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Woman: Dear historian.
Here is a new way to study.
Enjoy the time machine?
(dramatic music)
-: Hello. -: Hi!
King Alfred the Great.
I have a couple questions for you.
Narrator: Lindsey Peterson's final exam
wasn't on paper.
-: I directed and filmed and edited and produced
one video about time traveling through history
for our final review.
And another as Henry the VIII as The Bachelor.
-: Stay on here.
Narrator: In the Department of History
it's never one-size-fits-all.
-: Some of these creative projects have been
utterly remarkable.
And I think the students work very very hard at them
but because it's their own, they learn about it.
They understand it so much more
than if they just sat for an exam.
Narrator: With support from faculty mentors
students are encouraged to travel their own path.
Woman: What I want to do is make sure
that I'm not lecturing at them
but that I'm lecturing and trying to engage them.
And so, I want it to be student centered
and not just me imparting that knowledge.
Woman: The history classes that I have taken
have been very discussion based.
What the students initiate in the conversation
and then we kind of feed off each other.
Man: A Department of History is one of our departments
that's committed to excellence.
And delivering that excellence in terms of
innovative curriculum
that brings excitement
and an engagement from all the students in the classroom.
Woman: Innovative programs include the successful
History Harvest, where students work with the community
to create digital history projects.
Digital techniques are also put to use to study text,
or recreate an environment.
Man: There's so much about society that is defined
by the environment in which we live
and we can't really understand that unless we can see it
and get a sense of space and presence and scale.
And 3D graphics allow us to do that in a way
that would just have been impossible with just text,
or even with hand drawings.
Woman: By including the digital aspect
we can take research a step further
and go about it in a new way.
Contribute new things to the scholarship.
Narrator: The student experience emphasizes
engagement and critical thinking.
Small freshman level classes provide a distinctive
look at the past.
Woman: One of the ones that I teach is an
introduction to legal history class.
It's called Making and Breaking Law in
United States History.
And we're doing it at the 100 level
for freshmen exclusively.
It's really meant to be a nurturing environment
but one that also teaches them those really creative
and critical analytical skills.
Narrator: A supportive environment extends
through graduate school.
Man: They get to interact with us.
They get to teach with us, in some cases.
And I think it's a generally pretty collegiate environment.
It's competitive, but it's not cutthroat.
Narrator: The diverse history faculty earns
International recognition for leading edge research.
Excellent teaching, and mentoring
develops a culture of vibrancy.
-: So there's a very strong relationship between students
and their faculty.
Woman: They realize that you have needs
and that every student is different.
Woman: I really love my subject matter.
And I really really love my students here
at the University of Nebraska.
Man: We're giving them tools not only to help
with their own research, but hopefully also to make them
generally more marketable.
Woman: We have a range of courses that we teach
because our expertise really spans (laughs)
centuries, millennia.
And also continents.
And I like that kind of diversity in terms of
the content.
But I also like the different approaches that we
have to the classroom.
-: We like to do research, we like to think,
we like to bring our scholarship to life.
And I think that's, that's what a good department should do.
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