Theme: What Now?

Students from Nebraska's high schools, middle schools, and colleges explored What Now? Our speakers' ideas challenged the audience, our performers inspired them, the demonstrations and activities engaged them. On Saturday, August 19, 2017 we dove into a variety of topics. These photos give you an idea of what the day was like.

Lincoln High School
2229 J Street
Lincoln, Nebraska, 68510
United States

Carter Yost

Student

Carter Yost is a junior at Lincoln High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. Carter is on the student council, is an International Baccalaureate student and is heavily involved in theatre and music.

Darren Liebhart

Student, space and space exploratiom

Darren is a freshman at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, originally from Mullen, Nebraska. His knowledge of space and space exploration is extensive, and has been a part of his life from a very young age.

Emma Harner

Student Musician

Emma Harner is a freshman at Lincoln High School. She has been making music since she was two years old. She sings, plays the violin, piano (she loves jazz piano) and recently picked up the ukulele. She reads voraciously and loves to listen to music. She has recently started writing her own songs.

Gau Ayaj

Student

Gau is a freshman attending the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Originally from Sudan, he and his family fled to Egypt before making their way to the United States. As a former Engineering Pathway student at The Career Academy in Lincoln, and now at the University, he finds that many people write him off because he doesn’t fit their idea of what an engineer looks or sounds like.

Hannah Huston

Singer

Soul-inspired vocalist Hannah Huston was a preschool teacher in Lincoln, Nebraska when she auditioned for season ten (2016) of the U.S. singing competition The Voice. A native of Grand Island, Huston performed Allen Stone's "Unaware" for the show's coaches. Huston ultimately finished second runner up. In late 2016, Huston released her first single “I Alone Have Loved You”, which she performed for TEDxYouth@Lincoln.

Jayden Barth

Student

Jayden Barth, is 20 and a junior Sociology major with minors in environmental studies, human rights and humanitarian affairs at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. As an intern for Released and Restored, a faith-based prison program that prepares incarcerated persons for re-release into society, she has developed a passion around helping people in this area.

Jesse Lin

Student

Jesse is a 17 year old senior at Lincoln East High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. He participates in debate and has always had a passion for discussion.

Jordan and JP Reanne Patt and Davis

Modern dance and music

Jordan is a dance and journalism major at UNL from Firth, Nebraska. She is interested in morphing different mediums of art into her dance works, especially paint and live music. JP is a musician and composer who accompanies Jordan with his original piece.

Julia McQuillan

Professor of Sociology

Julia McQuillan is Department chair and Professor of Sociology at the University of Nebraska. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology in 1998 from the University of Connecticut. She has been involved in a variety of initiatives to support social science research infrastructure at UNL, e.g. directing the Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR) (http://bosr.unl.edu/) from 2005 to 2012 and serving in a leadership role with the Survey Research, Statistics & Psychometrics core facility from 2005 to 2013 (http://ssp.unl.edu/). As a co-principal investigator on the ADVANCE-Nebraska NSF grant (http://advance.unl.edu/), she has brought sociological perspectives to efforts to recruit, retain, and promote women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) departments. Her research focuses on social inequality, with special emphasis on work and health.

Juliana Quattrochi

Student

Juliana is a student at Lincoln High School in Lincoln, Nebraska and is a member of her school’s speech and debate team.

Keith Tran

Student

Keith is a 17 year old senior at Lincoln High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is a highly engaged student, and has been involved in a variety of activities from robotics and debate to cross country. Keith has always been interested in how gossip spreads in school, and is known to his friends as the “myth-buster” because he is always questioning those rumors to get to the truth.

Megan Elliott

Emerging Media Arts

Megan is the founding director of the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts where she is pioneering a program that will educate students in the art of creative thinking and problem-solving. She was previously the manager of leadership and community connections at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia.