Welcome to the History Department at the University of
Nebraska at Kearney! For over a century, we have introduced
undergraduates to the excitement and significance of historical
studies. We have trained generations of students who have gone on to
teach across the United States; work in museums, and libraries; and
serve in business and industry. The research our faculty has
undertaken has led them around the world to archives, battlefields and
other places of historical significance.
We see scholarship, teaching, and service within Nebraska and beyond as
mutually reinforcing components of a Liberal Arts education. Each
member of our faculty teaches courses at all levels from freshmen
surveys through graduate seminars. Many have won awards that recognize
the high quality of their scholarship, teaching, and service. Many
possess an international reputation in their fields of research. We
also have a lively community of graduate students who have chosen to
work with our outstanding faculty and the educational environment at
Kearney to pursue their master’s degree. Our undergraduate major
prepares our students for a variety of careers from graduate and law
schools, to public history and secondary teaching posts, to business
and industry.
Through teaching and research our faculty contributes to knowledge
about people and places all over the globe and throughout time and
space. Students study the ways people have interacted politically,
economically, militarily and culturally from the ancient world to the
present. They learn that what transpires in their own lives is related
to and has an impact upon events as far away as Eastern Europe, Africa
and Asia. The work of historians in all their endeavors is a
multi-disciplinary focus on education at its best.
We invite you to explore our website. Find out about the recent work
published by our faculty and about their current research projects.
Look at the range and the quality of the courses we offer. Read about
our successful alumni and the career paths that they have taken after
leaving UNK. And contact us to learn more!
The Department of History provides instruction, research, and
service functions to students, the Kearney community and citizens in the
State of Nebraska and beyond.
The History Department plays a primary role in introducing students
to the values associated with an educated citizenry. Specifically, the
department strives:
(1) To stimulate intellectual curiosity and to encourage habits of critical thinking.
(2) To cultivate the values of intellectual humility, tolerance, and human community.
(3) To promote an understanding and appreciation of the history of the peoples and cultures.
(4) To identify and pass on to students of history the values of
democratic societies based on our heritage of political freedom and
representative institutions.
(5) To develop an understanding and appreciation of the pluralistic
nature of American society and of the contributions of the varied ethnic
and racial groups in our past.
(6) To train students in the use of the historical method in the solution of problems.
(7) To help students learn about themselves and their relationship to the rest of the world.
(8) To introduce students to different methods of organizing information, thoughts and ideas.
(9) To develop students' communication skills, particularly by
providing students with writing experiences in all History classes.
(10) To develop in students a commitment to the pursuit of knowledge.