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In exactly one month, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its charter, February 15, 1869. Nebraska was only a couple of years old at the time, but state leaders knew it needed a university. UNL architecture librarian Kay Logan-Peters has written a book about the school’s history and will talk about the 12 events that shaped its future later this week at the Nebraska History Museum in Lincoln. NET’s Jack Williams spoke with her about some of the people and events that made the University of Nebraska-Lincoln what it is today.
NET News: The school was chartered in 1869. It really kind of grew out of the prairie in many ways. When you see old pictures of University Hall, there really wasn’t much out there.
Kay Logan-Peters: There was just almost nothing out there. There was a lot of prairie grass and it was on the north edge of the downtown area, which really didn’t amount to very much either. It was definitely symbolic. It was very large relative to other things around it and I think kind of a symbol of the aspirations of the little town of Lincoln.
NET News: You talk about Charles Bessey as one of the people who helped mold the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Why, in your mind, was he so important?
UNL architecture librarian and author Kay Logan-Peters (courtesy photo)
Logan-Peters: I think he really is the single most important faculty member of the 19th century. He was actually acting chancellor. He didn’t really aspire to be chancellor. He had that opportunity and during one of those acting chancellorships he finally told the regents, “find a real chancellor or I’m leaving.” So he was not that interested in being chancellor. But he was a great scholar. He was a very approachable person. [He had] influence on how the university grew and some of the administrative changes that really improved things. He was also an author of the Hatch Act, which created experiment stations at all land grant institutions. He was part of the committee that wrote that act that was passed by the federal government in the 1890’s.
NET News: In your book you call former Nebraska Governor Norbert Tiemann a pivotal figure in the university’s history. He was in office from 1967 to 1971. Why was he so important?
Logan-Peters: He was a great friend to the university. He was a one-term governor because, although he was a Republican, he was willing to raise taxes, create taxes actually, and direct a lot of that money to the university. So the university went through a little building boom during the Tiemann years. Some really important classroom buildings were constructed. And I think almost more important than that was a better revenue stream because of the way funding was handled at the state level. He was also young and dynamic. He was a graduate of the College of Law. He was willing to meet with student groups and things like that and he, of course, was governor when the baby boomers were arriving and making demands that previous generations hadn’t necessarily done. So I think he was accessible and he thought outside the box and he was a real supporter of the institution.
NET News: There was another big event in the school’s history, the 1968 merger with what was then Municipal University of Omaha, that became the University of Nebraska-Omaha. How did that change things for UNL?
Logan Peters: Yes, that merger really can’t be overstated. It’s probably one of the biggest things that ever happened to the university. Once the merger took place, we at UNL became part of a system. Until then we were NU, we were the university and suddenly we were part of a pair and the Med Center became its own campus. It wasn’t just an extension campus of NU, which is kind of how it had been before. Then, of course, we hired a university president as well as a chancellor. We built Varner Hall, which was called Regent’s Hall and everything became more complex, larger and with a broader reach, I think as well. And then things like balancing programs started to happen. Duplication of programs became an issue, then money. People started watching money and who was getting more money and things like that. And now, of course, we have the University of Nebraska at Kearney in the system and it’s a much, much, much more complicated organization than it was before the merger.
Kay Logan-Peters will discuss the 12 key events that helped shape the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Thursday, January 17 from 12:00 p.m-1:00 pm at the Nebraska History Museum in Lincoln.