Monty Nielsen vividly remembers being taught by his mother, Neva Nielsen, in a one room rural school in Nebraska. He witnessed firsthand her passion and enthusiasm for teaching, and now he hopes to pass it on to students at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

Conan O’Brien was a student of the late, great Johnny Carson.
But what exactly, he asked, made the man so great?

“Sometimes everybody’s talking about how amazing he was but they’re not telling you why,” Conan said in a clip from a documentary about Carson, the legendary comedian and host of The Tonight Show who graduated from UNL.

The clip, from a documentary UNL students made, was played the other day for guests in the campus theater named for Carson.

“He was the complete package,” O’Brien continued. “He’s a great physical comedian. There’s a lot of grace. Great at playing comedic moments the way any great improviser – like Will Ferrell or Steve Carrell – would. He could play those moments perfectly … Great with coming up with one-liners. A great ad-libber. But he was also an intellectual.”

(At UNL, he wrote a thesis on comedy, after studying and categorizing the jokes he heard on the radio. Carson once said in an interview that his college education helped him in his career – in the type of material he did and in the way he saw the world.)

Johnny Carson was one more thing, people who knew him say – generous. He promoted the rising young comedians who came out from behind his curtain and made him laugh. He tried to make all of his guests look good.

And he never forgot his friends back home, or his alma mater.

Learn about the most recent gift to UNL from the foundation that bears his great name.

He could run like the wind. He was fit.
He had a famous name: Buffett.
Fred “Fritz” Buffett grew up in Omaha and was a first cousin to billionaire Warren Buffett, the CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.
He was kind, Fred’s wife, Pamela Buffett, told The Omaha World-Herald. He was a “glorious” person, she told the paper.
But none of that could cure the kidney cancer that hit him. Like many families, the Buffetts ended up losing a loved one to cancer. Fred died of cancer in 1997 at age 60.
His wife recently gave a gift in tribute to him and to his Nebraska roots.
Find out what she did – and what others are doing – to help other glorious people who have to face cancer.
 

A groundbreaking was held today by the University of Nebraska Medical Center and The Nebraska Medical Center for the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center. Major donors to the project were announced at the groundbreaking.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center and The Nebraska Medical Center announced today that their cancer center project in midtown Omaha has a name: the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center.

The phone call came at 3:30 a.m. with the shocking news: The storm blew the roof off the library.

My library? 

That was Janet Stoeger Wilke’s first thought. She’s the dean of the library at UNK. Her second thought was to get herself and her staff there as soon as possible to help save the books. 

The April storm and its 78-mph winds left a lot of damage to the library and fine arts building at UNK. 

But it left some silver linings, too. 

In the United States, the word “pitch” often is associated with America’s favorite pastime, baseball.

But in many other countries, “pitch” refers to the surface where soccer – the world’s most popular sport – is played. 

Find out how such a "pitch" soon will help transform UNO's Caliglia Field into one of the best soccer complexes in the country. 

Eileen Ryan loved helping people. 

“Years ago, we started out doing small things,” she told us last year for a story about her and her husband, Wayne. “Now that we have more, we do more." 

“I always tell Wayne, ‘Half of the fun of having money is giving it away.’”

She loved Omaha. Much of her generosity can be seen many places around her town including UNMC, where Wayne was a longtime professor. 

She loved God. She told us this last year, too: 

“One thing I think of very often, particularly when I go to funerals, is that line from Scripture: No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.” 

Eileen Ryan passed away recently. 

Learn more of her story. 

Those who attend the more than 100 events held each year in the Johnny Carson Theater at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Lied Center for Performing Arts will notice several improvements to the 23-year-old venue when its renovation is completed next year.

The thousands of guests from around the world who each year visit Quilt House, home to the International Quilt Study Center & Museum at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, now look forward to seeing even more inside thanks to planned expansion of the museum.