Veridian Credit Union Community Engagement Award

2009 Winners

Fred Abraham:

Department head and professor of economics in the UNI College of Business Administration

A number of organizations and committees benefit from Abraham's involvement and expertise. He has served as the Iowa Baseball League Commissioner since 1997, seeing a more than five-fold increase in participating teams during that time. In 2008, 650 participants played on 50 teams. He has been treasurer of the Cedar Falls Lions Club and is currently the club's Scholarship Committee chairman. He has served on the College Hill Partnership and held positions with the UNI Credit Union Board, the Missouri Valley Economic Association and the Cedar Falls Parks & Recreation Commission. While chairman of the Parks & Recreation Commission, he oversaw the completion of two new baseball fields and the opening of the Falls Aquatic Center. He is currently involved with the Cedar Falls Landlord Accountability Ordinance Review Committee, working to improve living conditions for tenants and residents in Cedar Falls.

Cliff Chancey:

Department head and professor of physics in the UNI College of Natural Sciences

Chancey's leadership in the UNI College of Natural Sciences has given UNI students experience teaching math and science to Waterloo high school students, and in return those high school students, many of whom are low-income and minority, have been encouraged and inspired to pursue higher education, specifically in the areas of math and science. Chancey and the College of Natural Sciences faculty, staff and students work with the Waterloo Community School District through UNI's Classic Upward Bound and Educational Talent Search Programs. Summer and after-school programs engage the Waterloo students with advanced experiences in mathematics and science. Many of those students will be the first generation in their families to pursue a higher-education degree.

Richard Featherstone:

Associate professor of criminology in the UNI College of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Featherstone's expertise in policing and crime analysis is being used by the Waterloo Police Department and will hopefully lead to a decrease in gang-related crimes and more police-community partnerships. Featherstone supervises criminology graduate students who sort, code and analyze gang-related crime data to decipher the relationship between gang members, crime and related activities for the Waterloo Police Department. In addition to the students gaining experience, Featherstone is able to test his theories in the real world and improve the Waterloo Police Department's understanding of the relationship between gangs and crime in the community.

Linda Nebbe:

Assistant professor of educational leadership, counseling, and postsecondary education in the UNI College of Education

Nebbe is a founding member of the Black Hawk Wildlife Rehabilitation Project and a driving force behind its work to assess, treat and rehabilitate more than 800 injured or orphaned wild animals each year. For more than 20 years, Nebbe has given the organization's interns unique educational opportunities and has actively rehabbed injured and orphaned wild animals. She incorporates animals and nature into her career as a counselor in schools and in her private practice, also integrating them into her work with counseling students at UNI. Nebbe has been a wildlife educator for more than 30 years, giving educational presentations, programs and service opportunities to organizations and classes throughout the Cedar Valley.

Gabriela Olivares-Cuhat:

Assistant professor of Spanish in the UNI College of Humanities and Fine Arts

Community service is a part of the curriculum for Olivares-Cuhat's students at UNI. Her students have written children's stories in Spanish and read them to classes in Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Dubuque. They also volunteer in the Cedar Valley community through El Centro Latinoamericano. At UNI, Olivares-Cuhat advises two student organizations: Interested Ladies of Lamba Theta Alpha and the Hispanic-Latino Student Union. In the community, Olivares-Cuhat is an active member of the El Centro Latinoamericano Board of Directors and organized Latin Fest in the Cedar Valley last year. She works with area teachers to expose children to a second language at an early age.