University of Nebraska–Lincoln Informations

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln, commonly referred to as Nebraska, UNL, or NU, is a public research university in Lincoln, Nebraska. It is the state's oldest university and the largest in the University of Nebraska system.

The state legislature chartered the university in 1869 as a land-grant university under the 1862 Morrill Act, two years after Nebraska's statehood into the United States. Around the turn of the 20th century, the university began to expand significantly, hiring professors from eastern schools to teach its new professional programs and conducting groundbreaking research in agricultural sciences. The "Nebraska method" of ecological study developed during this time pioneered grassland ecology and laid the foundation for research in theoretical ecology for the rest of the century. The university is organized into eight colleges on two campuses in Lincoln with over 100 classroom buildings and research facilities.

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 46 conference championships and claims five national championships, with an additional nine unclaimed. The school's volleyball team has won five titles and appeared in the national semifinal nine other times. NU plays its home football games at Memorial Stadium and has sold out every game since 1962. The stadium's capacity of 91,585 people is famously larger than the population of Nebraska's third-largest city.

The University of Nebraska was created by an act of the Nebraska state legislature in 1869, two years after Nebraska was admitted into the Union as the 37th 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 land grant of about 130,000 acres (53,000 ha), and campus construction began with the building of University Hall. By 1873, the University of Nebraska had offered its first two degrees to its inaugural graduating class. The school's enrollment and budget remained relatively small until about 20 years after its founding, when its high school programs were taken over by a new state education system. From 1890 to 1895 enrollment rose from 384 to about 1,500. Shortly after, a law school and a graduate school were created, the latter making NU the first university west of the Mississippi River to establish a graduate school. By 1897, the school had the 15th-highest total enrollment in the United States.

Throughout the early 20th century, the university attempted to balance its identity as both a pragmatic, frontier establishment and an academic, intellectual institution. Around this time, NU founded several noteworthy campus organizations, including a football team, a debate team, and its first fraternities and sororities. In 1913, a fierce debate ensued over whether to keep the university in downtown Lincoln or to move it out of town. The issue was not resolved until a statewide referendum decided the school would remain at its current location. After purchasing property in the downtown area, the school funded several new buildings, both on the new property and its farming campus in east Lincoln. The school would not experience another expansion of this magnitude until the late 1940s, when the sudden arrival of thousands of soldiers seeking education after returning from World War II forced the school to seek further expansion.

In 1908, Nebraska was inducted as a member of the Association of American Universities, an organization of research universities. In recent years, Nebraska ranked near the bottom of the AAU's statistical criteria for members, a ranking attributed in part to the university's extensive agricultural research funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is not included in the AAU's rankings because it is not awarded by peer-reviewed grants; and because Nebraska's medical school is a separate institution whose research funding is not under UNL's auspices. Nebraska successfully retained its AAU membership after a 2000 challenge, which provided the school with an advantage when the Big Ten was looking to expand in 2010, as all of its members at that time were AAU members. Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman stated "I doubt that our application would've been accepted had we not been a member of the [AAU]." However, in 2011, after an extended campaign to retain its membership and a close, contentious vote, Nebraska became the only institution to be removed from the AAU membership by a vote of the membership (a few other institutions had voluntarily resigned.)

In June 2018, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) voted to censure the university for violations of academic freedom. In 2017, an adjunct instructor was filmed by a student as the instructor expressed a political opinion about the student's activist activities. State lawmakers demanded that the university hold the instructor accountable and the university subsequently fired her, a move the AAUP contends was a violation of her academic freedom.

The University of Nebraska system is governed by its board of regents. The board consists of eight voting members elected by district for six-year terms, and a non-voting student regent from each campus, who serve during their tenure as student body president. The board supervises the general operations and directs all expenditures of each university.

The university has nine colleges, combining to offer more than 150 undergraduate majors, 20 pre-professional programs, and 100 graduate programs. NU also offers programs at its campus from other University of Nebraska institutions, including the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) College of Public Affairs and Community Service, the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) colleges of Dentistry and Nursing, and the Peter Kiewit Institute, managed in partnership with UNO.

In 1869, the original University of Nebraska campus was laid out on four city blocks and comprised one building called University Hall. Currently, the university has three campuses, totaling 2,815 acres (1,139 ha): City Campus, north of downtown Lincoln; Nebraska Innovation Campus, just northeast of City Campus on the old Nebraska State Fair grounds; and East Campus, one mile east of City Campus.

Both City and East campuses include academic and research facilities, libraries, recreation centers, and residential buildings. They both feature various support buildings for power and networking, as well as in-ground infrastructure supporting advanced computing, power distribution, and energy-efficient heating and cooling from central plants. Both campuses are heavily landscaped, with the grounds functioning as a research mission of the university; they are administered as the UNL Botanical Garden and Arboretum, which handles major plantings including Cather Garden on City Campus and Maxwell Arboretum on East Campus.

In January 2010, the university acquired a 249-acre (101 ha) property northeast of City Campus that had been used to host the Nebraska State Fair. Plans for redevelopment included an US$800 million expansion to house agricultural biotechnology and other life science research. This project resulted in the construction of Nebraska Innovation Campus, a public/private research park located adjacent to the Bob Devaney Sports Center. Its buildings include several modernized structures formerly used for the state fair.

The Adele Coryell Hall Learning Commons, named in honor of alumna Adele Coryell Hall, were opened in 2016. The $10 million, 30,000 square-foot project was largely funded with $7 million in private donations. The learning commons are located on the first floor of Love Library North and feature private study rooms with wall-to-wall whiteboards and smart TVs.

UNL has student union facilities on both City and East campuses. The Nebraska Union is the located on the southern part of City Campus, northeast of 14th and R Streets. The Nebraska East Union is located east of East Campus Mall. The services the unions offer to students include dining, banking, computer labs, and recreational activities. University Bookstore locations are available at each facility. The Nebraska Union provides meeting space for events and speakers, and includes offices for The Daily Nebraskan, student government, and Greek Affairs. The East Union houses the Loft Gallery, a space for community and student artwork, and a full-service bowling alley, the home facility for Nebraska's bowling team.

The University of Nebraska has adopted LEED certification for all new construction projects. UNL's Sustainable Food Project, started in 2005, is designed to serve meals on campus that feature locally and sustainably produced foods. The university's motor pool includes vehicles fueled by soy biodiesel as well as gasohol (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline blend). The university received a grade of C on the College Sustainability Report Card 2011. The school has since established an Office of Sustainability in 2014 with projects such as EarthStock and Bugeater Student Organic Farm.

Admission to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln is rated "more selective" by U.S. News and World Report. US News also ranks Nebraska as the #139 national university in the country. For the 2015 fall semester, NU received 9,724 freshmen applications; 7,425 were admitted (76.4 percent) and 4,628 enrolled. The high school grade point average (GPA) of enrolled freshmen was 3.65, while the middle 50 percent range of SAT scores was 500–630 for critical reading and 500–660 for math. The middle 50 percent range of the ACT Composite score was 22–28. Twenty-six percent of enrolled freshmen were in the top tenth of their high school class and 52 percent were in the top quarter.

As of 2018[update], 74 percent of UNL's undergraduates were classified as "white, non-Hispanic"; 53 percent of the undergraduate population was male and 47 percent female.

The university's libraries, which combine to offer 3.5 million volumes, are the only set of comprehensive research libraries in Nebraska. The Don L. Love Memorial Library is the main library on City Campus and houses collections on social sciences and humanities. Other academic disciplines are housed in seven branch locations on campus:

The University of Nebraska State Museum is located in Morrill Hall on City Campus. The museum houses collections and exhibits featuring natural history, including its most popular attraction, a set of Mammoth fossils. Because of these fossils and a bronze Columbian Mammoth statue in front of the building, it is popularly known as "Elephant Hall."

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