One of the 2001 ORCA recipients, Brett Ratcliffe is curator of insects at the NU State Museum.

Ratcliffe Developed Interest for Insects as a Youngster

Team Scarab Fights to Restore Biodiversity

By Tom Simons, Public Relations

It probably would not have come as a surprise to any of Brett Ratcliffe's childhood friends that he would one day be the curator of the fourth-largest scarab beetle collection in the world.

After all, he started collecting insects as a boy in Georgia 45 years ago. At first it was only a hobby, but insects soon became his passion after he moved with his family to Japan at the age of 12.

"In Japan all kids collect insects, like all American kids play baseball," said Ratcliffe, who lived in Japan for four years while his Air Force father was stationed there. "There was this huge infrastructure there for insect study. Imagine going to a Younkers or a Dillard's and finding entomology departments where you can buy supplies and equipment and books. They do that in Japan and it just fired me up. The camaraderie I had with friends for collecting insects over there - and the competition to get a bug nobody else had - was wonderful."

Ratcliffe started out collecting beetles, butterflies and moths, but soon became overwhelmed by their diversity. He narrowed his pursuit to scarab beetles, butterflies and moths, but still couldn't keep up and when his family moved back to the United States, he decided to cut out the butterflies and moths.

"I was left with the scarab beetles, and that's still too many," he said. "For example, there are only 4,000 species of mammals in the world. Among scarab beetles alone - one family of beetles - there are 35,000 species."

Scarab beetles are generally compact, heavy-bodied insects that range in size from a grain of rice to the 8-inch-long Hercules beetle. A few species are considered agricultural pests, but others are vital in pollination and in breaking down organic matter, thus fertilizing the soil.

Scarabs also led Ratcliffe into a career in which he gets paid to do the thing he loves best - studying insects.

Curator of insects and professor of entomology at the University of Nebraska State Museum, Ratcliffe has been a member of the Nebraska faculty since 1970. He has traveled to the tropics at least once a year for the last 28 years, collecting scarabs in lowland rain forests and highland cloud forests, and he took a two-year leave-of-absence from UNL from 1976 to 1978 to work in Brazil's Amazon basin.

Largely because of his collecting expeditions, the NU State Museum had already built a very strong scarab collection when in 1999 the Smithsonian Institution transferred, for at least 10 years, nearly all of its vast scarab collection to the Nebraska Hall laboratory directed by Ratcliffe and his associate, Mary Liz Jameson. Only the British Museum of Natural History in London, the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and the Museum of Nature in Berlin have larger scarab collections than the one Ratcliffe and Jameson now oversee.

The collection arrived following the NU State Museum entomologists' success in securing a five-year, $740,000 National Science Foundation grant in 1997 to study New World beetles and train graduate students in taxonomy. That grant is paired with a $380,000 NSF biotic surveys and inventories grant under which they will attempt to document completely the dynastine scarabs of Central America.

The grants have allowed Nebraska's "Team Scarab" - Ratcliffe, Jameson and four graduate students - to produce a tremendous amount of what Ratcliffe terms "product." In the last 3 1/2 years, Team Scarab has published 47 papers in academic journals, produced 25 Web publications, made 31 research presentations, secured more than two dozen small grants and made four research expeditions.

That recent productivity and a career that has produced three books and more than 80 refereed journal articles earned Ratcliffe recognition this spring as one of two systemwide winners (with UNL history professor Gary Moulton) of the University of Nebraska's Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Awards.

"The ORCA award is really the result of the productivity of all the people in our lab, not just me," Ratcliffe said. "It's been a wonderful, synergistic effort and it's unfortunate that one person has to get singled out instead of our laboratory being singled out, which would be better. Mary Liz and I are very proud of our students."

Team Scarab's graduate students hail from Argentina, Canada, Ecuador and Guatemala, and Ratcliffe said he hopes they will go on to be effective spokespersons for biodiversity in their home countries. He said that's especially needed in the tropics where wholesale destruction of rain forests is taking place as humans move into previously pristine wilderness areas seeking timber products, minerals and metals and new areas for cattle ranches.

"We have a sense of urgency about what we're doing because so many of these habitats are being 'developed,' which means destroyed, for cattle farms or other short-term gains," Ratcliffe said. "Forests that we used to go to 15 or 20 years ago don't exist anymore. It's just terrible seeing that horrible loss of biodiversity.

