Chancellor's Pre-Game: UCLA

Curt Bright Author

11/04/2024 Added

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Chancellor Bennett shares his thoughts on his upcoming investiture and chats with a student who helps coordinate military flyovers at Husker home football games.

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[00:00:00.000]Welcome back. Huskers getting ready to be back home for the first time in about a month as the
[00:00:06.380]UCLA Bruins here to visit today, and as we do every week a chance to sit down with the Chancellor
[00:00:10.340]from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Rodney Bennett. Great to be back home. Great to be at
[00:00:14.200]Memorial Stadium. You know, it really is exciting to be back home and back in historic Memorial
[00:00:19.760]Stadium for Husker football. You know, road games are road games, and that's fine and a bye game is
[00:00:27.100]a bye game, and that's fine, but I tell you what there are few things better than Huskers and
[00:00:33.820]Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska. I mean it just sort of is the end all and the be all. Sure is.
[00:00:39.840]Well, we're kind of turning the corner on this semester the academic side. We're well into the
[00:00:44.700]fall semester. What do we have to look forward to? Well you know midterms are behind us. It's hard to
[00:00:50.100]believe that we have gotten through the midterm part of the year. We're bearing down on the holidays.
[00:00:55.340]I'm already thinking about
[00:00:56.960]Thanksgiving and Christmas and the new year, but I got to stay focused because we still have a
[00:01:03.300]semester to get through. December commencement will be December 20th and 21st. The graduate
[00:01:11.560]students will have their degrees conferred on the 20th and then the undergraduates on the 21st.
[00:01:18.340]I might add that a certain chancellor that you get to do radio broadcast with throughout the season
[00:01:25.140]will have a little
[00:01:26.820]investiture as part of the undergraduate ceremony on December 21st. We were thinking about how to
[00:01:33.440]do that and how to be efficient in doing it, and we thought, well, students are there, faculty are
[00:01:38.780]there, parents are there, we're already in our academic regalia. Let's just spend about 15
[00:01:43.680]minutes at the front end of the program doing the investiture for the university's 21st
[00:01:49.100]chancellor. For any of our listeners who may want to experience that, you can go to our online link
[00:01:56.680]of our commencement, and it will be probably within the first 15 minutes or so of the
[00:02:01.960]ceremony. So we're excited about the fall semester and we're excited that commencement, which is
[00:02:07.180]absolutely one of my favorite days of the year, will be later in December and then we'll have
[00:02:13.360]the investiture and then we'll get a little break for the holiday. Fantastic. We're also joined this
[00:02:17.920]week by an outstanding student, Chancellor, who has a special role, very important role on game
[00:02:22.180]day, a tradition here at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, right? I am so excited to have
[00:02:26.540]a student with us on the broadcast today, and I'd like to introduce our student
[00:02:31.300]to our listening audience. With me today is Alina Bergwald, and I just want to say to our
[00:02:39.200]listeners, you may be wondering about the origin of Bergwald, and I asked Alina that,
[00:02:44.140]and she said that her daddy told her that it was of German descent, and so that's what she's
[00:02:50.060]going with, and so that's what I'm going with, but this is Alina Bergwald. Alina is a junior
[00:02:56.400]criminology and criminal justice major from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She's an Air Force ROTC
[00:03:05.680]cadet, and on game day, on game day, Alina has the responsibility of coordinating
[00:03:12.640]the military flyovers that are often part of Husker football games, and that is such an exciting
[00:03:21.460]experience for all of us who are in Memorial Stadium, and
[00:03:26.260]so today we get to hear from the woman herself who is coordinating all of those
[00:03:32.140]efforts, and so Alina, welcome to you. We're glad that you're here, and I cannot
[00:03:37.240]wait to have Greg talk to you about your role, your responsibility on game day.
[00:03:41.920]This is exciting. Welcome Alina. Thank you so much for being here with us today.
[00:03:44.980]This is fascinating to me, and I know all of our listeners. Tell us what goes into
