Regent-elect Barbara Weitz, a former faculty member at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, toured UNMC recently.
During her visit, Weitz toured the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center and the iEXCEL Visualization Hub. She also had lunch with members of UNMC leadership, including Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., and Vice Chancellor for External Affairs Bob Bartee, who both escorted her through campus.
Regent-elect Weitz said one of the biggest challenges facing the university is stabilizing funding.
“It’s so difficult for people to plan, for people to be able to recruit, for us to retain the wonderful people we have, if we don’t have stable financing for the university’s operations and the future that we need to create for the students,” she said.
Still, she sounded an optimistic note, especially regarding the work UNMC and other campuses are doing.
After touring the visualization hub, she said she’d like to bring every Nebraskan in to see the virtual education technology, adding that the role of the regents was “helping people connect the dots in what the university does, and UNMC does, to make us not only a healthier state, but also then share these advances beyond our state to the country and the world.”
During the Ebola crisis, Weitz said, “the whole world turned to the med center.”
While that may not happen every day, she said, she envisions “people turning to us — on all of our campuses — for many different things. At the med center, there are immense projects going on in every arena, and it’s hopeful.
“One of the critical things, as a regent, is making sure that message reaches the legislature, the governor, as well as the people who vote,” she said. “You hope they will reach out to their legislators and say, ‘This is important,’ and then begin to bring their legislators with them along this pathway of learning the true value of what the university is giving the state.”
Weitz also stressed that the university needs to celebrate diversity.
“People don’t all think alike, we don’t all look alike, we aren’t split down between males and females around how we think,” she said. “We need to begin to appreciate the diversity that’s among us, both in terms of demographics, but in terms of thinking, experience and world view. We’re not just the University of Nebraska, we’re a university that’s contributing to the whole world, we’re a global citizen, too.
“To bring education across the state of Nebraska is our mission, but no one says we have to stop there.”