The day Howard Gendelman, M.D., announced that his University of Nebraska Medical Center team, in partnership with Temple University, had successfully eliminated HIV in a living animal was a long time coming after decades of research.

That moment seemed infinitely far off from when he was racing his station wagon on a Sunday morning to UNMC to transport a terminally ill patient. That was in the early 1990s, when HIV and AIDS were poorly understood and highly stigmatized. But when Gendelman, the Margaret R. Larson Professor of Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine at UNMC, was called on to see her, the patient was in ICU with a high fever and showing signs of severe dementia. No one knew what was wrong with her. But after an examination, Gendelman quickly understood she was in the terminal stages of AIDS, an illness that would soon become a worldwide epidemic. 

Gendelman knew the patient had only one chance: Promising new drugs had to be administered immediately. The medicine worked quickly. Within a week or two, the patient had regained consciousness and was almost back to her normal self — talking, walking and interacting with her family. It was one of the first complete reversals of AIDS dementia. 

That patient’s recovery was likely one of the few moments when emotion proved contagious in Gendelman’s career as a physician-scientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Johns Hopkins, the National Institutes of Health, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and, for the past 27 years, UNMC.

As the patient later described in a book edited by Gendelman: He was “like a kid in a candy store.” He paraded his colleagues in to see me and called me “medical history in the making.” She recalled him saying, “It’s moments like these that make me so proud to be a doctor,” and then turning to his colleagues and saying, “It’s time to find a cure!”

That was more than 20 years ago. Since then, AIDS has ravaged communities and claimed an estimated 35 million lives. Today, it is somewhat contained by antiretroviral drugs that suppress the virus. New infections have fallen 39% from the epidemic’s peak in the late 1990s — a major win in the worldwide battle against the disease. Antiretroviral drugs allow AIDS victims to live seminormal lives — but not everyone can afford or access these lifesaving medicines. In 2016, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS announced that for the first time, more than half of the world’s population living with HIV was receiving antiretroviral drugs. But that still leaves roughly 16 million people living with the disease and not receiving treatment.

Parker Witthuhn came to the University of Nebraska at Kearney to study history and political science. But more than that, the Story City, Iowa, native came to wrestle for the Lopers.

“Wrestling and being on a team is in my blood,” he said.

That made suffering a career-ending injury, fracturing his L5 vertebra and undergoing surgery in 2017, very difficult. Witthuhn struggled with the loss of his ability to compete on the mat and suddenly having “way more time on my hands,” he said.

His UNK wrestling coaches suggested this was “an opportunity to push myself academically, and that I should throw myself into my schoolwork to see what I could accomplish,” Witthuhn said.

He explained his passion for learning spans many fields, but his interest is piqued most when studying history and political science.

“I love diving into topics and finding similarities to things going on in the world today or finding roots and causes of current events,” he said. “Finding obscure facts and being able to trace the fallout from those events all the way up to today — that’s super fun.”

Witthuhn sought guidance from his teacher and mentor, Jeff Wells, Ph.D., of the history department in UNK’s College of Arts & Sciences. Aware of Witthuhn’s passion for history, Jeff encouraged him to get involved in UNK’s undergraduate research program.

“I hadn’t considered my writing good enough for publication until then and never really considered doing research until Dr. Wells showed me all the opportunities,” Witthuhn said.

Undergraduate research is highly supported and encouraged at UNK, according to Charles Bicak, Ph.D., senior vice chancellor for academic and student affairs.

“We have a strong emphasis on students doing independent scholarly work,” he said. “It’s a distinguishing part of the UNK experience.”

Matthew Bice, Ph.D., director of undergraduate research and associate dean of graduate studies, echoed these comments, saying research projects are student-driven, allowing a project to capture the interest of the student.

“The undergraduate research experience provides transferable skills that transition into all aspects of life, making it a lifelong experience,” he said.

Under Bice’s direction, students present their research and scholarly work at UNK Undergraduate Student Research Day each spring. Wells and Bice both encouraged Witthuhn to consider a history-writing project to present.

Sara Renken has never wanted to do anything else. She’s a third-grade teacher at Eagle Elementary School in Eagle, Nebraska. “I’ve always had a natural connection with kids,” she said. “I knew I made the right choice a few years into my career. It just felt right.”

Renken said she loves her job mostly because of the relationships she builds with kids and their families in this small village of about 1,000 people in Cass County.

Renken said teaching kids feels like a calling. But she also has challenging days and ongoing battles.

Not enough time and increasingly high expectations from federal and state governments are her No. 1 issues.

“You have little human beings that walk through your door,” she said. “They’re not just a number, they’re a person.

