to attend UNO that he has never forgotten. It was about $250 for the year, as he recalls, not enough to make a dent in tuition, but enough to cover his books. However, it wasn’t the amount that was most meaningful.

“It was more like UNO wanted me and thought I could succeed,” he said. “They noticed me as an individual. It was a loving kind of gesture.”

Greg went on to study law at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and receive his juris doctor degree. From there, he practiced environmental law in Denver. Later, he began a career with the Environmental Protection Agency where he helped clean up toxic waste sites.

Greg feels UNO nurtured his love of learning and set him up for a successful career. In return, Greg made a bequest to support scholarships at the College of Public Affairs and Community Service, where he received his degree.

“I just like to have a tie to UNO,” he said. “It was a very good time in my life. I wouldn’t be where I am without that education.”

Pandemic Hits Nebraska Business

June 30, 2020 by Derek Dillon

“This whole experience actually made me realize that I want to start a small business. You get inspired by clients, see their innovation and passion.”

NBDC seeks to lessen the impact

Hui Ru Ng might not have boarded a flight to Nebraska if not for Tommy Lee.

Ru (as her friends call her) was raised in Malaysia and dreamed of traveling to the U.S. to enroll at a college that was equally affordable and reputable. She also dreamed of seeing the sun-swept landscape exhibited in the since-canceled TV show “Tommy Lee Goes to College,” which chronicled the former Mötley Crüe drummer’s uninspired attempt to assimilate at Nebraska’s land grant institution.

Ru ultimately chose the University of Nebraska at Omaha and boarded an airplane for the first time.

“Back home, it’s summer all year,” she said. “When I got to the airport, I was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t what I thought.’ But I grew to love this place because of the people. I will never forget how Nebraskans supported me.”

After completing her undergraduate degree, Ru applied to be a graduate assistant at the Nebraska Business Development Center located at UNO. Oluwaseun Olaore (Seun, as his friends call him) applied around the same time.

A project director back home in Nigeria, Olaore foresaw a professional ceiling unless he had an advanced degree.

Ru and Seun’s two years with the NBDC coincided with a 100-year flood and a COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly the vulnerabilities of the Midwestern economy were tested like never before.

“This whole experience actually made me realize that I want to start a small business,” said Ru after having experienced a frightening two-part course on the financial realities of small-business ownership in times of crisis. “You get inspired by clients, see their innovation and passion.”

Seun too came away from this experience reaffirmed in his commitment to the industry.

“I’ve been able to help business owners figure out a way around these problems,” he said. “This hasn’t scared me away. It has strengthened me.”

Since its founding in 1977, NBDC has operated with a statewide mission out of its office in UNO’s College of Business Administration. For nearly four decades, Robert Bernier shepherded the center as its director.

“My opinion is that small business is more important to Nebraska, more important to our communities than anything,” said Catherine Lang, assistant dean of the UNO College of Business Administration who took over as NBDC state director for Bernier in 2016. “Nebraska small-business owners are innovative, resilient and tenacious. They care about their community.”

With Lang’s guidance, NBDC has assisted more than 8,500 clients — everything from fire-rated window providers to monarch butterfly habitat conservers — and helped them obtain in excess of $590 million in government contracts. All told, NBDC had a $1.9 billion impact on Nebraska’s economy over just the last four years, either directly creating or saving nearly 6,000 jobs.

If the NBDC is a tent, there are five support poles beneath: the Small Business Development Center, the Procurement Technical Assistance Center, Innovation and Technology Assistance, Professional and Organizational Development, and NU Connections.

There are centers in Chadron, Grand Island, Kearney, Lincoln, McCook, Norfolk, North Platte, Omaha, Scottsbluff and Wayne.

As Lang puts it, “We are kind of campus agnostic. We serve the entire state.”

One-on-one discussions are confidential and available free of charge. Proposals are tailored to the client.

“We work with them to develop their business plan,” Lang said. “That way they’re 100 percent intimately knowledgeable about financials, market research, everything.”

Located in UNO’s Mammel Hall, the center can tap into the university’s student body and faculty. “There’s a nice little symbiotic relationship between the academic world and the business world,” said UNO economics professor Christopher Decker.

Bernier deserves a lion’s share of the credit for the success of the graduate assistant program, Lang contends.

