By Gail Hairston
The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences will hold its Hall of Fame Ceremony Oct. 7 to induct four new members — Karl “Kip” Cornett, a 1977 alumnus and founder of Cornett; Sally Mason, a 1972 alumna and former president of the University of Iowa; Robert Ireland, an emeriti faculty of history; and Judith Lesnaw, an emeriti faculty of biology. The college’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony and reception will be held at 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7, in the UK Academic Science Building, located at 680 Rose St. Cornett was born in Hazard, Kentucky, and graduated from UK in 1977. Seven years later, he founded Cornett, an advertising firm that has become one of the leading agencies in the region. During his years at the university, Cornett was president of Theta Chi Fraternity, vice president of the StudentNews
By Bryant Welbourne
Two University of Kentucky students are among 28 students from Southeastern Conference universities who will study abroad during the 2016-17 academic year, the result of a contribution to the league by Dr Pepper. In 2015, the SEC corporate sponsor allocated $100,000 to the conference to provide study abroad opportunities for SEC students who excel in the classroom, demonstrate financial need and represent nontraditional study abroad participants. Shazia Olivares, a sophomore poltical science major from Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Jevincio Tooson, a dietetics major from Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, are the UK recipients of the awards. Olivares plans to study in Spain and Tooson will study in Italy. “We are enthused to expand upon the SEC’s commitment to education by giving deserving students a chance to study abroad through the SECU
On October 1, 2016, the University of Kentucky Department of Biology is hosting BioBonanza, a one-day open house festival.
BioBonanza will be held at the new Academic Science Building at 680 Rose Street on Saturday, October 1 from noon to 4 pm. Free parking is available in the parking garage on Hilltop Avenue, next to the Academic Science Building.
This free event will showcase interactive displays on research taking place in biology at UK. “As soon as you walk through the doors you’ll see all sorts of activities: displays of how a human heart works, butterflies and all sorts of insects, and you can even try to catch some local insects,” said Jennifer Simkin, a postdoc in biology who helped organize the event. “The displays will target high school and middle school students, but we’re going to have activities for people of all ages, so we welcome families.
By Gail Hairston
With the notable exception of the southeast, craft beers have flooded most regions of the country in the past decade. Microbreweries, craft brews and brewpubs, large and small, have challenged the way Americans drink and think about beer. Once regarded as a product created exclusively by traditionalists and hobbyists for self-consumption, craft beer has become one of the fastest-growing segments of alcoholic beverage sales in the United States. According to the Brewers Association, which calls itself “a passionate voice for craft brewers,” craft beer provides over 108,000 jobs, and many of the breweries and brewpubs have, in turn, helped revitalize city neighborhoods, generated new jobs in related industries, and played a key role in expanding digital and social media usage.
It’s been 21 years since Robin Cooper started working in the department of biology in the University of Kentucky College of Arts & sciences. It’s been 130 years since Thomas Hunt Morgan, Kentucky’s first Nobel Laureate, graduated from what is now called UK. What do they have in common? They used the same research organisms: fruit flies and crayfish.