"If we can make people understand, not just the consumer here in North America, but also the policymakers in Latin America, how much long-term gain there is to be had in sustaining their forests, compared to the short-term gain from timber products or cattle ranched that are only good for three years, then that's going to be better for the health of the world's ecosystems - and for their economies. But the juggernaut of development is proceeding so rapidly, it's a constant uphill battle."

May 5 Commencement Features Former NU Prof Miller

By Annette Wetzel, Public Relations

James E. Miller, Jr., the Helen A. Regenstein Professor of Literature Emeritus, at the University of Chicago, will give the address at the UNL commencement exercises, which begin at 9:30 a.m. May 5 in the Bob Devaney Sports Center. Chancellor Harvey Perlman will preside over the ceremony. Approximately 1,900 students will receive degrees.

Miller is a renowned scholar of American literature and has a special expertise in the writings of Walt Whitman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and J.D. Salinger. Miller was chairman of the department of English for the University of Nebraska in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In addition to delivering the commencement address, Miller will receive an honorary doctorate degree of letters.

Miller was president of the National Council of Teachers of English, and has received the Walt Whitman award from the Poetry Society of America and the Distinguished Service Award from the National Council of Teachers of English. Miller holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Oklahoma, a Master of Arts degree from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Jerald Schenken of Omaha will receive the Builders Award, conferred by the NU Board of Regents for service to the state and university. Schenken joined UNMC in 1965 as a pathology instructor and later became an associate professor. Since the mid 1970s, he has been a volunteer clinical professor in the UNMC College of Medicine and the School of Allied Health Professions. Schenken was the president of the Pathology Center based at Methodist Hospital in Omaha from 1981until 1996. He has served on numerous editorial boards and state and national organizations.

The Nebraska Alumni Association will honor three members of the Alumni Association at the Saturday Commencement.

The distinguished service award will be given to Steve Hauff, Don Moeller and Paul Swanson. The award was established in 1940 to recognize members who have a record of distinguished service to the association.

Hauff of Sioux Falls, S.D., is the president and treasurer of Dakota Sports, Inc., a company he founded in 1970. Moeller, of Golden, Colo., has has been an active board member of the Coloradans for Nebraska alumni chapter since 1991 and was the group's president in 1997-98. Swanson, a retired dentist in Redlands, Calif., has been a member of the Californians for Nebraska chapter since 1963 and was the group's president from 1994-96.

A drop-off area for graduates and mobility restricted guests will be available on the south side of the Bob Devaney Sports Center. Sign language interpreters for hearing impaired individuals will be provided on screen by HuskerVision. Reserved seats for guests who are ambulatory restricted will be available in the north and south sides of the arena. Guests in wheelchairs will be seated on the northeast corner of the arena floor. Golf carts will be located at the ramps on the exterior north and south sides of the Devaney Center to assist disabled guests entering and leaving the sports center. Tickets are not required and admission is free.

EU Visit Could Lead to Greater Opportunities for Students, Faculty

By Tom Simons Public Relations

Increased international opportunities for UNL faculty and students - as well as greater collaboration with other Big 12 Conference schools - could be the result of a trip taken this spring by Richard Edwards, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, and four other Big 12 provosts to European Union headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

Edwards and his colleagues met with EU officials on subjects ranging from opportunities for Big 12 scientists to visit laboratories in EU countries, to immigration policy, student exchanges and health and environmental problems.

"The trip had two purposes," Edwards said. "One was to foster greater cooperation among the Big 12 schools in developing academic programs and other opportunities for students that will enhance the offerings available at each individual institution.

"The second purpose was to see what possibilities there are for greater exposure to and cooperation with the European Union and its various research and exchange opportunities. I think there are good possibilities in all those areas."

One early possibility may be speaking tours of Big 12 campuses by EU leaders and scholars. In fact, the five provosts discussed the possibility of such a tour during a meeting with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate John Hume of Northern Ireland.

Edwards said he's encouraged by the potential for Big 12 schools to build on existing cooperative efforts such as the Faculty Fellowship Program that allows faculty members to spend time at other Big 12 campuses. It's also unusual, he said, for members of an athletic conference to try to build such collaborative efforts in the academic arena.

"I think you're going to see more of this as we try to develop new ways to support programs that we just couldn't afford or wouldn't be an appropriate priority if we were trying to do it for one campus," Edwards said. "It provides the opportunity for us to take advantage of the strengths of the other Big 12 campuses and to share our strengths with them."

Other Big 12 provosts who accompanied Edwards to Brussels March 29-30 were Brady Deaton of Missouri, Ronald Douglas of Texas A&M, Sheldon Ekland-Olson of Texas and Marvin Keener of Oklahoma State.