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Kearney is home to the nation's largest rural healthcare teaching facility. It was dedicated to a man who led the University of Nebraska at Kearney for 22 years. Dale Johnson spoke with retired UNK chancellor Doug Kristensen about growing healthcare in rural Nebraska – and the changing environment of higher education.
Doug Kristensen: It is amazing what this is going to do for rural Nebraska. So, what's happening inside that building, all the colleges of the University of Nebraska Medical Center are going to have a presence there, and you can receive your professional degree without going to Omaha. You can do it in Kearney, and our experience has been with teachers, If you train them in rural Nebraska, they're going to stay in rural Nebraska. The first building of the complex was a smaller building, but it held Allied Health. I had no idea what Allied Health was, but it's PAs, PTs, radiography, medical nutrition. We took the nursing program and moved them over there, and when that building was completed, the med center, it was their faculty, world class, absolutely the same experience, if not better than if they would have been in Omaha. Eighty-five percent of those students stayed in rural Nebraska. We have every reason to believe that's going to happen now – all the colleges of the Med Center, it's unbelievable. The partnership with them is tremendous. We could have never done that on our own. They couldn't have done it either. And so it's a true partnership that's going to make it happen, and it's happening here in Nebraska.
Johnson: The Trump administration has labeled institutions as breeding grounds for progressive ideas that suppress conservative viewpoints, having a lack of ideological diversity and a focus on political correctness. You laugh. Was he talking about UNK?
Kristensen: No, he pry couldn't pick UNK out. Let me tell you, go back to just good old common sense. Have you ever tried to tell an 18 year old how to think? It isn't going to work.
Johnson: Can be a waste of breath.
Kristensen: Yeah, what you can do is expose them to different views. The university isn't a breeding ground for anything. It is a tremendous collection of a very diverse group of citizens, not separated by color, but from where they come from. We've got students from small town western Nebraska who are closer to four other state capitals than our own. They're in the same classroom as somebody from Omaha who's never been out there. Conversely, you know, the student from Morrill has never been to Omaha, and yet we put them together. They live in a residence hall setting, and that's how this state connects those ideas that were a liberal bastion. Do we have instructors and faculty members who have a liberal point of view? Of course we do. But we didn't hire them for their political views. We hired them because they were good teachers. They instructed people and how to challenge students to think in a different way. Indoctrination is a waste of time, there's no return on that, but the return is when you have students who are able to look at different situations from a different perspective than what they had when they grew up at home.
Johnson: The Trump administration would prefer that administrators quash student protests. There were some while you were Chancellor. Stand up for Palestine, 2024 budget cut protest 23-24, 2022 students protested that Supreme Court decision on Roe v Wade. How did you handle student protests?
Kristensen: Oh, I usually went out there and stood with them. I mean, look, the great thing about UNK is that we know who you are. The bad thing about UNK is we know who you are. The line that I drew, we weren't there for damage, destruction or destructive behavior. If you're there with a raised voice and you're there in person and you've got a sign, okay, I'm okay with that, but if we're going to tear something up, we're going to damage something. There's a line there. That's not going to stand, and that's kind of where I think we drew the line. More likely than not, if they were going to protest, the students at UNK would come in to me and say, “Is it okay if we do that?” And it was granted. Look, budget cuts are a different deal. There's lots of emotion in that because it's people perceived that the rest of their life, they're not going to get to pursue that degree, although that's not true. Everybody who started, we we got them through in their degree, but you know it's hard on faculty members, it's unsettling and so the protests are okay, as long as we're not really being destructive. But you can't do it every day all day long for a semester either, because then we've interrupted learning and our responsibility. Was to teach the state's children.
Johnson: I am grateful for your time. Thank you very much for coming in and sharing.
Kristensen: Sure, so very welcome.
Johnson: Retired Chancellor of the University of Nebraska at Kearney, Doug Kristensen, joining me for the conversation on Nebraska Public Media. I'm Dale Johnson.