[00:03:48.320]coordinating these flyovers that we take so much pleasure in seeing. Thank you so
[00:03:52.320]much, Greg. It's just such a
[00:03:53.380]a pleasure and a great opportunity to be here with you and Chancellor Bennett today. The weeks
[00:03:58.030]leading up to each home game include just a ton of communication. We nail down times for practice
[00:04:03.810]flyover, transportation, as well as parking for the pilots. We secure event passes, and finally,
[00:04:10.310]we watch a timesheet that's broken down into increments of, I'd say, about five to ten seconds,
[00:04:16.050]beginning about two hours before kickoff. And we are responsible for letting the pilots know if
[00:04:21.030]the timing is on track, or maybe the times it's not quite. No pressure with this job, right?
[00:04:26.790]Has to be kind of intense in some of those moments. Yes, definitely, Greg. My first game, I'd say that
[00:04:34.450]I had quite a bit of anxiety, a little bit of pressure. I'd say I'm most definitely a perfectionist,
[00:04:39.790]and I want every single flyover to happen exactly at the perfect time. Well, that doesn't always
[00:04:45.370]necessarily go exactly according to plan. For the Illinois game, for example, we were approximately
[00:04:50.310]15 seconds off as the national anthem began. The pilots had to pick up the speed, knowing we were
[00:04:55.830]off from the plan timed on target. But they flew over the stadium just as the song finished.
[00:05:00.870]Fantastic. This is a high-pressure situation like that. I'm sure you're learning a lot of lessons.
[00:05:05.990]Yes, Greg. There are quite a bit of skills that I've gained. Confidence, professional communication,
[00:05:11.890]planning, etc. The biggest thing I've noticed is the communications I've gained just in general.
[00:05:19.590]I've learned the verbal communication, yes, but I've also had to reach out to pilots and the crew
[00:05:24.770]and think through different issues that might come up. So I'm also with that gaining critical
[00:05:28.970]thinking skills. I also hope to make a career as a pilot in the United States Air Force.
[00:05:33.650]So these interactions with these active duty personnel are quite a unique opportunity for me.
[00:05:38.530]Oh, Chancellor, you have to be so proud of Alina. Students like this,
[00:05:41.510]what great experience to do this while they're here in school.
[00:05:43.950]I tell you what, Greg, I'm just smiling the whole time that Alina is sharing her story and her
[00:05:48.870]background. When you hear a story like this and you have the opportunity to interact with students
[00:05:54.610]like Alina daily, like I get to do, it increases your confidence in young people and our collective
[00:06:03.310]future. These are our future leaders, not just here in Nebraska, but across the country. And as
[00:06:12.050]Chancellor, I could not be more proud. Greg, I know we're probably getting short on time, but before
[00:06:18.330]we do, I wanted to sort of share some statistics with our listeners about the university, and
[00:06:25.050]particularly as it relates to our long history of honoring and serving students with connections to
[00:06:32.510]our nation's military. We take our service to these students very seriously. UNL is among the
[00:06:41.870]top 25 colleges and universities and ranked number one in the Big Ten.
[00:06:48.130]And the best for vets ranking by military times. Those high marks are a
[00:06:55.810]credit to the entire University and in particular to the work of our Military
[00:07:02.830]and Veteran Success Center. The center was founded just a short time ago in
[00:07:09.310]2015 to support military-connected students. Our future is bright. Our
[00:07:16.570]country is certainly looking forward to the future of the military and veteran
[00:07:18.110]success. Our future is certainly going to be in good hands with the young men and
[00:07:21.850]women that we are educating and preparing and sending off into the world
[00:07:26.370]like Alina and I'm just so happy that she was with us today and I'm so happy
[00:07:31.230]that she will be a proud alumna of the University of Nebraska and the
[00:07:35.950]University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This was a delight to treat. Alina, thank you
[00:07:39.390]again so much for being here. Chancellor, always great to see you. Have a great
[00:07:41.870]week. Thank you, Greg. Thank you. We'll have more of our pregame show including
[00:07:44.590]the Big Ten Blitz coming up next.

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Chancellor's Pre-Game: UCLA

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