By: Lindsey Piercy

Sounding an alarm on the crisis of liberal arts education is nothing new, but now, perhaps more than ever before, questions about the direction and importance of a liberal arts degree are being asked.

The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky is working diligently to answer those questions. The college has launched a first-of-its-kind video series titled, "Insights — The Liberal Arts Today." The goal is to address the myths and realities in the field.

"We're living in an increasingly global society. College costs more than it did before, and parents want to make sure it's setting up their children for the future," Mark Kornbluh, dean of the Col

lege of Arts and Sciences, said. "I've gotten to know a lot of alums from our college, a lot of very successful people

By Mack McCormick and Whitney Hale

University of Kentucky Associate Professor of English and University Press of Kentucky author Crystal Wilkinson’s novel, “The Birds of Opulence,” has been named the winner of the 2016 Appalachian Writers Association's Appalachian Book of the Year for Fiction. The multigenerational novel follows four generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness. This marks the fourth award “The Birds of Opulence” has won, including the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the 

By Nate Harling

Mark Kornbluh, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, has appointed two interim associate deans while Elizabeth Lorch, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Study, is on sabbatical for the 2018-2019 academic year.

Carrie Oser is interim Associate Dean for Research. Oser is a highly involved and committed faculty member who serves as associate chair and professor of sociology. She holds joint appointments in the Department of Behavioral Science and the Center on Drug and Alcohol Research and serves as associate director of the new Center on Health Equity Transformation. A scholar of addiction treatment and health disparities, Oser has a strong history of external grant funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

 “It is a tremendous honor to be asked to serve as interim associate dean of research in the College of Arts &

By Whitney Hale

Eight recent University of Kentucky graduates have been selected to participate in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program, which provides them with the opportunity to live and work in Japan as assistant language teachers (ALTs) or as coordinators for international relations (CIRs) as interpreters/translators. The 2018 class of UK JET recipients is the largest class from the university to date.

Founded in 1987, JET has sent more than 60,000 global participants (including nearly 32,000 Americans) to work in schools, boards of education and government offices throughout Japan. What makes JET unique is that it is the only teaching exchange program managed by the government of Japan.

The JET Program typically receives 4,000-5,000 applications each year from U.S. applicants. Of these, 1,000-1,100 are

By Sarah Jayne Johnson

The Other Years perform "Red Tailed Hawk" for "Lost River Sessions" presented by WKYU-TV.

This fall the "Appalachia in the Bluegrass" concert series will return to University of Kentucky's campus. Starting Friday, Aug. 31, the series of free public concerts will kick off at noon, in the Niles Gallery of the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music, located at UK's Lucille C. Little Fine Arts Library and Learning Center. The opening act is folk duo The Other Years.

Heather Summers and Anna Krippenstapel of The Other Years are both originally from Louisville, Kentucky. They were neighbors

WRD encourages WRD majors and minors to conduct research at UK.

To help facilitate undergraduate research, WRD will offer up to $1,000 as support.

We encourage work in areas related to writing, rhetorical studies, or digital research. Such work might include:

To apply, please send a two page letter to the department chair at j.rice@uky.edu in which you

By Mack McCormick and Whitney Hale

University of Kentucky professor, University Press of Kentucky author and former Kentucky Poet Laureate Jane Gentry (1941–2014) has been named the recipient of Appalachian Writers Association’s 2017 Appalachian Book of the Year for Poetry for her posthumous collection “The New and Collected Poems of Jane Gentry,” edited by Julia Johnson, professor of English.

The AWA’s mission is to recognize and promote writing about the Appalachian region. The association works to celebrate writers who are living or have lived in

By Nick Harling

Tracy Campbell, professor of history in the Department of History, has been awarded the E. Vernon Smith and Eloise C. Smith Professorship in American History.  

The Professorship, part of a nearly $6 million gift from alumnus E. Vernon Smith, was given to UK in 2011 and has had lasting positive effects on the university and its campus. With the state’s matching of the endowment, the generous gift has amounted to more than $11 million, with the bulk of the gift going to the College of Medicine. As part of the original gift, Dr. Smith, a 1937 graduate of UK, established a professorship in American history.

Campbell was nominated, “for his wide-ranging and broad-reaching scholarly endeavors in American History, his excellence in the classroom, his dedication to the University, and his own love of American History,” said Karen Petrone, chair

By Nick Harling

The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences has named the first recipients of its Inclusion Fellows program, an initiative for faculty interested in actively orchestrating and advancing efforts to build a more inclusive campus.

Fellows can develop and implement scholarly, community-building, pedagogical, mentoring and networking events, initiatives or programming. The fellowship period serves as a professional development opportunity for the fellows, as it enables them to enhance their responsibilities and bring forth new ideas and measures that will positively affect students.

“The overall goal of the Inclusion Fellows Program is to draw on and support faculty to create sustainable change to enhance inclusivity within the college,” Cristina Alcalde, associate dean of inclusion and internationalization, said. “Over the course

By Lindsey Piercy

The University of Kentucky strives to be a place where people of all backgrounds are welcome. Students, faculty and staff come from different cities, states and countries — creating a truly diverse campus.

Linguistics, the study of language, is one way to measure diversity. It doesn't just have to be a foreign language, there's also diversity within the English language. For example, when referring to soft drinks, do you call them "coke" or "pop"? The answer speaks volumes about where you're from.

A fascinating project, initiated by Jennifer Cramer and Kevin McGowan, faculty members of the Department of Linguistics in the College of Arts & Sciences, aims to capture the various voices of UK. The venture, dubbed Wildcat Voices, started nearly two years ago and continues to

By Nate Harling

Tiffany Barnes, associate professor in the Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been selected to receive the Emerging Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association's Legislative Studies Section. The organization recognizes a recipient each year who has received their doctoral degree within the last five years and whose career has shown “unusual promise.”