… We do so much more than just trying to get them to learn words, science, math. My job is to help them grow up, to help them be the best that they can be.”

Early childhood educators are crucial to young children’s learning and development. Yet, these teachers are the most likely to leave their professions.

Renken is one of the lucky ones. She teaches in a public school system and has never considered leaving her profession. Many early childhood educators, however, teach at private child care centers or preschools that don’t have the resources to pay staff sufficiently or provide benefits, such as health insurance or retirement savings. In fact, many early childhood teachers barely scrape by.

The median salary for child care workers in Nebraska was $22,870 in 2015, according to information shared by the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska. That’s half of the median salary for public school teachers and below the federal poverty line for a family of three.

Not surprisingly, there is high turnover within the field — up to 26 percent annually in licensed child care settings — and a critical shortage of quality educators. A 2016 Kids Count report said that roughly 84% of Nebraska counties with child care centers report being unable to meet demand.

Frequent teacher turnover and inconsistent care, especially in the early, formative years, can have devastating effects on children and the learning process. But for the past three years, the Nebraska Early Childhood Workforce Commission, which Renken serves on and was convened by the Buffett Institute, has been working to tackle the most complex and pressing challenges facing Nebraska today — expanding and strengthening the state’s early childhood workforce to meet children’s needs throughout the first eight years of life.

Susan Sarver, director of workforce planning and development at the Buffett Institute, said there are many factors that keep early childhood teachers from earning enough to stay in their positions. One is perception. Not that long ago, the role of child care providers was viewed as relatively passive, but now science has caught up to what many knew intuitively. Those early years are crucial in a child’s development.

According to information on the Buffett Institute’s website, nearly 90% of the brain’s growth happens during the first five years of a child’s life. More than 1 million new neural connections are formed every second. These are the connections that build brain architecture — the foundation upon which all later learning, behavior and health depend. 

Children who do not receive high-quality education in their early years are far more likely to drop out of school later on, be placed in special education and not go to college — and even 70% more likely to be arrested for a violent crime. The stakes are high.

“We know now from science that birth through third grade is a unique developmental period,” said Sarver. “That infant or toddler teacher needs to be just as competent as a teacher for older students. Their needs are just different. We know better now, so we’re trying to be better.” 

Another problem is cost. The younger the children, the more teachers are needed per student. At child care centers and private preschools, Sarver said those costs eat up as much as 80 percent of the budget.

“Home-based providers often say they would like to raise their rates, but they know they can’t,” she said. “Parents are stretched. They can’t pay any more. The cost of putting an infant in child care costs more than college tuition.”

Consistent standards for teacher training also present a challenge. “It’s kind of a historical artifact,” Sarver said. “They began as two different systems. K-12 has a very clear path. 0-5 started a little differently.” Unlike for teachers of older students, there are no set requirements for early childhood educators, and requiring advanced degrees across the board is not necessarily the answer.

Determining the best way forward is a monumental task. But the commission formed by the Buffett Institute brought together about 40 people from diverse backgrounds in the public and private sectors to tackle it.

“It’s the unusual suspects,” Sarver said. “The department of labor, the chamber of commerce … it’s a unique collaboration.”

All those groups, along with the departments of education and health and human services — two divisions that exist in silos in many states, hold pieces of the puzzle. The hope is the more they collaborate, the more the big picture will come into view. Sarver said people across the early childhood spectrum are committed to moving forward together. They’re invested, she said, and, importantly, they get along.

“Nebraska nice really comes through,” she said. “It’s a small enough group that we’re able to tackle the hardest questions.”

The commission published a report in late January that details the challenges Nebraska faces and makes recommendations on how to address them. Sarver said she expects the University of Nebraska system to play an important role as the state moves forward in implementing the commission’s recommendations, given the research, knowledge and competencies that are housed there and that are required to make the changes that are needed. Many others will also be involved, including state and local governments, the early childhood community, K-12 education, businesses and private philanthropy.

“This is not a unique problem,” Sarver said. “We see this everywhere. The advantage we have in Nebraska is there are a lot of really good things going on in the state. We want to build on those strengths.”

Renken said she hopes the commission can raise awareness and help people understand the value of her profession.

“When the public knows the need and the value for good, quality care for our young kids, that’s when we’re going to see change,” she said. “One voice can be heard. But a lot of voices can start to make a difference. We’re still growing — but we’re becoming a little more vocal, a little louder.”

The Buffett Early Childhood Institute was created in 2011 and emerged from the shared vision of the University of Nebraska leadership and Susie Buffett, a longtime philanthropist and champion of early childhood education and development. More information about the institute and the Nebraska Early Childhood Commission report can be found at earlyyearsmatter.org/workforce.