“Thomas Hunt Morgan went on for graduate work and he was awarded the Nobel Prize, working with Drosophila [fruit flies] as a model organism. A lot of people don’t realize though, some of his first work was actually on regeneration in crustaceans,” Cooper said. “The power of genetics allows us to work with the Drosophila and do things really you can’t do with any other organism. Because of rapid development, you can manipulate genes really quickly and test out many different aspects from behavior to how the neuro circuits are
By Jay Blanton, Kody Kiser
Steven Alvarez is used to questions about language, words and meaning. But he couldn’t have been prepared for the questions being posed for teaching one class last semester. Provocatively titled, “Taco Literacy,” the class taught by Alvarez to undergraduates in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies (WRD) at the University of Kentucky used food to explore issues of Hispanic language and culture — a growing population in Lexington. Some, however, criticized the class as an example of being frivolous. Soon, media in Lexington — and across the country — were approaching Alvarez to ask what he meant by “taco literacy.” The class, while exploring some of the culinary smells and tastes of Hispanic and
By Whitney Harder
University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto announced today a $10 million gift from The Don Jacobs Sr. Charitable Foundation to further invest in undergraduate science education. The majority of the gift — $8 million — will go toward the new academic science building that now takes the name Don & Cathy Jacobs Science Building. Another $2 million will fund future academic and research investments yet to be determined. The legacy of Lexington businessman and philanthropist Don Jacobs and his wife Cathy already lives on across the UK campus — from business education to health care. And now, that same legacy will impact thousands of UK students, who are projected to use the new science building annually. Don and Cathy Jacobs have now donated funds in excess of $20 million to UK in areas ranging from science and health toBy Jay Blanton, Kody Kiser
Tracy Campbell views history as a way to explore the paradoxes of humanity and the human condition. “We’re human beings. We are complex. We are not perfect,” said Campbell, a University of Kentucky professor of history. “Why do we like Shakespeare? Because it’s not devils versus angels. It’s about how the two can usually be in the same head … and that’s a lot more interesting, but it’s also a lot more human … the paradox of American history is what I really enjoy trying to understand.” Campbell discusses the exploration of those paradoxes in his work at UK and in how he teaches students in this week’s edition of “Behind the Blue,” the podcast produced by UK Public Relations and Marketing that explores the people and events that make UK the university for Kentucky. Campbell — a native Kentuckian and UKBy Jenny Wells
All graduates of the University of Kentucky Department of Chemistry are invited to a reunion weekend this fall at UK’s new Don and Cathy Jacobs Science Building. The UK Chemistry Alumni Board will host the reunion Oct. 14-15 and are asking those interested to RSVP by Sept. 23. All graduates, including bachelor's, master's and doctoral students are invited, as well as friends of the department. “The Chemistry Reunion is a first for our department and should provide a great opportunity for our alumni to reconnect with friends and former classmates,” said Steve Yates, UK chemistry professor and chairman of the reunion committee. Featured events include an open house at the new science building 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 14, and a reception at the KingBy Jenny Wells
Qiang Ye, University of Kentucky professor of mathematics in the UK College of Arts and Sciences, has received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to research and develop new algorithms for solving linear algebra problems that will address accuracy problems in computer arithmetic. The three-year, $225,000 grant will allow Ye and his team to develop new methods to more accurately compute eigenvalues of large matrices, a computation that has many scientific and engineering applications such as Google search page ranking, structure design, image processing and circuit simulations. Large-scale computations of this nature are often inherently ill-conditioned, according to Ye, which implies their results may suffer from loss of accuracy caused by
The Trunzo Scholars Program began this summer and allowed seven College of Arts & Sciences students to participate in education abroad or professional internship opportunities. Established by Robert N. (Political Science ’78) and Anne Trunzo of Brookfield, Wisconsin, the Trunzo Scholars Program was designed to help political science and pre-law students expand their academic and professional horizons through education abroad and internship opportunities. The first class of Trunzo Scholars includes students who spent the summer interning in areas of politics, government, law, or public policy and in education abroad programs based in South Africa, Morocco and Spain, England and Peru. The comments and photos below provide a flavor of the students’ adventures and the life-changing impact of these intensive, high-impact learning opportunities.
“The most rewarding aspect of
Margaret McGladrey, a graduate student in the Department of Sociology, has published a study "Becoming Tween Bodies: What Preadolescent GIrls in the US Say About Beauty, the 'Just-Right Ideal,' and the "Disney Girls'" in the Journal of Children and Media. A blog post on ChildrenAndMediaMan about the study was recently published here. You can read the full study here.
McGladrey is the Assistant Dean for Research in the College of Public Health and a doctorate student at the University of Kentucky. This study resulted from her thesis project for her master's program in Communication at the University of
Lee Mengitsu, a junior pre-journalism major and sociology minor, recently had a blog published titled "We Did the Crime, We Did the Time. Now Let Us Vote." on Generation Progress. Read the blog here. In the blog, Mengitsu discusses the barriers former felons face when returning to society, namely voting rights.
