Academic Resources
Consistent with its mission to provide resources for excellent education and public service, the University of Nebraska at Kearney provides several resources that aid students and faculty in achieving educational success and that promote educational outreach into the local community.
Online Offerings
UNK has been meeting the educational needs of nontraditional, off-campus students for more than three decades by offering high-quality, affordable online programs. UNK students who complete online degree programs and courses are offered the same valuable instruction as those who complete degree programs and courses on-campus. Online courses are taught by credentialed faculty with real-world experience. UNK provides a wide range of resources to the campus community to support and develop online and blended courses. These include training for online faculty, course consultations, test proctoring, student-centered resources, and video-related resources. UNK supports online learning spaces designed to encourage interaction and engagement among students and provide faculty with flexible video-capable options for class lectures and tutorials.
UNK closely monitors and evaluates the latest trends and resource developments to advance UNK's online and blended course offerings to stay competitive in the marketplace. To view UNK's online programs, courses, and resources, go to UNK Online.
G.W. Frank Museum of History and Culture
As UNK’s history museum, the G.W. Frank Museum of History and Culture is dedicated to exploring the culture and history of Kearney through collecting, preserving, and sharing the stories of the many individuals associated with its past. Located in the oldest building on campus, a Richardsonian Romanesque mansion built in 1889 by former Kearney residents George W. and Phoebe Frank and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Frank Museum provides educational opportunities through guided tours, exhibits, special programming, artifact collection, and continuous research. It functions as a hands-on learning lab and internship provider for UNK students and faculty interested in history, museum work, the arts, culture, architecture, engineering, and related disciplines. The Frank Museum serves as a community center by regularly hosting academic presentations, poetry readings, and workshops, among other cultural programming. The Frank Museum is available to hold UNK classes for a day or a full semester, and larger group tours can be arranged with at least two weeks advance notice.
The museum is customarily open to the public from 1-5 pm on Thursday and Friday, and noon-5 pm on Saturday and Sunday, with guided tours available at 1pm and 3pm on these days. For large group tours, please call to schedule at least two weeks in advance. Admission is free, and parking is readily available.
Information Technology Services
Information Technology Services provides administrative and academic technology-based services to the campus in addition to infrastructure, security, client services, and enterprise services. Available services include technical assistance and desktop support for faculty and staff; training for faculty, staff and students using a wide variety of computing resources; wired and wireless internet access; hardware and software purchasing assistance; server support; web development, instructional design; and administrative application development.
A variety of platforms support administrative, instructional and research functions for faculty, staff and students. All students have UNK email accounts and Microsoft 365 collaboration and storage environments. The Canvas learning management system is used for online teaching and learning with integrations to Zoom, YuJa (video content), and TurnItIn (plagiarism detection).
Email and printing workstations are maintained in each residence hall. All of the residence halls offer wired and wireless network access to students in each room and across campus including some outdoor wireless connectivity. Three general-purpose computer labs are located in the Calvin T. Ryan Library. General-purpose labs provide access to a standard suite of software with information available here. There are student computer labs, some with Macintosh computers and some with Windows-based computers, located in each of the academic buildings, maintained by individual departments.
Students with disabilities and special needs should contact the Office of Academic Success for information regarding accommodations.
The Help Desk, located in Warner Hall 2137, is available to answer questions, resolve problems and provide information about computer use and network services at UNK. Training sessions and hands-on assistance are offered for faculty, staff, and students wishing to learn more about many aspects of technology. The Help Desk is staffed from 8 am to 5 pm on Monday through Friday, and authentication assistance is available 24x7. (See the Helpdesk link at its.unk.edu).
Two sets of guidelines, the University of Nebraska Policy for Responsible Use of University Computers and Information Systems and Guidelines for the Use of Information Technology Resources at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, apply to faculty, staff and students at UNK.
Institutional Review Board
The role of the University of Nebraska at Kearney Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to protect human subjects who participate in research and to ensure that research conducted by UNK students, faculty, and staff complies with federal regulations and internal policies. The IRB is an independent committee that may be comprised of faculty from a variety of academic divisions, staff, students, individuals with medical expertise, and community members.
The three general ethical principles that underlie the regulations concerning human subject research are: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. These principles guide IRB review of research conducted at UNK or in affiliation with UNK:
Respect for Persons - Prospective participants in research must be given enough information about the nature of the research, what is required of them, and the potential benefits and risks of participating to allow them to make an informed decision about whether or not to participate.
Beneficence - Research involving human subjects must maintain a favorable balance between benefits and risks. Many types of risk must be considered, including physical harm, psychological harm, harm to one's reputation or employment status, and financial harm. In any risk-potential situation, the benefits should outweigh the potential risk. Subjects must be aware of potential risks before consenting to participate in the research.
Justice - Researchers should fairly recruit and select subjects for research participation. Fairness refers to the subjects as individuals as well as to subjects as members of a group based on factors such as age, socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and so on.
At the individual level, subjects cannot be selected only because they are favored by the researcher or disliked by the researcher (for example, only those failing a class are invited to participate). Additionally, certain groups should not be more burdened than others with being research subjects. On the other hand, groups should not be excluded from research because of prior beliefs or because they are difficult to reach as research subjects.
Depending on the research method and subjects, IRB review is conducted at three levels: exempt, expedited, and full board. Researchers should submit their protocols to the IRB prior to data collection. Researchers also must complete a human subjects protection training program. The link to the training, submission guidelines, and forms for IRB review are available from the IRB website: www.unk.edu/irb.
