Northern Kentucky University
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Northern Kentucky University |
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| Motto | Quality-Made, Community-Driven |
| Established | 1968 |
| Type | Public |
| Endowment | $29.7 million |
| President | Dr. James C. Votruba |
| Undergraduates | 12,188 |
| Postgraduates | 1,722 |
| Location | Highland Heights, KY, USA |
| Campus | Suburban |
| Athletics | Norse |
| Colors | Gold █, Black █, and White █[1] |
| Affiliations | Great Lakes Valley Conference |
| Website | www.nku.edu |
Northern Kentucky University is a public, co-educational university located in Highland Heights, Kentucky, seven miles (11 km) southeast of Cincinnati, Ohio. Enrollment is currently about 14,200 students. NKU is the second largest university in Greater Cincinnati and the youngest of Kentucky's eight state universities.
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[edit] History
Northern Kentucky University was founded in 1968 as Northern Kentucky State College and awarded its first bachelor's degrees in May 1973. Originally formed as a University of Kentucky extension campus, in 1976, it became Northern Kentucky University. The Salmon P. Chase College of Law , formerly an independent law school in Cincinnati, merged with Northern Kentucky State College in 1971.
[edit] Campuses
NKU's main campus in Highland Heights, Kentucky is situated on more than 330 acres of rolling countryside along U.S. Highway 27, just off Interstate 275 (Ohio), seven miles southeast of Cincinnati, Ohio.
NKU's Covington campus, located in Covington, Kentucky, mainly serves nontraditional and adult students and also hosts the Program for Adult-Centered Education and Emergency Medical Technology programs.
The NKU Grant County Center, located in Williamstown, Kentucky is a partnership between the Grant County Foundation for Higher Education and NKU. It houses NKU educational programs and the Williamstown Innovation Center.
[edit] Campus life
NKU is in the process of building a $37 million, 144,000-square foot student union building, the $60 million Bank of Kentucky Center, a 9,000-to-10,000-seat arena for basketball games and other events, and a $30 million four-story complex featuring a 100-room hotel, a 40,000-square-foot, upscale restaurant and retail area and 30,000-square feet of office space.
NKU's Alumni Association Lecture Series has featured such guests as politicians Mario Cuomo, Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, Newt Gingrich, George McGovern, Bob Dole and John Edwards; political strategists James Carville, Mary Matalin and Paul Begala; journalist Bob Woodward; and commentators George Stephanopoulos and George Will. The 2006 Alumni Association Lecture Series will feature Tucker Carlson, a conservative commentator who appears on MSNBC and writes for a number of national publications, and liberal writer, comedian and radio talk show host Al Franken.
[edit] Academics
[edit] Schools and colleges
- College of Arts and Sciences
- College of Business
- College of Education and Human Services
- College of Informatics
- Department of Nursing and Health Professions
- Salmon P. Chase College of Law
- Honors Program
NKU's Alpha Beta Phi chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the International History Honor Society, has won 15 consecutive best chapter awards.
The Landrum Academic Center houses an Anthropology Museum.
[edit] Libraries
NKU's main library is the W. Frank Steely Library, named after the first president of NKU and completed in 1975. A $9.1 million renovation and expansion project was completed in 1995. The library's five floors contain 300,258 volumes, 18,797 bound periodicals and 1.4 million microforms. The library also houses the Greater Cincinnati Library Consortium Media Collection. In a Southern Association of Schools and Colleges reaccreditation study, library space was one of the main concerns. Following the state-funded 1995 expansion and renovation, Steely Library space has been taken by Women's Studies, offices for the Dean of Arts & Sciences, Media Services, Professional & Organizational Development Center, the Learning Resource Center, the Welcome Center, and several non-library faculty offices, all of which have taken over one-half of the new space. Addition of open-air IT help desks on the first and forth floors have been a recent source of controversy, as they have dramatically increased noise levels. Steely Library also has been plagued with the overuse of cell-phones, and struggles with decreasing availabity of computing resources to students wishing to study, with most of the computers being used for social networking sites, such as Myspace and Facebook.com.
The other library on campus is the two-floor Chase Law Library, which contains more than 313,792 volumes and approximately 57,859 monographic and serial titles.
[edit] Athletics
Northern Kentucky University is an NCAA Division II school that is part of the Great Lakes Valley Conference. Its sports nickname is 'Norse.' The Norse field teams in men's baseball, women's softball, men's and women's basketball, soccer, cross country, tennis, golf, and women's volleyball.
The Norse has claimed the GLVC All-Sports Trophy in five of the last seven years (1999-2000, 2000-01, 01-02, 04-05 and 05-06).
In 2000, the NKU women’s basketball team became NKU's first national championship team by winning the NCAA Women's Division II Basketball Championship ending its season with a 32-2 record. The 2002-03 team was the NCAA Women's Division II national runner-up.
The men's basketball team was the NCAA Division II national runner-up during the 1995-96 and 1996-97 seasons.
The women's soccer team was the NCAA Division II runner-up in 2000 and advanced to the NCAA Division II Final Four in 1999 and 2001.