“My research is fundamentally aimed at advancing our understanding of how individuals from marginalized groups, including women and racial and ethnic minorities, navigate the policy-making process to gain access to power and promote their policy goals. As such, I am thrilled to see research on women and

By Nate Harling

The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences is entering the eighth year of its Passport to the World initiative, a yearlong exploration of the culture and history of different areas of the world and interdisciplinary topics. This year’s program explores the role migration has played and continues to play in shaping societies across the globe, and here at home.  

“Migration has played a crucial role in human history, and in shaping contemporary societies, and we want to emphasize and critically examine interconnections among world areas and people across the globe, as well as how migration is central to our societies,” said Cristina Alcalde, associate dean of inclusion and internationalization in the college, and one of the

By Loretta Stafford

Josie Dupler traveled to Iraq and Turkey to teach and tutor immigrant children.

Servant leadership has always been important to University of Kentucky alumna Josie Dupler. After earning a degree in international studies with a minor in Arabic and Islamic studies, Dupler traveled to the middle east to teach, tutor and empower migrant children in Iraq and Turkey. 

Throughout the months of April, May and June, Dupler volunteered with the Light A Candle Project, a nonprofit organization that focuses on providing aid and relief to families fleeing from war-torn areas. While in Iraq, she taught English to children ages two through eight; she also tutored middle and high school students.  

Many of the

By Olivia Ramirez

Tsage Douglas standing in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

The connection between public health and economics might not be obvious to some, but the two fields have a unique and surprising interplay. Economics and public health both impact the well-being of the community. That is one of the reasons Tsage Douglas chose to earn a degree in public health from the University of Kentucky College of Public Health and a degree in foreign language and international economics in the UK College of Arts and Sciences.

Since taking Advanced Placement Micro and Macro Economics at Scott County High School, Douglas has been interested in the Federal Reserve. It was at this time that her interests in macroeconomic and developmental economic

By Dave Melanson

Dave Eaton (right) a research scientist at UK's Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER), mentors Todd Prater, an elementary school student from Floyd County, Kentucky.

At a quick glance, one might not think Dave Eaton and Todd Prater would have a whole lot in common.

Eaton, an Owensboro, Kentucky, native who earned his doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of Kentucky Department of Chemistry, is the consummate, professional researcher. Carbon is his game, and the UK Center for Applied Energy Research’s (CAER)laboratories is his home away from home. Whether he is working on carbon fiber, carbon nanotubes, activated carbon or energy storage applications, Eaton is constantly pushing the boundaries of discovery.

Despite a hectic

By Lindsey Piercy

It's the diagnosis those 65 and older often fear, but what are the chances you will be unhappy if you develop some cognitive impairment in the years ahead?

A new study, authored by Anthony Bardo and Scott Lynch, tackles that very question by examining "cognitive life expectancy." What exactly does that term mean? Bardo, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky, describes "cognitive life expectancy" as how long older adults live with good versus declining brain health.

"There is a great deal of stigma and fear surrounding declining cognitive ability that sometimes comes with age — especially among those nearing the second half of their adult lives. Yet, findings from my recent study show that cognitive impairment does not equate to unhappiness."

How did Bardo reach

By Whitney Hale

The National Archives and UK's Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center will present this year’s Earle C. Clements Innovation in Education Awards to three Kentucky educators: Laura J. Cooley, Dustin Ferrell and Amber Sergent.

The National Archives and the University of Kentucky Libraries Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center will present this year’s Earle C. Clements Innovation in Education Awards to three Kentucky educators: Laura J. Cooley, of Pikeville High School; Dustin Ferrell, of Eastern High School; and Amber Sergent, of Woodford County High School. The awards, which recognize the state’s best educators in history and/or civics, will be presented by 

By Trey Melcher and Jenny Wells

Na'imah Muhammad and Nedjma Kalliney discuss their writings in a session of the "Giggles, Guts, and Glitter" creativity workshop. Photo courtesy of Anna K. Stone.

DaMaris B. Hill, an assistant professor of creative writing and English literature in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, recently hosted a writing and creativity workshop for young women of color. The workshop was made possible by a "Girls of Color: Voice and Vision" grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

The purpose of the project was to elevate the voices and lived experiences of these young women by sharing personal stories and creating art.

"A project that educates black girls about accessing voice, feminist

By Julie Wrinn

Chris Green (’93 B.A.) majored in English for the usual reason: he loved to read. His path to that degree, however, and to his success as a partner in the internationally prominent New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, was unusually long and circuitous.

“I was really introduced to serious writing by Bill Floyd, one of my all-time favorite teachers. He taught us Yeats in the eighth grade,” recalls Green. “Since then, I’ve loved poetry, especially the modern poets.” The doors Floyd opened proved to be the high point of Green’s early academic career, however, because he “back-slid” in high school.

Thanks to his SAT scores, Green was admitted to Princeton, but he lasted only three semesters. “It was an intensely challenging academic environment, and my study skills weren’t on par with my classmates.” He worked hard but couldn’t manage his

By Whitney Hale and Jenny Wells

More than 45 of the University of Kentucky's students and recent graduates had the world's most prestigious scholarship, fellowship and internship organizations take note this year. The newest class of highly regarded scholars include UK’s 14th Truman Scholar and first Pickering Fellow.

Helping prepare these UK students and recent alumni to compete for and win such honors is the mission of the UK Office of Nationally Competitive Awards. Under the guidance and leadership of Pat Whitlow, the office identifies and works with young scholars on the application process for large scholastic prizes awarded by regional, national and international sources.

This year UK students and alumni were recognized with the following awards: