By Katy Bennett

The University of Kentucky is honoring its August and December graduates with December Commencement this Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, and friends and family of our graduates who cannot make it to Lexington do not have to miss out on this special event. UK is utilizing social media and other technology to bring Commencement to your computer or mobile device.

Both the Graduate and Professional Students and Undergraduate Commencement ceremonies will be live-streamed online at www.uky.edu/uknow, the University’s daily news website. Fifteen minutes prior to each ceremony's start, “Live from the Big Blue Carpet” will air and features students, faculty and special guests as they prepare for Commencement and is hosted by students from the 

By: Katie Pratt

University of Kentucky faculty and students recently participated in the university’s second annual Environmental and Sustainability Research Showcase, which highlighted research related to environmental and sustainability science and policy.

The event was hosted by UK’s Tracy Farmer Institute for Sustainability and the Environment and the College of Agriculture’s Environmental and Natural Resources Initiative. The goal was to encourage collaborations across disciplines and colleges to enhance environmental and sustainability research.

As part of the event, UK students submitted posters highlighting their research. A panel of judges chose the best posters based on criteria that included scientific thought, skill level and thoroughness of data collection and assessment.

“The posters covered a very diverse range of topics

By Kathy Johnson

The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center, Appalachian Studies and the Graduate Appalachian Research Community are making a call for papers for the 2012 UK Appalachian Research Symposium and Arts Showcase. The topic of the work must be related to Appalachia, original, and produced in the last three years. 

The deadline for submitting an abstract of work online is midnight Dec. 15. The submission can be made by going to the GARC tab on www.

By Student Activities Board, Katy Bennett

All-nighters, highlighters and lots of coffee usually sum up many students' finals week traditions. However, one of UK's favorite traditions hopes to alleviate some of the stress of finals week, even if it's just for one night. Midnight Finals Crunch Brunch is from 9 p.m. until midnight, tonight, Dec. 12, at Memorial Coliseum on UK's campus. Crunch Brunch is sponsored by the Student Activities Board. A valid UK ID is required to attend this free event.

Students can come and enjoy a free hot breakfast served by UK faculty and staff. Each student who attends Crunch Brunch will receive a free long sleeved T-shirt while supplies last. There will also be activities such as an oxygen bar and free five minute massages by massage therapy students to help give students time

Date: Saturday, December 10, 2011 - 11:00am - 1:30pm

Location: The Lyric Theater

By Colleen Glenn

The semester may be winding down, but an important community series at the Lyric is just heating up. “Rebuilding the Block,” the S.T. Roach Community Conversations, kicks off Saturday, December 10th. 

by Jonathon Spalding

“As soon as I got to the reception dinner everyone was just smiling,” said Adesuwa Ighodaro, the first recipient of the Paul G. Sears endowed scholarship in chemistry.

The scholarship, initiated in 2008, was created in honor of Dr. Paul G. Sears to assist undergraduates studying chemistry at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Sears earned his B.S. in Industrial Chemistry in 1950, as well as his Ph.D. in 1953 from UK, but the connection he has with the university doesn’t end there.

“My roots at UK run deep,” said Dr. Sears.

After working at Monsanto for a couple years, Dr. Sears returned to UK as a full professor where he eventually retired in 1990. For 28 years Dr. Sears influenced the lives of more than 7,200 undergraduates in more ways than just teaching the difference between electrons and neutrons.

While

The doctoral program in English at the University of Kentucky is among the best in the country.  The 2010 National Research Council (NRC) survey of 119 PhD programs in English Language and Literature generated an overall score evaluating faculty, students, and the program as a whole (the “S” ranking).

View rankings

Based on its NRC-based rankings, University of Kentucky’s doctoral program in English is #12 out of the 119 English departments in the United States that grant PhDs.  The English Department at the University of Kentucky is ranked 8 among public institutions.  This ranking highlights the University of Kentucky’s exemplary record in faculty research and graduate student training, research, and job placement.  We scored

Achmad Hidayatullah, Connor Appelman and Devon Wilson, three students from A&S Wired, are organizing an event to take place during Dead Week. All Keeneland Hall residents are encouraged to study between 3pm and midnight on December 4th and 8th, 2011, for "Study for the Cure," a study-a-thon fundraiser that will benefit the Kentucky Children's Hospital.

https://www.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Keeneland%20Hall%20Studies%2…

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By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The University of Kentucky Confucius Institute will welcome a renowned international education expert to campus next week to discuss the current state of Chinese education in the U.S. and around the world.

University of Vermont emeritus professor of education Juefei Wang will give a talk titled “Chinese Education in a Changing Society” at 3 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6, in the William T. Young Library.

The esteemed professor and program director of the Freeman Foundation founded the University of Vermont Asian Studies Outreach Program and served as its director for 14 years.  In that role he created a statewide program for Asian studies in schools in Vermont, organized more than 1,000 teachers, school administrators, and high school and college students to visit

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The University of Kentucky departments of Statistics and Biostatistics have long been the campus consultants for making sense of all sorts of data.

"Quantitative data and analysis is vital to research in a data driven world, including many dissertations, but many students feel overwhelmed when they have to design their own studies or analyze real data, so they look to our department," said statistics Professor Arne Bathke of the College of Arts and Sciences. "They often know very precisely which research question they want to answer, but often they don’t know the most efficient and powerful way to collect the data, and how to make sense of it once it has been collected."

At the beginning of

By Jenny Wells, Mike Lynch

The Kentucky Geological Survey at the University of Kentucky celebrated a major achievement today in the mapping of Kentucky's geology. KGS has published all 25 maps in the 30 by 60 minute geologic map series (1:100,000 scale), making them available to the public. This achievement is unparalleled by any other state, making Kentucky a leader in geologic mapping and map technology.