The fastpitch softball team holds the NCAA record (including Division I) for most consecutive wins in a season with 55.
In 2006, the Norse cheerleading squad won the Universal Cheerleading Association's national title in the small unit coed category of NCAA Division II competition, and also won the national title again in 2007.
Students have organized club teams in ice hockey, taekwondo, fencing, boxing, lacrosse, rugby, skeet & trap, and brazilian jiujitsu. These clubs are primarily organized through the Sport Club program.
[edit] Campus media
The Northerner is NKU's award-winning, independent, student-run newspaper. It has an online presence at The Northerner.
WNTV News and a new late night comedy show are some of the television programming offered on the student-run TV station. WRFN is the online student-run radio station.
NKU is host to the award-winning public radio station WNKU-FM, founded in 1986. You can listen live at WNKU.
[edit] Notable alumni
- Steve Chabot, U.S. Representative from Ohio's 1st Congressional District, earned his Juris Doctor from the Salmon P. Chase College of Law in 1978.
- Actor George Clooney briefly attended NKU but did not graduate.
- Wrestler Wildcat Chris Harris attend NKU for two years but did not graduate.
- Ken Lucas, former U.S. Representative from Kentucky's fourth congressional district from 1999 to 2005, received an honorary doctorate from NKU. Lucas was a founding regent at NKU, where he served for 23 years on the Board of Regents, 13 of those as chairman. After his term in Congress, Lucas donated his congressional papers to the Schlachter Family Archives in NKU's Steely Library. In 1994, Lucas had a building on campus named after him, the Lucas Administrative Center.
- David Mack, acclaimed creator of the comic book Kabuki and former writer/artist of Daredevil, graduated from NKU in 1995 with a BFA in graphic design.
- Actress Jenny Robertson, who has appeared on such television programs as "Law and Order" and "Reno 911!"
- Shawn Nordheim, Mrs. Kentucky 2006, has an associate's degree in nursing from NKU.
- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb attended NKU and was on staff of the student newspaper, The Northerner, before dropping out and joining The Kentucky Post. He later worked at the San Jose Mercury News, where his series, "Dark Alliance," CRACK AND THE CONTRAS alleged that the U.S.-supported Contra rebels in Nicaragua sold drugs in America and were largely responsible for introducing crack-cocaine into the US. There was debate about the accuracy of the series, although the series was soon found to be accurate. Webb committed suicide in December 2004.
- Warren Bettis, an Ohio jurist who serves as a judge on the Ohio Court of Claims, earned his law degree from the Chase College of Law in 1952.
- Joe Zerhusen, the public-address announcer for Cincinnati Reds home games at Great American Ball Park and public-address announcer for University of Cincinnati men's basketball and football home games.
- Brigham A. McCown, the Deputy Administrator and Acting Administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) at the U.S. Department of Transportation, earned a law degree from the Chase College of Law in 1997.
- Ryan Abeo (RA Scion), MC of Common Market, a hip hop duo based in Seattle, Washington, attended NKU, but did not graduate.
[edit] Notable faculty
- Gary McGurk, an actor from Home Improvement and Babylon 5, is a current acting professor at NKU.
- Dr. James Ramage, a faculty member in the history department, is a well-known Civil War expert who recently had a Civil War museum in Ft. Wright, Kentucky named in his honor.
- Ukrainian pianist Sergei Polusmiak, an internationally renowned concert artist and master teacher, is artist in residence and professor in the music department.
- Joan Ferrante is a sociology professor who is best known as the author of several popular sociology textbooks, among them Sociology: A Global Perspective.
- Stephen Leigh, a novelist, is an assistant professor at NKU.
- Richard Cowan, an internationally recognized opera singer and founder of Lyrique en Mer/Festival de Belle Ile, an opera festival in Western France, is currently on the faculty in the music department.
[edit] Partnerships
NKU is a national model of civic engagement and economic development initiatives. Corporate and university partnerships include The Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement, the Fifth/Third Entrepreneurial Center, the Metropolitan Education and Training Services Center, the Infrastructure Management Institute, and Fidelity Investments.
Other centers on campus include the Institute for Freedom Studies, the Center for Applied Ecology, the Small Business Development Center, the Institute for New Economy Technologies, the Center for Environmental Education, the Center for Integrative National Science and Mathematics and the Chase Local Government Law Center.
[edit] References
- ^ Welcome to NKU. Retrieved on February 26, 2007. “the logo will use the school colors of gold, white and black”
[edit] External links
- Great Lakes Valley Conference Website
- GLVC Communication
- Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization (CEO) at NKU
- NKU Club Hockey
| Great Lakes Valley Conference |
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| Bellarmine • Drury • Indianapolis • Kentucky Wesleyan • Lewis • Missouri-Rolla • Missouri-St. Louis • Northern Kentucky • Quincy • Rockhurst • Saint Joseph's • Southern Illinois-Edwardsville • Southern Indiana • Wisconsin–Parkside |
