The combination of architectural engineering and construction programs make The Charles W. Durham School the only one of its kind in the nation.

Housed in Omaha at The Peter Kiewit Institute, the school is part of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s College of Engineering. Is it Lincoln? Is it Omaha? Is it UNL? It can all be a little confusing.

David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, will be at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Oct. 9. Axelrod will speak at 6 p.m. at the Nebraska Champions Club for the Peter J. Hoagland Integrity in Public Service Lecture Series. The lecture is free and open to the public, with a limited number of seats available on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors will open at 5 p.m. Host for the event at UNL is the department of Political Science.

Visitors to the Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park near Royal, Neb., can share the same joy and adventure as the paleontologists who discover fossils each day in the newly opened Hubbard Rhino Barn. The new building covers 17,500 square-feet—eight times larger than the one it replaces—and allows for the discovery and protection of many more fossils and enhances the experiences for visitors to the unique park. Visitors experience a firsthand look at the extinct animals preserved exactly as they died, and all new fossil excavations are carried out in their full view.

Recent estate gifts are providing long-term support to the University of Nebraska. Virginia A. Blackman bequeathed $900,000 to the University of Nebraska Foundation for the Professor James S. and Virginia A. Blackman Memorial Fund, a permanent endowment she established years earlier in memory of her husband. The Amos and Doris Greenamyre estate created an endowed scholarship fund totaling about $1.5 million.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Office of Student Involvement and the LGBTQA Resource Center announce an endowed scholarship fund has been established in honor of Professor Emeritus Louis Crompton. Lead donors to the fund established the Louis Crompton Scholarship Fund at the University of Nebraska Foundation as a tribute to Crompton, a longtime English professor at UNL and an early leader in gay and lesbian studies. In 1970, he initiated at UNL one of the first interdisciplinary courses in the nation about the gay and lesbian community.

The University of Nebraska snared several top spots in BusinessWeek magazine’s annual ranking of the best undergraduate business programs in the country. In the rankings by business specialty, the University of Nebraska received the top spot in business law, ranked third in quantitative methods and ranked seventh in macroeconomics.

A longtime supporter of the University of Nebraska and wife of a former engineering professor provided more than $1 million to support three areas of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Virginia A. Blackman bequeathed $900,000 to the University of Nebraska Foundation for the Professor James S. and Virginia A. Blackman Memorial Fund, a permanent endowment she established years earlier in memory of her husband.

University of Nebraska alumnus Bill Walker enjoys his work as a geologist and always desired to give back in some way to the program that provided him a head start in his field. Now he’s found a meaningful way to do just that. He and wife Judy Orendorff Walker donated $250,000 to the University of Nebraska Foundation to establish two permanently endowed funds designed to support students in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

A scholarship in memory of Brian Smith is keeping his passion for learning alive even though the University of Nebraska–Lincoln student’s life was cut short one year ago. Family, friends, professors and fellow students have participated in fundraisers since Smith’s death to create the Brian M. Smith Memorial Scholarship Fund at the University of Nebraska Foundation.

The International Quilt Study Center & Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has been honored with the gift of 275 quilts with an estimated value of more than 1.2 million dollars from the estate of collectors Sara Rhodes Dillow and Byron Dillow, M.D. of Fremont, Nebraska. In recognition of their generosity, the center’s conservation room was named in their honor.