At any given time, Ru juggles a dozen clients on the innovation and technology side of the operation, helping them identify which grants to pursue. Olaore works with the small-business development center to help companies flesh out business plans, construct financial projections and apply for loans.

“They hire a lot of international students in the office,” Ru said, mentioning that three continents are currently represented by graduate assistants. “We have great diversity.”

When the pandemic arrived, NBDC was prepared.

“We had to be ready,” Lang said. “Businesses all over the state are contacting us for help — clients who are trying to navigate this whole CARES act, SBA loans, unemployment insurance, IRS rules.”

The inspired work has left an impact on those providing it.

“These people are so passionate,” Ru said. “You learn a lot from them.”

Lang loves how interconnected the NBDC is, that resources are available no matter where a company sprouts from. And indeed, there is an irony almost poetic about salt-of-the-earth Nebraskans turning to students born thousands of miles away for guidance through the all-encompassing storm.

“I know we’re just a sliver of the entire ecosystem of Nebraska,” Lang said. “But I’m so very proud. We are always going to do the best we can.”

Two Weeks and Five Days

June 29, 2020 by Derek Dillon

UNO students team with UNMC, Apple Inc. to develop COVID-19 app

It starts with an email notification.

An interesting opportunity. Care to hop on a conference call to discuss?

The three University of Nebraska at Omaha students are intrigued.

On the phone, the pitch goes like this:

Would you like to build a groundbreaking mobile application with considerable value as a public health tool? It’ll involve collaborating with two teams.

The first is the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Global Center for Health Security, which is rapidly working to quell an unprecedented global health crisis and is also home to the nation’s only federal quarantine unit. The other is Apple Inc.

With the COVID-19 pandemic having recently arrived in Nebraska, spring break has come early.

No need to juggle coursework.

The students quickly agree.

Work begins immediately. Prototyping and wireframing and coding. Analysis and dialogue and refinement. Daily meetings stretch into the pre-dawn hours as each team navigates hunger — the UNMC team subsisted on takeout curry — exhaustion and multiple time zones.

As news segments turn some of their peers infamous during imprudent trips to warmer regions, Keegan Brown, Grayson Stanton and Carly Cameron spend their spring break tucked away in a design studio, maintaining 6 feet of separation and working in conjunction with experts in the fields of medicine and technology.

Less than three weeks later, 1-Check COVID was available in the Apple App Store and was downloaded more than 10,000 times in the first 10 days. The app is now also available on Google Play for Android phone users.

1-Check COVID is a risk-assessment tool that asks the user a series of questions ranging from biographical to geographical before inquiring about symptoms. All are computed in an effort to assess the likelihood of someone having contracted COVID-19. Once the questions are completed, users learn their risk levels: low, urgent or emergent. From there, they are guided toward subsequent steps, whether to continue to monitor their symptoms or contact the public health department. If users agree, they can share their risk profiles with health care professionals, employers and family members, among others.

“This will hopefully be lifesaving,” UNO and UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., said in a news release, which names the three Scott Scholars, who are all Nebraska natives, computer science majors and underclassmen. Cameron, the oldest of the trio, was 2 years old when the SARS outbreak occurred. She doesn’t remember it.

In a time of crisis, both UNMC and Apple have bet on youth. And youth has delivered.

“What these students did is nothing short of extraordinary,” said Harnoor Singh, director of student development for the Walter Scott, Jr. Scholarship Program (Scott Scholars), which was launched in 1997, thanks to the generous support of the Suzanne & Walter Scott Foundation. The program challenges high-achieving engineering and information science and technology students to develop their technical, creative and leadership skills.

As a Ph.D. candidate at UNMC, Thang Nguyen is researching and developing decision-support tools. An innovator at heart, Nguyen had built one such tool focused on strep throat analysis “as a launching-off point,” he said.

Then came a pandemic. And an opportunity.

With an understanding of how to parse the literature, decode and translate information into a language that coders can comprehend, Nguyen pivoted to the issue at hand, using the same logic that was already built.

“A lot of what we do is identify problems as they come up and try to just solve in a rapid manner,” said Michael Wadman, M.D., chair of the UNMC Department of Emergency Medicine, “so I think that’s kind of our mindset when we approach any problem.”

A relationship between Scott Scholars and Apple Inc. formed after UNO students took part in a summerlong workshop called AppJam, which included a trip to the tech giant’s California campus. Gold reached out to Singh to see if a partnership could be struck between the three teams.