By Whitney Hale
The University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) successfully completed work on its National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) digitization grant, resulting in online access to 140 cubic feet of materials from the Bert T. Combs Appalachian Collection. The materials from the Coal, Camps and Railroads project is available to the public through the digital library ExploreUK. The newly digitized materials at UK focus on 189 years of economic development in the Eastern Kentucky coalfield from 1788 to 1976. The 10 individual collections document: the search for, extraction of, and distribution of coal, oil and natural gas resources in Breathitt, Boyd, ClarkBy Gail Hairston
Kentucky is privileged with a bounty of railroad museums and attractions, but the Elkhorn City Railroad Museum has a charm and history all its own.
With its unique collection of railroading tools, equipment, uniforms and instruments; enhanced by books and photos; and personalized by retired railroad employees eager to share their tales of life on the rails, the Elkhorn City Railroad Museum preserves and protects Eastern Kentucky’s pride and culture as well as its hope for the future.
This past spring semester, University of Kentucky sociology students in Associate Professor Shaunna L. Scott’s “Sociology of Appalachia” class were quick to recognize the potential of the small museum
By Gail Hairston
University of Kentucky Professor of History Jeremy Popkin was recently awarded a prestigious Public Scholar program award of $50,400 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The grant will fund Popkin’s research and writing, leading to the publication of his manuscript on the French Revolution, “Free and Equal: The Story of the French Revolution.” The NEH Public Scholar program is meant to support scholars in the humanities who are writing books that will bring the best of current research to a broad general audience. This book will "give readers new perspectives about the French Revolution by incorporating, among other things, my own research on the role of the media during the revolution and the importance of the revolutionaries' struggles about slavery in the French colonies," Popkin said. "The project is anBy Whitney Harder
The decrease in fishery productivity in Lake Tanganyika, Africa's oldest lake, since the 1950s is a consequence of global warming rather than just overfishing, according to a new report from an international team led by a University of Arizona (UA) geoscientist that includes the University of Kentucky's Michael McGlue, who is Pioneer Professor of Stratigraphy in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. The lake was becoming warmer at the same time in the 1800s the abundance of fish began declining, the team found. The lake's algae — fish food — also started decreasing at that time. However, large-scale commercial fishing did not begin on Lake Tanganyika until the 1950s. The new finding helps illuminate why the lake's fisheriesBy Gail Hairston
Hannah Pittard, University of Kentucky assistant professor of English and creative writing, continues to impress the literary world with her third novel, “Listen to Me.” Designated as “an emerging voice,” Pittard’s “Listen to Me” was on Buzz Book’s list of must-read books in 2016. On July 5, Washington Post’s mysteries and thrillers reviewer Patrick Anderson called “Listen to Me” a “captivating” novel. In Saturday’s New York Times, critic Erica Wagner said Pittard “creates…the feeling of emotional truth.” Pittard’s thriller/mystery is about a young couple who fear their marriage is driving them both crazy. The youngBy Whitney Harder
The circadian rhythm, or circadian clock, is an internal mechanism that drives the 24-hour cycles that tell our bodies when to sleep, wake and eat — and now, new research has found that bacteria living within the gut also have a clock. "We are the directors of that clock, much like the sun directs our own circadian rhythms!" said Jiffin Paulose, UK post-doctoral scholar and co-author of the study in PLOS ONE. Paulose and Professor and Chair of the Department of Biology Vincent Cassone found that a certain class of bacteria found in the human gut, Enterobacter aerogenes, expresses circadian patterns because of its sensitivity to melatonin, the hormone produced atBy Samantha Ponder
University of Kentucky doctoral student Paul Hime has been awarded the Blue Waters Graduate Fellowship from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Hime, a graduate student in Associate Professor David Weisrock's lab in the Department of Biology, is one of only 10 students across the country who has been selected for the program. The NCSA's Blue Waters Fellowship will give Hime access to one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world — the Blue Waters supercomputer. He will also receive a $38,000 stipend, up to $12,000 in tuition allowance, an allocation of up to 50,000 node-hours on the computing system, and funds for travel to a Blue Waters-sponsored symposium to present research