These detailed maps show surface and subsurface rock types, formations, and structures such as faults. Geologic formations and faults control the occurrence of minerals and fuels, groundwater, and geologic hazards.

"They are an important contribution to society because the information they provide assists in the production of resources, protection of groundwater and the environment,

By Mick Jeffries

Most people would have to admit: it’s hard not to be a little curious about a university lecture presentation called “Kinky Hillbilly Queens.” Even more so when the talk, which filled a room with recently at the UK Student Center, is presented by someone with the undeniable and far-reaching academic credentials of Dr. Carol Mason.

At the appointed time, Mason cheerfully and adeptly takes the room, inviting prospective students to examine popular TV stereotypes of provincial women. She’s impishly Socratic, soliciting comments and opinions, putting the attendees at ease with her own natural and implacable confidence and curiosity. On one side of the room, a quorum of her departmental peers are seriously beaming over their new colleague. And for good reason, too: It’s

Diversity at Kaizen Motors – Team Solidarity is Greater and Sometimes Less than Expected. UK Sociology prof and former graduate student examine team intensification.

Corporations pour billions of dollars into diversity training without taking the time to research what diversity actually means to the people on the shop-floor. In a new book released this past October, Tom Janoski of the University of Kentucky Sociology Department, and his former student Darina Lepadatu  reveal the dynamics of gender, race and age as workers experience it for themselves.

Their methodical case study of a lean production system at a Fortune 500 corporation exposes the rhetoric of diversity to the realities and pressures of lean production in a

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The University of Kentucky's Appalachian Center and Appalachian Studies Program will give the campus and Lexington community a realistic look at Appalachia through film in the center's first Appalachian Forum series event this week.

Young people from the Appalachian Media Institute (AMI) will showcase three films produced by AMI filmmakers from 3:30-5 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 1, at the William T. Young Library Auditorium. The short films will be followed by a question and answer session. 

The film presentation will cover a wide range

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

University of Kentucky freshmen pull out their iPads, gather in small groups around 21st century tables and begin to discuss physics problems in a way that's as far from conventional as the touch screens they are intently gazing upon.

This is just a typical afternoon for physics and astronomy Professor and Chair Mike Cavagnero's experimental A&S Wired research course: the Science of Measurement.

"Measurement and observation are the foundations of science," Cavagnero said. "Measurement is the first step in all of science, actually, and it's a step that's often left out of K-12 science education."

The 26 A&S Wired students who registered for the eight-week class have carried out customary physics coursework, but have

By Whitney Hale, Erin Holaday Ziegler

University of Kentucky students took a new look at some historical images of Lexington in a groundbreaking, campuswide collaboration.

As part of his "GEO 164 iWorlds" class this past semester, geography professor Matthew Zook assigned students the task of geocoding photographs of streetscapes of Lexington from the first half of the 20th century.  Students were tasked with using descriptive metadata, including the street address, to determine the likely location of the photograph.   

"This project provided undergraduates with hands-on experience in geocoding and crowdsourcing geographic data," said Zook. "Furthermore, we've created a resource that will endure beyond the semester and be of interest to the larger community."

WHO: Professor Juefei Wang, University of Vermont

WHAT: "Chinese Education in a Changing Society" - Confucius Institute Speaker Series

WHERE: William T. Young Library

WHEN: Tuesday, December 6, 2011 3:00p.m.

Dr. Juefei Wang is Professor of Education Emeritus of the University of Vermont and Program Director of the Freeman Foundation.  He founded the University of Vermont Asian Studies Outreach Program and served as its director for 14 years.  In that role he created a statewide program for Asian studies in schools in Vermont, organized more than 1,000 teachers, school administrators, and high school and college students to visit China, Japan, and Thailand, and assisted Vermont schools in offering content on Asia.   In 2003, the program received the inaugural Prize for Excellence

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

A visiting Fulbright Scholar will give an insider's perspective on the past, present and future of Iraq at the University of Kentucky tomorrow.

Mohammed Saeed, a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Statistics pursuing a master's in public health in UK's College of Public Health, will discuss the "Recent History of Iraq, U.S. Involvement and War and Current Issues" at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 29, in the William T. Library. There will be a reception in the Keeneland Room after Saeed's talk.

Saeed was born and raised in Baghdad and arrived at UK in 2010 after receiving a Fulbright scholarship. 

The visiting scholar plans to discuss the Iraq-Iran War; the Gulf War; life under Saddam Hussein's

By Colleen Glenn

Earlier this year, Dhananjay Ravat, Chair of UK’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, was named an Outstanding Alumnus of the Purdue University Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Ravat, who earned his Ph.D. from Purdue in 1989, was delighted by the news. The award was presented in a ceremony on the campus of Purdue University on September 30, 2011.

“Being honored by your teachers is probably one of the ultimate honors,” Ravat said. “For me, it sort of validates all the teaching and research I have been involved in the past 20 years. It also energizes me to do more.”

In receiving this honor, Ravat joins a small and elite group of Purdue Earth and Atmospheric Sciences alumni that include scientists who have excelled in academia, industry, or government organizations like NASA. In fact, one of the other winners

Two UK Sociology Professors See The Jobs Crisis as a Critical Issue in the Next Decade of NSF Research.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (December 5, 2011)– The National Science Foundation asked researchers around the US to profile the most important issues of the next decade in the social sciences. Myron Gutmann and Amy Friedlander of the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Division said that “the response has been astonishing—and formidable.” The 252 response papers were put onto a website for the world to see, and in the last month, NSF published a report on the project called Rebuilding the Mosaic: Fostering Research in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at NSF in the Next Decade.  The one proposal from the state of Kentucky was submitted by Thomas Janoski and Christopher Oliver from the Sociology Department. It is