Dr. John Falconer
director of Sponsored Programs, 308.865.8496
Poster sessions, oral presentations, musical performances and art exhibitions will be among the activities taking place during Student Research Day on Friday, April 20, at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
“This year, we have seen a significant growth in the number of posters, oral presentations, and performances,” said Dr. John Falconer, director of UNK Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities. “I encourage all instructors to consider promoting this event to students, where they can see the diversity and quality of original scholarly work done by UNK students. It can be an important step in recruiting new students to engage in research and creative activity.
The event, which will be held in the Nebraskan Student Union, will begin with poster judging at 9 a.m. From 1:30 – 3:30 p.m., there will be oral presentations and open poster viewing followed by an awards ceremony at 3:45 p.m. Prizes are awarded for both oral and poster presentations.
There will be a Student Research Day from noon until 1:15 p.m. Guest speaker for the luncheon will be UNK graduate Jordan Kuck, a Ph.D. candidate in modern European history at the University of Tennessee. Kuck received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UNK in 2005 and 2007, respectively. His master’s thesis, which was supervised by Dr. Carol Lilly, a UNK professor of history, was selected as the runner-up for the best graduate thesis that year. During his undergraduate career, he was a member of the UNK Honors Program, Student Support Services and a pedagogical research team that traveled to Rostock, Germany in 2003. He also studied abroad at Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany in 2004, and participated in the 2005 National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Further, he co-wrote a book, “A Century of Sports at the University of Nebraska at Kearney,” with Dr. Mark Ellis, a UNK associate professor of history.
Kuck specializes in the history of the interwar period in Europe, on the topics of nationalism, democracy and the periods various “isms,” particularly authoritarianism, fascism, communism and totalitarianism. His dissertation, which he plans to finish next year, focuses on the authoritarian regime of Karlis Ulmanis, the University of Nebraska educated dictator who ruled Latvia from 1934 -1940. He has presented papers at a number of regional and international conferences in the United States and Latvia, and he has published numerous articles.
In addition, he has been the recipient of numbers prizes and awards, including a U.S. State Department Fulbright Fellowship to Latvia, a U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Students (FLAS) Fellowship and the J. Wallace and Katie Dean Non-Service Fellowship from the University of Tennessee Graduate School. Last spring, he received the Chancellor’s Extraordinary Professional Promise Award from the University of Tennessee.
