Wayne State College

Wayne State College is a prestigious institution in north east Nebraska. It is located in the small city of Wayne, 45 miles south west of Sioux City, Iowa, and 100 miles north west of Omaha, Nebraska’s largest city.

Originally employing four members of staff and teaching 35 students, many of which part-funded their tuition with milk, eggs or chicken from their farms, it now runs around 100 courses, the overwhelming majority of which are for undergraduates, though postgraduates can study education, business administration or organisational management at the college. Education, criminal justice and pre-professional programmes at Wayne State are among the most popular.

Private between 1891, the college became part of the state university system in 1909. It has previously been known as Nebraska Normal School, Nebraska State Normal College and the Nebraska State Teachers College at Wayne, acquiring its current name in 1963, soon after it dropped the two-year teacher certificates it had run between the wars and post-World War II.

James Keogh, head of speechwriting while Richard Nixon was president, and previously executive editor of Time magazine, and Val Peterson, governor of Nebraska and, later, US ambassador to Denmark and Finland, who gives his name to the Peterson Fine Arts Building, both studied at Wayne State.