Library
The Calvin T. Library is available to all users. The library's homepage, library.unk.edu, provides the most up-to-date information on the library, its services, and its collections. The library’s faculty and staff focus on being an integral part of students' careers at UNK and work with campus partners to ensure outstanding academic support for every student, graduate or undergraduate, no matter where they are located. Throughout the year one-on-one reference assistance is available in person and by chat, text, email and telephone, either via drop-in or appointment. The library has a number of study rooms and computing resources available for use, including laptops available for checkout.
A massive amount of print and online resources are available to students and community users. Print collections of note include the Archives and Special Collections, which focus on Nebraska history and the history of the university, and the Curriculum Collection, which includes examples of resources used in pre-K through 12th grade, along with the Nebraska Archive of Children’s Literature. Computers are available throughout the library as well as for checkout for up to three days.
The library also houses the Loper Success Hub, which includes the UNK Writing Center, Tutoring Offices, Success Coaching, Student Disability Services Office, Academic Advising, Career Development, and TRiO/SSS offices, as well other services and activities focused on student academic success.
Miriam Drake Theater
The Miriam Drake Theatre is a 334-seat proscenium house with a complete functional fly system and modern sound and lighting systems. The stage house has traps, orchestra pit, and all the necessary equipment for full value stage productions. The theatre is located in the Fine Arts Building and is home to theatrical and dance productions throughout the year. This space is a laboratory and performance venue for undergraduate students in theatre, musical theatre, and dance. The university productions are open to students, faculty and the community at large.
Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA)
The Museum of Nebraska Art is unique among art museums, dedicated exclusively to telling the story of Nebraska through the art of Nebraska. MONA exhibits the work of a distinguished and diverse collection of artists including pieces by Nebraska artists as well as artwork featuring Nebraska subjects by artists from all over the world. A Kearney landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places, MONA provides a fitting home for its collection of over 6,000 works. Located in downtown Kearney, MONA is a regional center for cultural activities where students enjoy opportunities to broaden their academic experiences through their association with the Museum and its collection. Visitors enjoy MONA by attending exhibitions, special educational workshops, lectures, and musical performances. Web and distance education programming provide connections to the Museum beyond central Nebraska as well. With no admission fee and convenient parking, MONA is an artistic treasure readily available to all. For more information, visit MONA's website: mona.unk.edu.
Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic
The Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic is the academic center for the B.S.Ed. degree program in Communication Disorders and the M.S.Ed. degree program in Speech/Language Pathology. It offers a site for the integration of professional coursework with extensive practical experience under direct faculty supervision for those students choosing this major.
The Speech, Language, Hearing and RiteCare Clinics offer consultation, evaluation, and treatment for students, faculty, and the general public. Services are available for both children and adults with communication disorders related to stroke, laryngectomy, cleft palate, head injury, cerebral palsy, voice disorders, premature birth, stuttering, hearing loss, articulation, language delay, swallowing, developmental delay, second language acquisition, language and learning disorders, and augmentative and alternative communication needs. The clinics are located at the west end of the College of Education Building. Clients may park in the lot 18 directly off Hwy. 30 by the main doors to the clinic. For more information, please contact the Clinic Coordinator at 308-865-8507 or the Department of Communication Disorders at 308-865-8300.
Walker Art Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery is dedicated to serving the students, faculty and staff of the Department of Art and Art History, the University campus community and the Kearney region, by presenting exhibitions of accomplished visual expression. Two such exhibitions are presented each academic year, drawn from regional as well as national sources. Each of these exhibitions is selected for its educational and inspirational value to the students, as well as artistic merit and intent. As a rule, exhibiting artists and designers lecture on their work, or offer gallery talks. In addition, one half of the standing permanent art faculty exhibits new work each year on a rotating basis.
The Walker Art Gallery devotes over half of its exhibition schedule to the UNK art students. There is an annual exhibition of student work deemed exceptional by the art faculty, and a series, each semester, of capstone senior exhibitions. The students are given the primary responsibility for the installation and deinstallation of their exhibitions, thus gaining invaluable practicum experience.
Writing Center
The Writing Center is located in UNK’s Learning Commons on the second floor of C.T. Ryan Library. The Center provides one-on-one writing assistance at no charge to all UNK students, faculty, and staff. Consultations can take place face-to-face or via Zoom, with consultations lasting 30 minutes (for 1-3 pages) to one hour (for 4-7 pages). Visitors can bring any piece of writing at any stage in the writing process for help with pre-writing and drafting, generating a thesis, supporting ideas, organizing paragraphs, writing clearly and concisely, citing outside sources, editing for grammar and punctuation errors, and more. UNK students, faculty, and staff can submit work electronically for eTutoring via the Learning Commons’ website: Go to www.unk.edu/lc and click the Writing Center link. Writers receive feedback on one paper at a time, and submitted papers are reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis. When reviewing a paper, the tutor uses margin comments to provide in-text feedback and suggestions, tailored to the writer’s listed concerns. The reviewed draft is then sent to the writer by return e-mail within two to four days of a submission, not counting weekends.
All kinds of writers use the Writing Center, including highly successful writers who know that every writer needs a reader, less confident writers who want to improve their skills and learn new techniques, and writers learning English in conjunction with college-level writing. In keeping with our goal to help all writers improve their own skills, writing consultants will not correct, edit, proofread, or write any part of the paper; instead, they will help writers identify patterns of error and consider other options and strategies. Visit www.unk.edu/lc for exact hours and to make an appointment.