UNO Fund Student Scholarship Stories – Reagan Folda
As a student in the Sign Language Interpreting program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Reagan Folda understands the importance of a clear and
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Gifts through the UNK Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
UNK has a proud tradition of excellence and support when it comes to Loper Athletics and enjoy great success in all sports.
Find specific areas to support within your college, department, program or area of interest.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact to the University of Nebraska at Kearney and its students? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
UNK AA has been working since 1906 to promote communication and interaction among more than 40,000 alumni, students, faculty, administrators and friends of the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Gifts through the N Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
Husker athletic programs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are a source of pride for alumni and Nebraskans throughout the state and around the world.
Find specific areas to support within your college, department, program or area of interest.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and its students? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
NAA is a nonprofit organization that connects alumni with Dear Old Nebraska U, and with each other, for the betterment of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Gifts through the Innovation Funds let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
There are many ways to give including employer matching, payroll giving, donor advised funds, tangible property, grain, stocks and more.
Find specific areas to support within your college, department, program or area of interest.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact to the University of Nebraska Medical Center and its students? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
The mission of the UNMC Alumni Relations Office is to serve and engage with learners and graduates through effective communications, the formation of meaningful relationships, and opportunities to invest in the advancement of the university through gifts of time, talent, and treasure.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Gifts through the UNO Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
Our athletes are competing at the Division I level in collegiate sports, not only enhance the visibility of UNO, but also to provide great benefits to all of Omaha.
Find specific areas to support within your college, department, program or area of interest.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact to the University of Nebraska at Omaha and its students? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
UNO AA is an organization focused on strengthening connections with more than 100,000 UNO alumni, students and friends from all over the world.
Nebraska Medicine and its research and education partner, the University of Nebraska Medical Center, share the same mission: to lead the world in transforming lives to create a healthy future for all individuals and communities through premier educational programs, innovative research and extraordinary patient care.
These funds support innovative initiatives at Nebraska Medicine that allow the academic health network to take advantage of emerging opportunities.
There are many ways to give including employer matching, payroll giving, donor advised funds, tangible property, grain, stocks and more.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact at Nebraska Medicine? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
The mission of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska is to transform the lives of young children by improving their learning and development.
Every day, nearly a billion people in the world do not have enough safe and nutritious food to lead healthy and active lives. Many of them also lack access to enough clean water to meet their needs. By 2050, our global food demand will double to meet the needs of nearly 10 billion people, making water and food security one of the most urgent global challenges of our time.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
Your giving to this area enables the president’s office to quickly direct resources to various university projects and areas across the system as needs arise.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Gifts through the UNK Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Gifts through the N Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Gifts through the Innovation Funds let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Gifts through the UNO Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
Add your voice and your support to see the power of the crowd in action.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Gifts through the UNK Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
UNK has a proud tradition of excellence and support when it comes to Loper Athletics and enjoy great success in all sports.
Find specific areas to support within your college, department, program or area of interest.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact to the University of Nebraska at Kearney and its students? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
UNK AA has been working since 1906 to promote communication and interaction among more than 40,000 alumni, students, faculty, administrators and friends of the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Gifts through the N Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
Husker athletic programs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are a source of pride for alumni and Nebraskans throughout the state and around the world.
Find specific areas to support within your college, department, program or area of interest.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and its students? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
NAA is a nonprofit organization that connects alumni with Dear Old Nebraska U, and with each other, for the betterment of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Gifts through the Innovation Funds let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
There are many ways to give including employer matching, payroll giving, donor advised funds, tangible property, grain, stocks and more.
Find specific areas to support within your college, department, program or area of interest.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact to the University of Nebraska Medical Center and its students? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
The mission of the UNMC Alumni Relations Office is to serve and engage with learners and graduates through effective communications, the formation of meaningful relationships, and opportunities to invest in the advancement of the university through gifts of time, talent, and treasure.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Gifts through the UNO Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
Our athletes are competing at the Division I level in collegiate sports, not only enhance the visibility of UNO, but also to provide great benefits to all of Omaha.
Find specific areas to support within your college, department, program or area of interest.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact to the University of Nebraska at Omaha and its students? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
UNO AA is an organization focused on strengthening connections with more than 100,000 UNO alumni, students and friends from all over the world.
Nebraska Medicine and its research and education partner, the University of Nebraska Medical Center, share the same mission: to lead the world in transforming lives to create a healthy future for all individuals and communities through premier educational programs, innovative research and extraordinary patient care.
These funds support innovative initiatives at Nebraska Medicine that allow the academic health network to take advantage of emerging opportunities.
There are many ways to give including employer matching, payroll giving, donor advised funds, tangible property, grain, stocks and more.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact at Nebraska Medicine? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
The mission of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska is to transform the lives of young children by improving their learning and development.
Every day, nearly a billion people in the world do not have enough safe and nutritious food to lead healthy and active lives. Many of them also lack access to enough clean water to meet their needs. By 2050, our global food demand will double to meet the needs of nearly 10 billion people, making water and food security one of the most urgent global challenges of our time.
Looking for ways to make the greatest impact? Here are some great options.
No matter your circumstances. No matter your age or financial situation. If leaving a legacy is important to you, we can help through planned giving.
Your giving to this area enables the president’s office to quickly direct resources to various university projects and areas across the system as needs arise.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Gifts through the UNK Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Gifts through the N Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Gifts through the Innovation Funds let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
The greatest needs of the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Gifts through the UNO Fund let you make a bigger difference on campus, your college and students.
Add your voice and your support to see the power of the crowd in action.
Home > UNO
Assistant Director of Communications
Contact: josh.planos@nufoundation.org
NBDC seeks to lessen the impact
Hui Ru Ng might not have boarded a flight to Nebraska if not for Tommy Lee.
Ru (as her friends call her) was raised in Malaysia and dreamed of traveling to the U.S. to enroll at a college that was equally affordable and reputable. She also dreamed of seeing the sun-swept landscape exhibited in the since-canceled TV show “Tommy Lee Goes to College,” which chronicled the former Mötley Crüe drummer’s uninspired attempt to assimilate at Nebraska’s land grant institution.
Ru ultimately chose the University of Nebraska at Omaha and boarded an airplane for the first time.
“Back home, it’s summer all year,” she said. “When I got to the airport, I was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t what I thought.’ But I grew to love this place because of the people. I will never forget how Nebraskans supported me.”
After completing her undergraduate degree, Ru applied to be a graduate assistant at the Nebraska Business Development Center located at UNO. Oluwaseun Olaore (Seun, as his friends call him) applied around the same time.
A project director back home in Nigeria, Olaore foresaw a professional ceiling unless he had an advanced degree.
Ru and Seun’s two years with the NBDC coincided with a 100-year flood and a COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly the vulnerabilities of the Midwestern economy were tested like never before.
“This whole experience actually made me realize that I want to start a small business,” said Ru after having experienced a frightening two-part course on the financial realities of small-business ownership in times of crisis. “You get inspired by clients, see their innovation and passion.”
Seun too came away from this experience reaffirmed in his commitment to the industry.
“I’ve been able to help business owners figure out a way around these problems,” he said. “This hasn’t scared me away. It has strengthened me.”
This hasn’t scared me away. It has strengthened me.
- NBDC graduate assistant Oluwaseun Olaore
Since its founding in 1977, NBDC has operated with a statewide mission out of its office in UNO’s College of Business Administration. For nearly four decades, Robert Bernier shepherded the center as its director.
“My opinion is that small business is more important to Nebraska, more important to our communities than anything,” said Catherine Lang, assistant dean of the UNO College of Business Administration who took over as NBDC state director for Bernier in 2016. “Nebraska small-business owners are innovative, resilient and tenacious. They care about their community.”
