UNO dedicates Dr. Jeffrey P. Gold Drive

University of Nebraska President Ted Carter joined leaders from UNMC and the University of Nebraska at Omaha Sept. 28 to inaugurate the newly named Dr. Jeffrey P. Gold Drive in front of the main entrance at UNO’s Baxter Arena.

“How cool is it to have a street named after you?” Carter asked attendees.

Carter and UNO Chancellor Joanne Li, PhD, CFA, both praised Dr. Gold’s tenure as chancellor of UNO from 2017-2021, during which he continued to serve as the chancellor of UNMC.

“That is an above-and beyond, Herculean effort,” Carter said.

Carter praised Dr. Gold’s accomplishments at UNO, including a 5% growth in enrollment, more than tripling UNO’s research enterprise and significantly expanding technology transfer efforts.

The event was “an opportunity for us to say how important your leadership was at a critical time, particularly during the early years of the COVID pandemic,” Carter said.

Dr. Li, who celebrated her one-year anniversary as UNO’s chancellor in July, welcomed Dr. Gold back to UNO and the Baxter Arena.

“In the past year … he has proven to be a wonderful mentor and colleague, to me and to the whole UNO family,” she said.

“Dr. Gold built a very strong foundation,” she said, pointing to successes UNO has been able to build on since 2021, including welcoming the largest-ever incoming first-year class with 38.5 percent self-identifying as underrepresented and more than a third identifying as first-generation, continuing UNO’s focus on access. Dr. Li also touted the university’s recent successes with record-breaking research growth and external funding at the state and federal level.

“Jeff, you are truly a Maverick, and we’re happy to welcome you home,” she said.

Dr. Gold said he was humbled by the honor, thanked the UNO faculty, students, faculty and staff and then spoke about the impact of UNO.

“Public, metropolitan, urban campuses – anchor institutions, as they are known – have always been critically important, but in the current era are more important than they’ve ever been,” he said. “I see the future here at UNO as being incredibly bright, not only from the educational perspective, but from the research and creative activity/discovery perspective, the community engagement perspective, the national reputation perspective and so much more. And that’s mostly based on what we have all come to know and love as the Maverick spirit.”

He closed by thanking the UNMC and Nebraska Medicine leadership teams and added that he plans to put the new Dr. Jeffrey P. Gold Drive to use.

“I look forward to driving down this street and attending many winning athletic events in this building,” he said.