Football interview vs. Illinois

Ronnie Green Author

09/23/2019 Added

4 Plays

Description

Ronnie Green talks about a recent announcement of a major gift from Kiewit and others to expand the College of Engineering toward the building of a new facility to be named Kiewit Hall.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:00.059](upbeat music)
[00:00:01.900]Welcome back.
[00:00:02.733]Countdown to Kickoff here in the Husker Sports (mumbles).
[00:00:04.290]Nebraska and Illinois tonight.
[00:00:05.940]The opening game of conference play,
[00:00:07.570]and as we do each and every week during our pregame segment,
[00:00:10.160]a chance to sit down with the chancellor
[00:00:11.560]from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Ronnie Green.
[00:00:13.910]Welcome to Champaigne.
[00:00:14.940]I guess you know your counterpart here pretty well,
[00:00:17.500]is that correct?
[00:00:18.333]Yeah, I actually do.
[00:00:19.740]Robert Jones, the chancellor here at the
[00:00:21.420]University of Illinois, has become a good friend
[00:00:24.590]over the last few years.
[00:00:25.800]We actually traveled together
[00:00:27.040]with he and his wife this summer.
[00:00:28.420]Just ran into him, randomly,
[00:00:30.410]out in the tailgate area here earlier before the game.
[00:00:34.180]And we'll see him during the game.
[00:00:35.060]Be great to be here with Robert and Lynn.
[00:00:37.440]Very good, great.
[00:00:38.500]And that's one of those things about it,
[00:00:39.550]you get to kind of know some of your counterparts
[00:00:41.300]around the Big 10.
[00:00:42.133]And good when you can come visit them a little bit.
[00:00:44.006]Yeah, you bet.
[00:00:45.060]Now last week we had a home game with Northern Illinois,
[00:00:47.280]but it was a pretty fun event Sunday at the stadium.
[00:00:49.970]Not a lot of fans there, but it was a really neat event.
[00:00:52.400]Can you tell everybody about that?
[00:00:54.100]Well, it was a great event.
[00:00:56.160]And tied to our Life Skills program with our Husker athletes
[00:00:59.910]which is one of the top in the country,
[00:01:01.570]to help our students not just be good students in academics,
[00:01:04.760]but also learn life skills
[00:01:06.390]that are going to help them long term
[00:01:08.990]when they're done with their education.
[00:01:11.280]And it was part of a Husker Heroes Outreach program.
[00:01:15.530]This was the 10th time we had it,
[00:01:17.546]last Sunday at the stadium.
[00:01:19.620]It's designed to work with individuals with disabilities
[00:01:24.430]and their families.
[00:01:25.790]Get a chance to hang out and play games
[00:01:28.650]with some of our freshman Husker athletes.
[00:01:31.200]We had over 400 families there
[00:01:33.490]and over 150 of our Husker athletes.
[00:01:35.940]Freshman in the athletics program across all our sports.
[00:01:40.220]Led by Keith Zimmer, who leads our Life Skills program.
[00:01:43.130]And as I said, a leader nationally we have been
[00:01:46.150]for a long time in this area.
[00:01:48.690]And it's just another emblematic source of pride
[00:01:53.350]that we have in Husker athletics and in our Husker athletes.
[00:01:56.250]So it was a great event last Sunday.
[00:01:57.970]Sounds fantastic.
[00:01:58.830]And so neat that the athletes are able
[00:02:00.830]to be a part of something like that.
[00:02:02.110]They won't forget that.
[00:02:03.560]So really big university news this week.
[00:02:05.530]Plans for a new building
[00:02:06.730]to make room for some more students,
[00:02:08.600]which we'd love to hear about.
[00:02:09.710]What can you tell us about the building
[00:02:10.970]and the partnership that's helping to make this happen?
[00:02:13.520]It was a big week this week.
[00:02:15.140]We had a huge announcement on Monday.
[00:02:17.930]Associated with our College of Engineering,
[00:02:19.880]with Nebraska Engineering.
[00:02:21.810]UNL has the sole College of Engineering
[00:02:24.380]for the state of Nebraska.
[00:02:25.670]It's part of our land grant mission
[00:02:27.240]of the University that we've had for 110 years,
[00:02:30.760]and the College of Engineering's history.
[00:02:33.640]And we're working to expand our college.
[00:02:36.570]We know there is huge demand
[00:02:38.350]for professionals in the STEM fields,
[00:02:41.050]and particularly in engineering
[00:02:42.820]in the future for Nebraska and beyond.
[00:02:45.830]And we are expanding both in size of the college
[00:02:49.100]and in capacity of our facilities for the college.