With Lang’s guidance, NBDC has assisted more than 8,500 clients — everything from fire-rated window providers to monarch butterfly habitat conservers — and helped them obtain in excess of $590 million in government contracts. All told, NBDC had a $1.9 billion impact on Nebraska’s economy over just the last four years, either directly creating or saving nearly 6,000 jobs.
If the NBDC is a tent, there are five support poles beneath: the Small Business Development Center, the Procurement Technical Assistance Center, Innovation and Technology Assistance, Professional and Organizational Development, and NU Connections.
There are centers in Chadron, Grand Island, Kearney, Lincoln, McCook, Norfolk, North Platte, Omaha, Scottsbluff and Wayne.
As Lang puts it, “We are kind of campus agnostic. We serve the entire state.”
One-on-one discussions are confidential and available free of charge. Proposals are tailored to the client.
“We work with them to develop their business plan,” Lang said. “That way they’re 100 percent intimately knowledgeable about financials, market research, everything.”
Located in UNO’s Mammel Hall, the center can tap into the university’s student body and faculty. “There’s a nice little symbiotic relationship between the academic world and the business world,” said UNO economics professor Christopher Decker.
Bernier deserves a lion’s share of the credit for the success of the graduate assistant program, Lang contends.
At any given time, Ru juggles a dozen clients on the innovation and technology side of the operation, helping them identify which grants to pursue. Olaore works with the small-business development center to help companies flesh out business plans, construct financial projections and apply for loans.
“They hire a lot of international students in the office,” Ru said, mentioning that three continents are currently represented by graduate assistants. “We have great diversity.”
We are kind of campus agnostic. We serve the entire state.
- NBDC State Director Catherine Lang
When the pandemic arrived, NBDC was prepared.
“We had to be ready,” Lang said. “Businesses all over the state are contacting us for help — clients who are trying to navigate this whole CARES act, SBA loans, unemployment insurance, IRS rules.”
The inspired work has left an impact on those providing it.
“These people are so passionate,” Ru said. “You learn a lot from them.”
Lang loves how interconnected the NBDC is, that resources are available no matter where a company sprouts from. And indeed, there is an irony almost poetic about salt-of-the-earth Nebraskans turning to students born thousands of miles away for guidance through the all-encompassing storm.
“I know we’re just a sliver of the entire ecosystem of Nebraska,” Lang said. “But I’m so very proud. We are always going to do the best we can.”
As a student in the Sign Language Interpreting program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Reagan Folda understands the importance of a clear and
As a full-time social worker, Matthew Beckmann works every day to assist those who most need support. In the course of working on behalf of
“I think education is very important, and all of these young people need to have a career. That’s our future. The young people become educated and good citizens.”
Home > UNO
Assistant Director of Communications
Contact: josh.planos@nufoundation.org
UNO students team with UNMC, Apple Inc. to develop COVID-19 app
It starts with an email notification.
An interesting opportunity. Care to hop on a conference call to discuss?
The three University of Nebraska at Omaha students are intrigued.
On the phone, the pitch goes like this:
Would you like to build a groundbreaking mobile application with considerable value as a public health tool? It’ll involve collaborating with two teams.
The first is the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Global Center for Health Security, which is rapidly working to quell an unprecedented global health crisis and is also home to the nation’s only federal quarantine unit. The other is Apple Inc.
With the COVID-19 pandemic having recently arrived in Nebraska, spring break has come early.
No need to juggle coursework.
The students quickly agree.
Work begins immediately. Prototyping and wireframing and coding. Analysis and dialogue and refinement. Daily meetings stretch into the pre-dawn hours as each team navigates hunger — the UNMC team subsisted on takeout curry — exhaustion and multiple time zones.
As news segments turn some of their peers infamous during imprudent trips to warmer regions, Keegan Brown, Grayson Stanton and Carly Cameron spend their spring break tucked away in a design studio, maintaining 6 feet of separation and working in conjunction with experts in the fields of medicine and technology.
Less than three weeks later, 1-Check COVID was available in the Apple App Store and was downloaded more than 10,000 times in the first 10 days. The app is now also available on Google Play for Android phone users.
