Nebraska nonprofit organizations striving to address critical community needs or wishing to make a significant local or state impact may now submit funding ideas to Women Investing in Nebraska (WIN).

For information and to submit an online letter of inquiry for consideration, go to womeninvestinginnebraska.org by March 1.

For UNL student Dan Wiek, earning the John E. McCue Memorial Scholarship meant that he could go back to school and get a construction-management degree. 

But enrolling in college can be difficult at age 36.

Tack on the pressures of a family and finances, and the strain from college is even greater.

Scholarships like the John E. McCue Memorial Scholarship, Dan says, can take some pressure off of non-traditional students like him.

The baby boys – twins – were born too early. Both needed oxygen, but the hospital had just one oxygen machine.

The parents had a choice:

Which son would get the machine and live, and which would not get it and die?

UNL student Ashley Schmidt witnessed this a few years ago when she worked at a hospital in Mali, West Africa. It shocked her. It shocked her when the baby who didn’t get the oxygen died a few days later.

She saw other scenes like that during her six months in Mali, where machines and things she took for granted as a kid in Omaha, Neb., were expensive and scarce and could mean the difference between life and death.

She saw that life without easy access to energy was precarious.

She saw a way she and other UNL students could help.

Find out what they did. 

Dr. Carol Swarts grew up “barefoot” in the Sandhills during the Depression.

Like many tenant farm families, we had nothing. You depended on each other in those days, and you looked after your family.

This Friday, Oct. 7, UNL will dedicate a new state-of-the-art lab in the basement of Chase Hall on East Campus, home of the Department of Biological Systems Engineering. It will be called The Swarts Family Biological Engineering Teaching Lab.

Carol, a UNL and UNMC alum, will be there. She donated much of the money needed to build the lab. She did this in honor of her family.

For me, it’s all about family. We were brought up with a work ethic and the altruism that goes along with it – looking after your neighbor and working for what you get. My parents never turned anyone away.

She also has supported UNMC throughout the years, sometimes in honor of her family. Without her family and the education she received at the University of Nebraska, she wouldn’t have had her rewarding career.

She has a dream for this lab. Find out what it is.

Imagine taking graduate level courses tuition-free.

This vision has become reality for 32 Nebraska teachers after State Farm Insurance of Nebraska gave $20,000 for fellowship awards to teachers seeking to improve their math and science teaching skills.

They take classes at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Nebraska Math and Science Summer Institutes in order to not only better their skills, but also to add to the knowledge of their students.

Kyle Royuk, a recipient of the State Farm fellowship award, teaches geometry, statistics and pre-college math at Crete High School. Royuk said the award has been a blessing to him and his family.

Learn more about Kyle and the State Farm awards.

The birds are loud this morning in May as Walt Bagley, 94, sits on a backyard bench.

Virginia’s Garden.

Those words are etched on the bench.

The retired forestry professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln still lives here at Prairie Pines Arboretum, the 145 acres of land just east of Lincoln that he and his late wife, Virginia, gave to the University of Nebraska in 1992.

College students from around the country were amazed, and maybe jealous, when UNL senior Zach Smith told them that he got to do one-on-one research with a professor.

They couldn’t believe the University of Nebraska–Lincoln had such a research program, outside of a lab, for undergrads. Their colleges didn’t.

And you get paid, too?

Smith, a double political science and vocal music major, earlier this year returned to Lincoln from seven months in Jordan, where he met many students from other colleges who also were studying abroad.

Learn about the UNL program that sent him there, and how it’s been making professors from other schools jealous, too.

Edward J. Cornish means a lot to Emilie O’Connor, even though she’s never met him and never will.

Because of him, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln sophomore food science major has the opportunity to further her education and not worry as much about money.

Emilie, who’s from Omaha, is one of this year’s recipients of the Edward J. Cornish Scholarship. The Cornish Fund, founded in 1937, is the oldest fund at the foundation still awarding money to students.

Emilie O’Connor would thank Edward, if she could.

“I would want him to know that I am working very hard in school and am putting his scholarship to good use.”

Few college students ever receive words of advice directly from one of the greatest writers of all time. Few can boast that such a great writer is blood – in Charles Cather’s case, a beloved aunt.

Willa Cather.

Your Aunt Willie

Find out the words the great Cather wrote to her nephew in November 1945, and the surprising topic of that letter.

Charles Cather, Willa's nephew, died March 14 in California, and his personal property relating to Willa Cather was given to the University of Nebraska Foundation. The materials, which were loaned to the foundation from Charles Cather and became a gift upon his death, arrived last December to be catalogued by the university. While the materials have not been formally appraised, the estimated value is $2 million. They will be unveiled at an event at 10 a.m. May 12 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Van Brunt Visitors Center, 313 N. 13th St.