[00:02:52.220]So we already had announced a phase one,
[00:02:54.737]$75 million renovation in addition to what's known as
[00:02:59.900]the Scott Engineering Center in our college
[00:03:02.730]on the campus in Lincoln.
[00:03:04.960]That's starting this fall
[00:03:06.480]with support from the state of Nebraska
[00:03:08.440]and some private philanthropy.
[00:03:10.150]And on Monday we announced the kick off
[00:03:12.623]of our phase two of that growth for the college,
[00:03:16.032]with the naming of a gift, major gift,
[00:03:19.680]from the Kiewit Corporation in Omaha.
[00:03:21.860]One of the leading construction firms in the world;
[00:03:24.498]has been for 135 years.
[00:03:27.190]In their history, they built much of the infrastructure
[00:03:29.820]for the United States historically.
[00:03:32.000]And they announced a $20 million gift to support a building
[00:03:36.450]of a new $85 million instructional facility
[00:03:39.390]for the College of Engineering, across 17th and Vine.
[00:03:42.330]It'll be added to our Engineering complex starting
[00:03:45.250]in about a year and a half.
[00:03:46.330]So exciting, exciting announcement.
[00:03:48.900]Also facilitated by the Able family
[00:03:51.410]in Lincoln, Jim and Mary Able.
[00:03:53.560]And NEDCO, also a builder of infrastructure,
[00:03:56.690]big concrete business as we know it for many, many decades,
[00:04:00.810]111 years themselves in that business.
[00:04:03.750]And they actually own the land in that site
[00:04:07.420]and are donating that to the University
[00:04:09.460]where this building will be built.
[00:04:11.030]Many of our students will remember and know Able Hall.
[00:04:14.010]Named after the Able family for that same reason.
[00:04:17.130]The land originally was in the Able family.
[00:04:19.870]So a huge deal for the College of Engineering.
[00:04:22.650]We're looking to grow our college to over 5000 students
[00:04:25.510]from the about 3200 that we have today
[00:04:28.280]and meet those needs for the future of engineering.
[00:04:31.400]You touched on this briefly,
[00:04:32.400]but why is the planned growth
[00:04:34.010]in Nebraska's only College of Engineering
[00:04:36.730]so important right now?
[00:04:38.220]Well we know from data that we have,
[00:04:41.320]that there's 15,000 new workers in this field
[00:04:44.490]that are going to be needed in the next decade
[00:04:46.428]in engineering across civil engineering,
[00:04:49.290]mechanical engineering, electrical engineering,
[00:04:52.037]chemical engineering, agricultural engineering.
[00:04:57.050]Also in construction,
[00:04:58.380]we have one of the leading construction management programs
[00:05:00.980]in the world in the college,
[00:05:02.480]and in the Durham School of Architectural Engineering,
[00:05:05.170]it's actually on our Omaha campus as part of the college,
[00:05:08.030]and computing.
[00:05:09.610]The computing program's also in the College of Engineering.
[00:05:14.470]So those needs we know are out there.
[00:05:16.710]That's part of why we know we need to grow our enrollment
[00:05:19.630]in these fields.
[00:05:21.460]And this $160 million investment in total
[00:05:25.200]is a huge infusion to the college,
[00:05:27.290]along with growing our faculty in the future.
[00:05:29.388]All led, I should say
[00:05:31.090]by one of the best engineering deans in the country,
[00:05:33.610]a fellow named Lance Perez,
[00:05:35.690]who became our engineering dean three years ago
[00:05:38.710]and is leading this vision for growth
[00:05:41.420]in this very, very important field
[00:05:43.120]for Nebraska in the future.
[00:05:44.830]Oh boy, that's fantastic.
[00:05:45.970]That is so exciting to hear that news.
[00:05:47.900]Thank you for sharing that with all of us here today.
[00:05:50.750]Well, enjoy this one tonight.
[00:05:52.250]Next week we'll catch up back in Lincoln.
[00:05:54.230]Be home for a couple weeks.
[00:05:55.210]Well, there's a lot of Nebraskans here.
[00:05:56.945]A lot of Husker Nations here.
[00:05:58.400]We've been wandering around
[00:05:59.360]the tailgates a little bit this afternoon,
[00:06:01.120]and seen a lot of Nebraska fans.
[00:06:02.570]It's going to be great to see them here
[00:06:03.760]in Urbana-Champaigne tonight, and go big red!
[00:06:06.290]Very good.
[00:06:07.123]Ronnie Green with us here on our Countdown to Kickoff.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Football interview vs. Illinois

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments