By Whitney Hale

The University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced that recent College of Arts & Sciences philosophy graduate Benjamin Troupe, of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, was named a finalist for the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship. Troupe is one of 60 national finalists who will interview for the fellowship in Washington, D.C., in mid-April.

Funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, the Pickering

Innovative efforts to preserve a historic Lexington neighborhood have earned the Kentucky Archaeological Survey and the Davis Bottom History Preservation Project a top honor in the field of a archaeology.

They have been named the 2018 recipients of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Award for Excellence in Public Education. The award is designed to recognize and encourage outstanding achievements by individuals or institutions in the sharing of archaeological knowledge with the public.

Davis Bottom was a residential community located west of downtown Lexington. Established for free blacks after the Civil War, Davis Bottom was home to several

NeuroCATS, an undergraduate student organization founded last year, strives to achieve its mission to educate the younger generation about neuroscience through community outreach.

Created with the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Science's newly established neuroscience program, NeuroCATS provides a place for neuroscience majors and minors to meet, socialize and get involved with the community. 

Through a program they created called NeuroKIDS, they visit local schools and share basic neuroscience principles and the scientific method with children. This new six-week after-school program for fourth- and fifth-grade students at Veterans Park Elementary School and E7 Kids Café is about educating young kids about the central nervous system and to get them excited about science. The program allows kids to participate in

By Lindsey Piercy

A two-day event at the University of Kentucky will explore the diversity and complexity of Jewish history in Kentucky.

UK is hosting the Kentucky Jewish History Symposium starting Thursday, April 12, at the Hilary J. Boone Center. A public keynote lecture, by Professor and Rabbi Gary Zola, executive director of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, will begin at 7:30 p.m. The lecture promises to place Kentucky Jewish history in its national and transnational contexts. 

A full day of sessions is scheduled from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday, April 13, in the ballroom of the UK King Alumni House at 400 Rose St. They will feature national scholars, UK faculty and students as presenters. 

At a keynote lunch, attendees will hear from politician

By Lindsey Piercy

The University of Kentucky African American and Africana Studies Program hopes to send a message of empowerment throughout the 24th annual Black Women's Conference.

This year's conference, themed "The New Jane Crow; Black Women, Mass Incarceration, and Police Violence," will be held Friday, March 30, and Saturday, March 31.

"Black women are a fast-growing portion of the prison population and experience a myriad of challenges related to high incarceration rates in the U.S. Therefore, we thought it was essential that we draw attention to the very real impact mass incarceration and police violence have on black women," said Anastasia Curwood, director of African American and Africana Studies Program (

By Jenny Wells

The University of Kentucky will host a public talk on campus next week by John Preskill, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics and director of the Institute of Quantum Information and Matter at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

The talk, “Quantum Computing and the Entanglement Frontier,” will take place 4:15 p.m. Friday, April 6, at the Don & Cathy Jacobs Science Building Room 121.

Preskill's talk will be the 17th annual van Winter Lecture.  The van Winter Lectures were established in 2001 to honor the memory of Clasine van Winter, who held a professorship in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1968 until her retirement in 1999.  This year's van Winter Lecture is jointly sponsored by the 

By Lindsey Piercy

Several University of Kentucky faculty members within the College of Arts and Sciences presented research at the Association for Asian Studies annual conference last weekend.

The four-day event, in Washington, D.C., brought together scholars, professors, researchers and authors from around the world to present research and discuss topics devoted to the study of Asia.

The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) is the largest Asian Studies conference held in North America. More than 3,000 people attended this year, including UK faculty:

By Tatyanna Pruitt

Lauren Cagle, an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences, was recently named a rising star in Technical and Professional Communication by the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW). Cagle

participated in the organization’s first plenary panel, on which rising stars and senior scholars discuss major issues in the field, during this year's conference which took place March 13-14. ATTW rising stars are faculty members who are considered among the best in the field.

The Association of Teachers of Technical Writing was formed to encourage dialogue among teachers of technical communication and to develop technical communication as an academic discipline. ATTW today has approximately 1,000 members that includes both graduate and undergraduate students of

By Tatyanna Pruitt

Growing up reading "The Hobbit" novels, Emily Dautenhahn never imagined she would get to visit the actual movie set of the trilogy. Her unexpected journey became a reality when she took a leap and decided to study abroad.

Dautenhahn, a senior double majoring in mathematics and history in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, decided she wanted to participate in an education abroad program the summer after her sophomore year, and began researching and filling out applications. She ultimately decided on a program in New Zealand.

"After choosing an internship program in New Zealand, I was delighted to hear that I had been placed with the

By Jenny Wells

Francis Su, a mathematician from Harvey Mudd College, will deliver a talk on how math helps people flourish at the University of Kentucky next week.

Hosted by the UK Department of Mathematics in the UK College of Arts and Sciences, the 2017-18 J.C. Eaves Lecture will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. Thursday, March 29, in Room 110 of the White Hall Classroom Building.  

Su, who is the outgoing president of the Mathematical Association of America, is known for his powerful speeches on how mathematics can help people achieve their human desires, such as truth and justice.

“Why does the practice of mathematics often fall short of our ideals and hopes? How can deeply human themes

By Susan Odom and Jenny Wells

Kentucky’s middle school girls and their parents or guardians are invited to register for the second annual Expanding Your Horizons conference at the University of Kentucky Saturday, April 21. This day of hands-on workshops will give middle school girls the chance to meet role models and get exposure to opportunities in the STEM disciplines. This is the second iteration of the conference, which is organized by members of the UK Colleges of Agriculture, Food and Environment; the UK College of Arts and Sciences; and the UK College of Engineering.

Sometime during the transition from middle school to high school, middle school

By Stephanie Swarts

The University of Kentucky Gaines Center for the Humanities has selected 12 exceptional undergraduates as new scholars for the university’s Gaines Fellowship Program for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 academic years. Gaines Fellowships are given in recognition of outstanding academic performance, demonstrated ability to conduct independent research, an interest in public issues, and a desire to enhance understanding of the human condition through the humanities.

Gaines Fellowships are awarded for the tenure of students’ junior and senior years; students in all disciplines and with any intended profession are given equal consideration.

UK’s 12 new Gaines Fellows are:

By Kaitlyn Summe

As part of the "Year of Civics and Citizenship," the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences will host guest speaker Sam Ford for a lecture regarding the Future of Work initiative in Kentucky: the power of narrative for imagining sustainable solutions. The free public talk will begin 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, in the William T. Young Library.

For a state at the front lines of economic disruption, the future of work can be a challenging subject. Ford will discuss how we can avoid dominant culture narratives becoming self-fulfilling prophecies as well as the roles questions of narrative and civic imagination play in economic development.

Ford is a

By Allison Cooper

Six students from the University of Kentucky will compete in Emory University’s Global Health Case Competition (GHCC) in Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, March 17. This is the fourth year that UK will compete in Emory’s competition. Students from three teams that participated in UK’s GHCC were selected to form a new team for the competition.

Emory’s competition brings 24 teams together from national and international schools to propose solutions to current real-world health issues. The teams are presented with a case involving a specific issue, and they have a week to create a realistic approach to solving it. This year, the teams will be working on a method to contain a deadly virus during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

UK faculty and other professionals in the state will assist the students, providing their expertise to advise the team. Professor

By Jenny Wells

Melissa Pittard, a senior lecturer in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Statistics, has received an award from the American Statistical Association. The Best Speed Session Award, which was given out as part of the 2017 Joint Statistical Meeting Conference, was given to Pittard for her presentation on statistics education. More than 480 presenters participated in the speed sessions.

"I am quite honored to win the award and was rather surprised," said Pittard, who received her doctoral degree from UK in 1999. "The other presentations were excellent. I usually just joke that I am really good at talking fast. 

”The topic of my presentation was using video presentations to assess student learning in large lectures

by Susan Odom

Kentucky’s middle school girls and their parents/guardians are invited to join us for the second annual Expanding Your Horizons Conference at the University of Kentucky campus on Saturday, April 21, 2018.  This day of hands-on workshops will give middle school girls the chance to meet STEM role models and get exposure to opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math. This is the second iteration of the conference, which is organized by members of the Colleges of Agriculture, Food, and Environment, the College of Arts & Sciences, and the College of Engineering.

Co-organizers, including Ellen Crocker (Forestry and Natural Resources) and Carmen Agouridis (Biosystems & Ag Engineering), joined forces to bring Expanding Your Horizons back to UK for a second time. The EYH team is back with more person – in particular

By Whitney Hale

A desire to become a physician-scientist has led University of Kentucky biology junior Joshua Preston to not only excel in the classroom and lab, but also garner one of the nation’s most coveted STEM scholarships as well as entry into several undergraduate research programs during his college studies.

Preston is UK’s most recent recipient of the Astronaut Scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF). He is one of 45 recipients of the prestigious $10,000 scholarship, which is presented annually to outstanding college students majoring in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM). Candidates must be nominated by faculty of the participating universities based on their display of initiative, creativity

By Jenny Wells

 Chad Risko, an assistant professor of chemistryin the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences and researcher at the Center for Applied Energy Research, has been selected to receive a 2018 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. Risko is one of 31 academic scientists at 22 institutions to receive the honor this year.

Risko’s research is inspired by complex synthetic materials and the desire to

By Sarah Wood

When University of Kentucky students signed up for the MCL 591: Russian Radio class, they didn’t realize they would be reaching people 5,000 miles away.

Dedicated to the improvement of students’ linguistic and cultural knowledge, “Russian Radio” is a unique class offered by the UK College of Arts and Sciences. It is not a typical class, however. Instead of taking exams and conducting research, students in Russian Radio learn through live readings on UK’s independent student radio, WRFL-FM (88.1).

“We don’t have exams in this class. Every week is like an exam when students try to read on the radio. This extra time is dedicated to a student’s deeper understanding of language, culture and connection to Russian,” said 

By Gail Hairston and Kathy Johnson

Karen Rignall of the University of Kentucky has received a $50,000 Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship to pursue her research “Stories of Place in a Changing Appalachia,” a project in Eastern Kentucky, to bring “stories of place” and other traditions to bear on local land-use planning.

The Whiting Foundation announced yesterday (Tuesday) a new cohort of seven Whiting Public Engagement Fellowships, including Rignall’s, to showcase how the humanities enrich our lives.

In a written statement, Whiting Foundation leaders declared, “Never before has an understanding of history, philosophy, literature, and culture been so important. The humanities — too often underappreciated outside of academia — bring to bear careful inquiry and deep context, and help us absorb the news