Dean says UNL’s advising sound, despite dissatisfaction elsewhere By Cns Wildhagen Staff Reporter Although some American univer sities are questioning the value of doctoral advisers, there have been few complaints about the quality of UNL advisers, one UNL official said. “I’d like to believe that the quality of advising is excellent at the univer sity,” said Merlin Lawson, associate dean for graduate studies and assis tant vice chancellor for research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. According to a study of disserta tion practices at 40 U.S. universities by the Council of Graduate Schools, advising for graduate students is in poor shape. The report’s conclusions, published in a Jan. 16 Chronicle of Higher Education story, stated that many graduate students surveyed were dis satisfied with their advisers. The report recommended that stu dents be given better guidance in choosing advisers and that they meet regularly with advisers. Recommendations for improve ment also included providing peri odic review of advisers and better adviser training. At UNL, there are about 770 gradu ate faculty Fellows. Fellows can chair the supervisory committees that ad vise doctoral students. Normally four Fellows serve on each committee, with 340 graduate members on com mittees in all. The committees advise about 1,350 doctoral-degree candidates.- Each committee advises from one to seven students, depending on their doctoral program progress. One UNL committee adviser did not agree with Lawson about the quality of doctoral advising. Robert Brown, an educational psychology professor, said the com mittees could use some improvement. “Generally, the advisers are inter ested in the students’ welfare, but the faculty may not be good at advising,” he said. “Just because you can do research does not mean you can ad vise students.” The Fellows counsel much the same way they were advised while doing their dissertations, Brown said, but each student has a different back ground. This means different con sulting methods arc needed, he said. Lawson said the graduate Fellows are strictly reviewed before being chosen. Each person is nominated to serve on the graduate faculty. Nomi nees must have published a research topic of quality, possess scholarship and creativity and be a positive men tor to graduate students, he said. After the review process, two-thirds of the graduate faculty in the nomi nee’s field must approve the appoint ment, he said. Brown said there should be some kind of proper training so the advisers can counsel the students adequately. The committee usually meets only three times with the doctoral student, Brown said. The first meeting is to approve the course study for the stu dent. It next meets to approve the dissertation topic, and it may not meet again to until the student has finished the dissertation, he said. During the period in which the student is working on the disserta tion, the student meets one-on-one with a main adviser, who is on the committee, Brown said. Lawson said the main purpose of requiring a dissertation is to demon strate that the student is able to com plete research of a topic. It usually lakes two to three years for a student to complete a dissertation, he said. It can be a frightening and awe some task that some students find difficult to complete, Lawson said. Brown suggested that the commit tees get students involved in doing research before they begin their dis sertation to make the task easier. Hispanic enrollment targeted By Julie Skar Staff Reporter A national report indicates His panics are “grossly underrepresented” at U.S. colleges and universities, but the president of the Mexican Ameri can Student Association says the group is doing all it can to raise those num ters UNL For the 1990-91 school year, 280 of about 24,000 students who attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were Hispanic. That number is up slightly from 255 Hispanic students in 1989-90. Although Hispanics arc underrepre sented numerically, MAS A President Blanca Ramirez said the group is working to encourage more Hispanic students to attend UNL and to help them become involved on campus. Recently group members went to South Sioux City to speak with high school students about coming to UNL. “The idea is to have them come and visit the campus and help them prepare for college life,” she said. The recent national report, authored by the American Council of Educa tion, revealed that although Hispanic college enrollment rose from 417,000 in 1978 to 680,000 in 1988, the in crease is not in proportion to the fast growth of the Hispanic population. The findings, which were included in a Chronicle of Higher Education story, stated that among ail Hispanics aged 18 to 24, only 16 percent were enrolled in college in 1989. Ramirez said Hispanic students need to realize that college is not as difficult as they may think, and stu dents must be encouraged by their parents, teachers and school counsel ors. MASA hopes to create a positive atmosphere at UNL by helping others learn about the Hispanic culture, she said. Chicano Awareness Week is one of those introductions to the Hispanic way of life, she said. The awareness week, April 15-20, will provide stu dents with the opportunity to dis cover positive aspects of the culture, Ramirez said. The week will include a luncheon, a dance, a fun run and possibly a book and craft sale. Ramirez said that although the group is working toward more representa tion for Hispanic students at UNL, there still is much to be done. The university needs to work with the administration and the educational department to produce teachers who are not only bilingual but who also are sensitive to the Hispanic students’ and parents’ needs, she said. Gulf Continued from Page 1 sions than were flown against Japan in the final 14 months of World War II. Most major bridges in the Kuwait region now have been destroyed or badly damaged, the command said, and the Iraqis have had to throw makeshift pontoon spans across riv ers — new easy targets, said com mand spokesman Marine Maj. Gen. Robert Johnston. Air strikes Sunday rocked Iraqi targets from Kuwait to Baghdad. Late in the afternoon, a missile — proba bly a U.S. cruise missile — slammed into downtown Baghdad, sending up a column of white smoke, according to an Associated Press report from the Iraqi capital. Fresh reports came in of air attacks on civilian vehicles on the road from Baghdad to Jordan. Egyptians arriv ing in Jordan said their bus was the only vehicle on the road when it was repeatedly machine-gunned by war planes. One of their group was killed, they said. Since early in the 18-day-old war, the rumble of distant B-52 strikes has been heard from across die Saudi Kuwaiti border. The huge bombers have zeroed in particularly on the dug-in positions of the Republican Guard, the core of Iraq’s defense of occupied Kuwait. One of the eight-engine, S55-mil lion “Stratofortresscs,” headed back from a bombing mission, crashed into the Indian Ocean late Saturday on its way to its base at Diego Garcia, a tiny atoll 2,000 miles southcastof the gulf. The U.S. command