University of Nebraska–Lincoln
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln is a public land-grant research university in Lincoln, Nebraska, United States. Chartered in 1869 by the Nebraska Legislature as part of the Morrill Act of 1862, the school was the University of Nebraska until 1968, when it absorbed the Municipal University of Omaha to form the University of Nebraska system. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship institution of the state-wide system.
The university is organized into nine colleges and offers over two hundred degree programs across its undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs. The school also offers programs through the University of Nebraska Omaha College of Public Affairs and Community Service, the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Dentistry and College of Nursing, and the Peter Kiewit Institute, which is managed in partnership with the Kiewit Corporation.
Nebraska is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". According to the National Science Foundation, Nebraska spent $320 million on research and development in 2020. Between its three campus locations the university has over one hundred classroom buildings and research facilities. The university's enrollment in 2021 was 19,552 undergraduate students and 4,879 graduate students, with 1,595 full-time or part-time instructional faculty. Undergraduate admission to the school is considered "more selective."
Nebraska's athletic programs, known as the Cornhuskers, compete in NCAA Division I and are a member of the Big Ten Conference. NU's football team has won forty-six conference championships and claims five national championships, with an additional nine unclaimed. Twenty-five former Cornhuskers have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. A total of 111 former Nebraska student-athletes have combined to win fifty-four Olympic medals, including sixteen gold medals. Among approximately 300,000 Nebraska alumni are three Nobel laureates, four Pulitzer Prize winners, one Turing Award winner, and twenty-two Rhodes Scholars.
History
Rise to Western prominence
The University of Nebraska was created by an act of the Nebraska Legislature in 1869, two years after Nebraska was admitted into the Union as the thirty-seventh state. The law described the new university's aims: "The object of such institution shall be to afford to the inhabitants of the state the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of literature, science, and the arts." The school received an initial federal land grant of about through the Morrill Act of 1862. Public opinion on the new school was split; many argued the state did not need a university as it did not even have a state-wide high school system, and others suggested any public university should be church-controlled, which was typical of eastern colleges at the time.Campus construction began in September 1869 when the cornerstone of University Hall was laid at the corner of 11th and S Streets. Though the building was very large, expensive, and ornate, it was made of low-quality materials and required a foundation repair before hosting a single class. By 1871, the university welcomed its inaugural class of twenty collegiate students and 110 preparatory students, and in 1873 offered its first degrees to graduating students. A school newspaper, Monthly Hesperian Student, was quickly established and the University of Nebraska State Museum opened in University Hall. In its early years, the University of Nebraska was modest in terms of enrollment, budget, and stature. The school's development was slowed by a mid-1870s grasshopper swarm that devastated the state's economy and caused NU's first chancellor, Allen R. Benton, to resign. Benton's successor, Edmund Burke Fairfield, led a contentious tenure highlighted by clashes over the place of religion in higher education. Under Fairfield's watch, the University of Nebraska hired its first female faculty member, Ellen Smith. Smith's hire highlighted the young university's relatively diverse group of students and faculty; this was done deliberately by the board of regents, which hoped to boost the school's enrollment and the city's population through immigration.
Like University Hall, many early buildings were poorly and cheaply constructed, and not until James Hulme Canfield became chancellor in 1891 were any significant infrastructure upgrades made. The forward-thinking, enthusiastic Canfield was a sharp contrast to the conservative, traditional leaders before him. He began an aggressive remodeling and expansion of many university buildings, often overseeing construction himself. Among these was University Library, which was built in 1895 and is the oldest building on campus. Canfield worked to make the high school-to-college transition as easy as possible for Nebraskans and traversed the state tirelessly to encourage students from all backgrounds to consider higher education. By the time Canfield resigned in July 1895 to return to his native Ohio, enrollment had nearly quadrupled. Shortly after his departure the school established its College of Law and School of Agriculture.
The University of Nebraska's football program played its first game in 1890, but did not have a full-time head coach until hiring Frank Crawford in 1894. Nebraska State Journal writer Cy Sherman began referring to the team as the Cornhuskers in 1899, and the nickname was officially adopted the following year.
A new century and The Great War
As the twentieth century began, the university attempted to balance its identity as both a pragmatic, frontier establishment and an academic, intellectual institution. In addition to its football team, several noteworthy campus organizations were founded around this time, including a debate team, the school's first fraternities and sororities, and the Society of Innocents. Much of this new growth was attributed to the hiring of Brown University president Elisha Andrews; under his guidance Nebraska became the fifth-largest public university in the United States. Andrews ambitiously sought funding for expansion; a 1904 investment from John D. Rockefeller led to the construction of The Temple, which still stands on campus. In total, nine new buildings were constructed during his tenure, including Nebraska Field, and the school nearly doubled in enrollment. Shortly after Andrews retired due to health concerns, a fierce debate ensued over whether to keep the University of Nebraska in downtown Lincoln or to move it out of town. A relocation to the outskirts of Lincoln would allow for cheaper, quicker expansion and provide farmland for the College of Agriculture. New chancellor Samuel Avery favored this relocation, believing it would make alcohol-seeking students less likely to visit downtown Lincoln or nearby Havelock. Ultimately, a statewide vote determined the university would remain in its original location, with funding prioritized for additional buildings on the Farm Campus.When the United States joined World War I in April 1917, students from Nebraska's extensive Reserve Officers' Training Corps program were called into service. NU's ROTC was led by John J. Pershing during his time as a professor of military science and tactics in the 1890s; during World War I, Pershing commanded the American Expeditionary Forces and became the only person to hold the rank General of the Armies of the United States during his own lifetime. Because of his chemical expertise, Avery was asked to join the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service in Washington, D.C., and during his absence the board of regents conducted "loyalty trials" against twelve faculty members accused of anti-American sentiment. Like most colleges across the United States, enrollment at NU plummeted as a result of the war. Nebraska was put in a particularly difficult position given the state and university's reliance on agriculture, which was slow to recover in the post-war years.
Many at Nebraska wished to construct an on-campus memorial dedicated to those lost in The Great War. NU built Nebraska Field in 1909, but its wooden construction and limited seating capacity meant that after less than ten years there was significant momentum toward the building of a larger steel-and-concrete stadium. The abrupt departure of highly successful head coach Ewald O. Stiehm temporarily slowed this momentum, but by the early 1920s, with "the present athletic field as inadequate now as the old one was in 1907," the university began plans to build a new stadium on the site of Nebraska Field. The new stadium project was initially conceived as a combination gymnasium-stadium-war museum complex to be called the "Nebraska Soldiers and Sailors Memorial." Due to the slow post-war economy, the scope of the project was decreased to just a football stadium. When the fundraising target amount of $450,000 had been met, a groundbreaking ceremony was held on April 23, 1923. Construction was completed on the 31,000-seat stadium in just over ninety days, in time for NU's first home game of the 1923 season, a 24–0 win over Oklahoma on October 13. Memorial Stadium was dedicated the following week to honor Nebraskans who served in the American Civil War, the Spanish–American War, and World War I. Later, the dedication was expanded to honor Nebraskans who died in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
The Great Depression into World War II
Avery retired in 1928 and dean of agriculture Edgar A. Burnett was named chancellor. The following year, the United States plunged into the Great Depression and the Great Plains were struck by the Dust Bowl; an agriculture-dependent state, Nebraska was hit hard in the early 1930s as crop prices fell to all-time lows. By 1932, the University of Nebraska was forced to institute a five-percent cut to maintenance and a ten-percent cut to all faculty salaries, including Burnett. A lengthy, bitter fight for funding between the board of regents and Nebraska legislature lasted most of 1933, with the state initially suggesting an across-the-board budget reduction of over twenty percent, in addition to the cuts that had already been made, to prioritize funding for farmers. The board of regents desperately campaigned to alumni and voters for support in the budget fight and was ultimately able to negotiate a more modest set of cuts for the 1933 and 1934 fiscal years. A slight recovery in crop prices before the next round of university funding in 1935 meant the state was willing to raise NU's budget back to what it was early in the Depression. In response to the lack of available state funds throughout the Depression, the University of Nebraska Foundation was established in 1937 to serve as the school's primary fundraising arm.The lack of funding, reduction in salaries, and cancellation of many university events caused a sense of general tension between administration, faculty, and students throughout most of the decade. Though he took a salary cut himself, Burnett became distrusted by the faculty, and his reputation never fully recovered. He resigned in 1938, the same year Nebraska's student union opened on the corner of 14th and R Streets.
The board of regents selected West Virginia University president Chauncey Samuel Boucher to replace Burnett. The Depression was still unfolding, and in response to a rising level of failing students at the university, Boucher instituted NU's first admission standards. At the outset of World War II in Europe, Boucher urged neutrality among students and faculty; even after the United States entered the war, he encouraged the university to "carry on" as normal. However, plummeting enrollment and intense national fervor meant the school could not stay "neutral" for long, and began offering vacant university buildings to the United States Army for training and shelter. Nebraska soon joined the Army Specialized Training Program and the campus became disorganized and chaotic as soldiers "studied very casually while in residence" before being deployed overseas. More than 13,000 soldiers received language, medical, or engineering training before the program was shut down in 1944 to allow for the opening of Love Library, which had been used as a barracks.
Many new classes and programs were offered throughout the 1940s, most of them in the medical and engineering fields. Following the end of the war, the school experienced an enormous influx of students, many of which were returning veterans seeking an education as part of the G.I. Bill, which offered them free tuition and housing assistance. The average soldier was older than the average college student, and thus the rate of drinking on campus increased significantly. Many older students were married with children, and the lack of adequate infrastructure on campus culminated in a student riot in 1948. New chancellor Reuben Gustavson was understanding of the pranks and "tomfoolery" on his campus during the post-war years, and he became well-liked by the students. Gustavson was crucial to a number of post-war developments, including the integration of campus dormitories and the planning of the school's medical center.