Nebraska, University of

▪ university system, Nebraska, United States

      state university system of Nebraska, U.S., composed of four coeducational campuses. It is a land-grant university with a comprehensive academic program; it is also a research institution. The main campus at Lincoln, through its 10 colleges and its graduate studies program, offers some 150 bachelor's degree programs, more than 75 master's degree programs, and several dozen doctoral degree programs. It includes colleges of architecture, law, human resources and family sciences, and agricultural sciences and natural resources. The campus at Omaha has nearly 100 undergraduate degree programs and more than 65 advanced degree programs in 7 colleges; the campus at Kearney offers about 50 academic programs in 4 colleges. Omaha is also the home of the medical centre (the fourth campus), which contains colleges of medicine, dentistry, nursing, and pharmacy and a school of allied health professions.

      The university conducts research in a wide variety of fields, including computer science, biotechnology, behavioral biology, transportation, mass spectrometry, food processing, nontraditional manufacturing, and agriculture. The Lincoln campus contains the University of Nebraska State Museum, the Lied Center for Performing Arts, and the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, which was built by architect Philip C. Johnson. Prairie Schooner, a noted literary quarterly, is published there. The Museum of Nebraska Art is located at the Kearney campus, and the Center for Afghanistan Studies is found at the Omaha campus.

      The University of Nebraska was chartered in 1869 and became a land-grant institution under the aegis of the Morrill Act of 1862. It began offering graduate instruction in 1886, and in 1896 it became the first university located west of the Mississippi River to establish a graduate school. The medical centre, incorporated in 1881 as Omaha Medical College, joined the university system in 1902. Established in 1908, the University of Omaha joined the system as a campus in 1968. The Kearney branch, which had been created as a normal (teacher-training) school in 1903, joined the system in 1991.

      Notable graduates of the University of Nebraska include botanist, jurist, and educator Roscoe Pound, novelist Willa Cather, photographer Harold E. Edgerton, anthropologist Loren Eiseley, and television personality Johnny Carson.

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