After the Scott Scholars, UNMC and Apple began working together, Nguyen said the students’ focus and attention to detail stuck out.

“When you cross from the clinical side to the technical, there’s a lot of language that gets lost,” he said. “There was none of that with this team. Those are special students in a very high-functioning program. I don’t know if you see that in too many places.”

Apple representatives helped the teams troubleshoot bugs and fast-track the app for development.

“Sometimes it takes several weeks just to get approval through the App Store,” Singh said, noting that his team needed all of two weeks and five days to bring the project to the public.

“It has the potential to save so many lives,” he said, “to not only allow folks to assess their risk, but also decrease the pressure on emergency rooms and urgent care clinics.

“Sometimes the universe brings people together. Personally, I couldn’t be more proud of our students. I don’t know how many times I heard Apple executives say, ‘This has never been done before.’

“A public health crisis like this has the ability to leverage human talent to create radically innovative solutions. We took a group of high achievers and placed them in a learning environment that emphasizes human-centered design and were very intentional with teaching them how to navigate ambiguity and how to become comfortable with failure. These are all elements that they’ve learned in the Scott Scholars program.”

The Epidemic Within the Pandemic

June 29, 2020 by Derek Dillon

UNO Professor Examines Loneliness

In 2019, researchers and the media began sounding alarm bells about a “loneliness epidemic” — a rise in people reporting feelings of isolation that could become a health crisis, leading to increases in heart disease or even shorter life spans.

And that was before COVID-19. Before the world shut itself indoors and government leaders mandated, and pleaded, for everyone to stay at least 6 feet apart.

Isolation and social distancing are terms the world is all too familiar with now.

“I have, for years, been trying to come up with ways to make people more aware,” said Todd Richardson, Ph.D., an associate professor in the University of Nebraska at Omaha Goodrich Scholarship Program who is researching loneliness. “And then this comes around and does it for me.”

What researchers like Richardson have warned of — fraying social connections and the ways people arrange their lives to perpetuate isolation — rocketed to the world’s collective consciousness as COVID-19 spread rapidly across the globe. As cities, states and countries shut down, everyone felt the pain of isolation. People kept friends and family members at bay. They missed play dates, barbecues, birthday parties and graduation ceremonies. They missed the rush and roar of live music, the shared excitement of home runs and 3-pointers. They wondered if the “sea of red” would ever wash over Memorial Stadium in quite the same way.

And everyone felt those things, together.

“It’s ironic that the experience of loneliness unites us, but I think it can in this moment,” said Richardson. “We’re all under threat from something that doesn’t discriminate between human beings. This is an extra-human threat. So we can bond as humans and realize we’re working together in order to resist this. And I think there’s something really, really beautiful in that.”

But there’s a flip side to that potential beauty. The longer people stay apart, the harder it becomes to return to one another.

“There is a period where you acknowledge the loss in your life, and you lament it, and you try and fill it in whatever way you can,” Richardson said. “But the longer you’re away from other people, the less trust you have for other people, so the harder it gets to break out and to reach out. And at that point, loneliness starts feeding in on itself. It becomes a self-perpetuating kind of cycle.”

Richardson said social interaction influences people in ways they’re not even aware of. Seeing another person express emotions, such as joy and pain, sparks a mirror response in the brain.

“The mere fact of making eye contact with them, or being in the same physical space as them, connects us to them in important ways,” he said. “It makes us acknowledge them as people, as fellow humans, as entities worthy of respect and autonomy.”

Fundamentally, Richardson said, it teaches people empathy.

“The longer we retreat from one another,” he said, “the longer we don’t share that physical space, the less empathetic we get, and the less we care about other people.”

There is also risk in social interaction, and humans are inherently risk-averse, Richardson said. People may want to avoid not just the risk of disease, but the risk of shame, embarrassment or rejection that comes with putting themselves out there in the world. The longer people stay protected, the more comfortable they may become.

“I think that when this abates, we’re going to have a lot of work ahead of us reacclimating and coming to terms with the fact that we need one another,” he said, “and that is worth the risks that we take.”

« Previous Page

We are stronger
together.

About the Campaign

Impact of Giving

Ways to Give

Volunteer Leadership

Contact Us

We are strongertogether.

We are stronger
together.