1-Check COVID is a risk-assessment tool that asks the user a series of questions ranging from biographical to geographical before inquiring about symptoms. All are computed in an effort to assess the likelihood of someone having contracted COVID-19. Once the questions are completed, users learn their risk levels: low, urgent or emergent. From there, they are guided toward subsequent steps, whether to continue to monitor their symptoms or contact the public health department. If users agree, they can share their risk profiles with health care professionals, employers and family members, among others.
“This will hopefully be lifesaving,” UNO and UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., said in a news release, which names the three Scott Scholars, who are all Nebraska natives, computer science majors and underclassmen. Cameron, the oldest of the trio, was 2 years old when the SARS outbreak occurred. She doesn’t remember it.
In a time of crisis, both UNMC and Apple have bet on youth. And youth has delivered.
“What these students did is nothing short of extraordinary,” said Harnoor Singh, director of student development for the Walter Scott, Jr. Scholarship Program (Scott Scholars), which was launched in 1997, thanks to the generous support of the Suzanne & Walter Scott Foundation. The program challenges high-achieving engineering and information science and technology students to develop their technical, creative and leadership skills.
“These are the students we’ve been waiting for,” Singh added.
These are the students we've been waiting for.
- Harnoor Singh, director of student development for the Walter Scott, Jr. Scholarship Program
As a Ph.D. candidate at UNMC, Thang Nguyen is researching and developing decision-support tools. An innovator at heart, Nguyen had built one such tool focused on strep throat analysis “as a launching-off point,” he said.
Then came a pandemic. And an opportunity.
With an understanding of how to parse the literature, decode and translate information into a language that coders can comprehend, Nguyen pivoted to the issue at hand, using the same logic that was already built.
“A lot of what we do is identify problems as they come up and try to just solve in a rapid manner,” said Michael Wadman, M.D., chair of the UNMC Department of Emergency Medicine, “so I think that’s kind of our mindset when we approach any problem.”
A lot of what we do is identify problems as they come up and try to just solve in a rapid manner.
- Michael Wadman, M.D., chair of the UNMC Department of Emergency Medicine
A relationship between Scott Scholars and Apple Inc. formed after UNO students took part in a summerlong workshop called AppJam, which included a trip to the tech giant’s California campus. Gold reached out to Singh to see if a partnership could be struck between the three teams.
After the Scott Scholars, UNMC and Apple began working together, Nguyen said the students’ focus and attention to detail stuck out.
“When you cross from the clinical side to the technical, there’s a lot of language that gets lost,” he said. “There was none of that with this team. Those are special students in a very high-functioning program. I don’t know if you see that in too many places.”
Apple representatives helped the teams troubleshoot bugs and fast-track the app for development.
“Sometimes it takes several weeks just to get approval through the App Store,” Singh said, noting that his team needed all of two weeks and five days to bring the project to the public.
“It has the potential to save so many lives,” he said, “to not only allow folks to assess their risk, but also decrease the pressure on emergency rooms and urgent care clinics.
“Sometimes the universe brings people together. Personally, I couldn’t be more proud of our students. I don’t know how many times I heard Apple executives say, ‘This has never been done before.’
“A public health crisis like this has the ability to leverage human talent to create radically innovative solutions. We took a group of high achievers and placed them in a learning environment that emphasizes human-centered design and were very intentional with teaching them how to navigate ambiguity and how to become comfortable with failure. These are all elements that they’ve learned in the Scott Scholars program.”
When Samuel Bak was 9 years old, he was living in a Polish ghetto. The town he had grown up in was decimated. Most of
“It’s a certain pride, having gone to the university and to be affiliated with it. We talk proudly about how great of an experience it was and what a great school it is.”
1010 Lincoln Mall, Suite 300
Lincoln, NE 68508
800-432-3216
info@nufoundation.org
The University of Nebraska Foundation (EIN: 47-0379839) is exempt from federal income tax under the provisions of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.